hubba hubba

Christmas time heartbreak. Holly and tears, garlands and euphemisms, mulled wine and pining sighs. Amidst all of our own stories, annual and perennial, we acquire the comfort and extra attention that a dramatic narrative brings.

The real tragedy is finding no one to tell our special stories too. What is a friend but an archivist? And so I build a real technological attachment with a blogging site. Remember, a technological attachment is a human attachment.

For me, I drive alone and find small joys in the plump brown birds that linger in a bush by the theatre back-door. My mother, had she been with me, could have told me what kind they were.

notes on my persephone preference

Tree Leaf Talk: A Heideggerian Anthropology

by James F. Weiner

p.xi

Holzwege:

a path cut in order to prevent the spread of fires

a path leading into the woods used mainly by woodcutters

colloquially-- to be on the wrong track, to be mistaken

"We seem to encounter another of Freud's primal words with antithetical meanings"

P.L. limits to knowledge...

-------------------------------------------------------

"The Renaissance Cyborg"

by Jonathan Sawday

"The modern human relationship with machines, from its emergence in the earlier part of the sixteenth century down to the present, has always been tinged with a measure of unease. 'They' have always been nearer kin to 'us' whan we have cared to admit; and in that lies thier fascinationtion, as well as their potential horror" p.191

identity threatened, no "essence" of human-ness

Buddhist philosophy

(1)no essences, (2) no "goal" for enlightenment (not promethius), no particular peices/human scale=illusion, "helpful fiction"

I can see how (1) and (2) are contrary to PL and western philosophy, what about (3)?

(2) for me, favors persephone model

Oh What Spring Time Days You Once Beheld

Last night, in an inverted snowy dream, the Minneapolis Metrodome heaved inwards into itself. The roof, under the weight, collapsed further still until outside met inside. It bent until it caved, it caved until it broke. Snow poured in and coated the astroturf. The citizens of Minneapolis must wake to visions of a lamentable and languid whale, which the ring of the stadium bravely guards.

And on the streets, people in cars tentatively pass: optimistic for new structures, reverential of the old, and still content with Christmas approaching.

Things I Want My Play to Include

loving friends

fake snow

secrets

a terrible rift

a cyborg

the jefferson memorial

facebook status/twitter-like interludes

doubts about everything (abortion, god, social activism, science, progress, love, reality, communication, gender, animal rights)

good jokes

a death

a chekhov character like masha

Do not talk to me when I cry every time I hear your voice. Wait, and talk to me when I will not cry because I will not hear your voice.

just a suggestion

Facebook, there needs to be an ability to like someone else's like. We can go back and forth forever, or for at least some number of years: liking a like, liking the like to a like, liking the like to a like to a like... until we need no words, only the performative word of Like. We will walk around in these caves made of our liking; the original object of liking is lost and suspected by many to have never existed in the first place. And that's ok because we are all very liking of each other.

Paradise Lost, gut response

What do I do? If I want to share some passages and insights that I have gained from Milton's epic, am I enacting Eve offering the fruit to Adam? Promethius... Persephone... how do you know good pursuits of knowledge from bad pursuits of knowledge? Is all knowledge evil? What are the limits? What are the loopholes? Is the pursuit of knowledge equivalent to the pursuit of a woman-- some original misconception, some mal-interpretation of intention? Both religion and reason have room for non-reason. You cant be a humanist and a Miltonist at the same time, can you? Can you be a literary theorist and a nun?

Clean House, gut response dialogue

: Clifford?

: Maybe.

: Just maybe? I love Clifford.

: What about Kevin?

Kevin? Kevin.

: Noooo! Noooo!

: Kevin! Kevin?

: No. Anything but Kevin.

: Why not Kevin? Kevin!

: Because it reminds me of dog food and bacon.

: Lord, Lucy. Tell me why Kevin reminds you of dog food and bacon.

: Well Kevin sounds like kibble, so theres that commercial kibble and bits... "kibbles and bits and mm mmm beefy bits!" ... and then bacon, well Kevin Bacon, obviously.

: Kevin Bacon.

: Yes.

: Kevin Bacon.

: Yes?

starts dancing towards Lucy

: We are going to name our son, Kevin Baconnnnn!

: Ew stop!

: Bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon

They embrace

how does a cyborg die?

I had not thought of this before. In renaissance literature, humans and the physical world are seen as corrupt because their elements aren't mixed correctly. Consequently, they are mortal and subject to decay. On the other hand, ethereal beings are perfectly mixed and are thus eternal.

If a cyborg is built from replaceable parts, heals and grows from synthetic systems, and is immortal because of this, it either defies renaissance logic or is incorporated into the mental paradigm as a holy being. Whoever can kill a cyborg is probably a devil of sorts. Or someone who can unmix the balance... if that is possible. Descent into corruption and sin usually is depicted as a matter of choice and agency, not forced placement.

So. A cyborg dies by descending into human sin. Once tarnished and weakened by this transition, he is killed. He would be killed by simple violence-- off-stage, in the fashion of the Greeks. This is all fuzzy logic of course.

re-thinking

What I may secretly wish is that I take the alternate path: I struggle morally, psychologically, and mentally, but my struggles will spit me out in a place where everyone else has been all along, and that is somewhere safe. Does it count if I have this hidden intention? And do people subconciously build up conflict as a way to distract themselves from worse, bigger conflict? I think I know the answer to that question.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time." --The Magus by John Fowles.

gut response, Translations dialogue

A: Sometimes I hear those sounds over the radio, and I get so frightened, especially when I’m alone. I switch the thing off, but that doesn’t always make me feel better.

B: You shouldn’t be afraid of music.

A: Well, if not music what should you be afraid of?

C: Its seems the literature and artistic endeavours of man will encapusulate some of his queries and miseries—can’t you be afraid of what you don’t know yet? Its what you fear that teaches you what you don’t know.

D: If you’re not scared, you’re not thinking.

C: Or is it the other way around?

E: I’d ruther be a brave fool anyhow.

D: And we love you for it, Beuford.

E: Damned pig robot should be scair’t of the things that he don’t understand. I’ll teach him to be.

gut response, Bourbon and Laundry dialogue

: How do you know?
: I read it!
: Read it where?
: In a book.
: What book?
: I dont know, Leno, just this thing in a book!
: Wait did you even read the whole book?
Silence.
: Did you read the whole book?
: Thats not the point. I--
: NO. Did. You. Read. The. Book?
: Not... all of it...
: Ah! Typical! How can you lecture me when you have a half-assed idea yourself? If I didnt hold you up to the wall and make you eek out that you don't know what youre talking about, you'd be running around Knoxville using that infuriating tone of voice-
: What tone of voice? And whether or not I read the whole book, the idea is the same regardless.
: using the tone "you know leno, its very frustrating to me to see you abuse your body in this way..."
: Shut up! shut up shut up shut up shut up-- That isnt fair. That isnt funny.
: still in the tone, "Of course you know I want you to be happy..."
: It just means that I care.
: No, no. It means you dont know what the heck you're talking about.
: You don't need a whole book to make a point in an argument!
: You do.
: You dont.

what is school?

blah blah blah... loss of identity... blah blah blah.... duality of man.... blah blah blah... juxtaposition

orientation, space, and the internet

I have been recently excited by some new posts on Reading (w/) the Digital Human blog: orientation, space, and the internet.

One contributer says physical space is different from the internet becuase we can map it. As of now, there is not way to map two-dimensional space online. The best way, continues the contributer, is to orientate ourselves by ways of traffic and hits, the most visited sites become more defined as more paths lead to them... google, facebook, etc. The contributer uses the word gravity to characterize the force of their attraction. At first gravity, to me, still implies problematic directions. On earth it is "down." But after some thought, (and remembering reading Enders Game back when) I've re-remembered/realized that in outerspace we can rid ourselves with up/down/left/right: cyberspace follows these same rules, a thought that this contributer shares.

And yet does't routine have something to do with internet orientation? I have a log of sites I must cycle through whenever I get online. This sort of ritual is not unlike an obsessive/compulsivist's desire for order and comfort. This habit-building online throws into stark light my habit-building offline: routines I enact every day in my physical body for the sake of normalcy.

I used to think of these websites as rooms, after all chat "rooms" and other forums want us to be familar with these spacial distinctions... Facebook is a house with many rooms, and I feel good when I go there because it affirms what I'm doing as what others are doing. But if one extends the analogy of rooms and houses, what is the space where we are traveling to and from? Cyberspace does not give us the time for journeys in between destinations. The closest we get is the loading symbol on multi-media heavy pages, and those, like some aspects of long car-rides, provide only aggravation.

And as I am writing this, I am becoming increasingly aware of euphamisms, or are they demarcators, that we use for these online spaces. Are they rooms? Sites? Pages? All? None? Why?

Will future nostalgics opt for digital simulation of travel? Maybe they will want scenery of paths that lead them from site to site, or bits of graphic breadcrumb 'bites' like Hansel and Gretal.

Or maybe, future nostalgics will wish for a loading bar (45%....76%.....90%....) just like the "good ole days."

forever sunsets

I do believe that when its raining outside, this is something that I as well as others can independently comment upon. I don't think the whole world is a hoax or anything. I just think that actually getting at the rain outside is tricky and maybe impossible. Its like "watching the sunset"-- that figure of speech stacked up many times over in your brain, until the original event, literally watching a sun set is lost, lost so that it might as well have not existed in the first place. This is not to say that I can prove any of this, only that maybe one time I knew and felt it so much, but now I only sort of remember it being right.

a holy message

The Message came to her as she was leaving the gym, sweaty and satisfied. In this moment of ungaurded calm, the words unbiddenly entered her brain, like the tea labeled "mint-infused" that she bought at Weigals. And these words were perfect, balanced, concise. She got home, typed in her new facebook status, hit enter. So natural, it felt right.

gut response, Woyzek dialogue

: I saw Woycek.

: Yea?

: I thought, I thought that in that scene? It could have been you, with that knife, I saw you there.

: What scene?

: The one. The one where he kills her.

: I’m not going to kill you!

: But you could!

: Lena!

: But you could! You could! You could! Oh my God its too terrible.

: Lena, I’m not going to kill you. I love you.

: That’s all it takes—he kissed her. He kissed her when he was doing it. Oh my God.

: Lena, Lena, stop. Stop it.

: I can’t, I can’t! Anything could happen--

------------------------

: No its not like anyone's "crazy"! We just go to see the psychiatrist, you know, just in case we are.

: Covering all the bases?

: Exactly! Covering all the bases. In case.

insider/outsider confusion

My history professor asked our class to consider Leila Achmed's autobiography, A Border Passage in terms of "insiders" and "outsiders." Yet the longer I thought, the more problematic the words become.

Initially, the categorization is simple. Achmed, as a girl born in Egypt, can be seen as an "insider" in her youth. Later, she begins her schooling in Britain and ultimately finds residence in the U.S. as a professor, reaching a point of "outsider" to her first home. Yet, it is through a scholar's eye that she returns to childhood memories, and does not just recreate them for the reader, but instead re-interprets them, finds new importance to them, and re-imagines them. Many times she uses phrases such as (to paraphrase) "if I had known then..." or "looking back now, I see this was actually all about this..." It appears that Achmed uses the status of "outsider" to better understand herself as an "insider." But if that is the case, of the current and former Ahmed's, who is the real "outsider" and who is the real "insider"? Everyone knows the phrase, "inside scoop," so is it possible for Ahmed to deliver better insider information than an insider?

Plus, there is this tension between British colonizers and Egyptians. Once again, one could easily say Brits: outsiders, Egyptians: insiders. But here enters in Ahmed again to confuse us. As a woman who received her formal education in large part from British institutions and British teachers, is she, as well as other Egyptians in similar situations, not an outsider here too? Though she may not sympathize directly with British politics in Egypt (wait a second, thats an older, "outsider" Ahmed who has that opinion) is she not an individual in large part shaped by their force? Additionally, Ahmed acknowleges her father to have in some part internalized colonialism in his efforts to emulate the British. The "colonial internalization" is apparently a sympton of many colonized peoples. Once over, this is a western concept that Ahmed has learned to diagnose. Britain has infiltrated. Even more uncomfortably, is it possible that the roles can be reversed in this outsider/insider relationship between Britain and Egypt? Since Britain has called the shots in Egypt for basically for seventy-years of emperialism, perhaps it is they, the administrators and foreign authority, that are the real insiders here. The colonizers are calling the shots, they become the insiders to thier own game while the colonized are the outsiders learning the rules. As already evidenced in the above paragraph, can't outsiders make better insiders than insiders?

Lastly, in the book, there seems to be a sense of insiders and outsiders even within the Egyptian citizenry. Ahmed, aware in some degree of her "outsider" status, seems to envy other Egyptians for being more Egyptian then her. But as my TA pointed out in an email once "is there one true face to Islam?" this question has broader implications: the whole notion of "Egyptian" can't fall to one person as a model for everyone else. Ahmed expresses the ambiguities of people's identity within Egypt in the first place, and how the term Egyptian may not fully encapsulate a person. Well, for that matter, no term fully encapsulates anyone, so where are these insider groups to be found? If we accept the lesson there there is no "essence" of a person, we can extend this to say, there is no "essence" of cultural identity. I think Zizek said somewhere in his book, Violence, that a "body of people" or "nation" is actually a idea that no one fully sees: it is physically impossible. Yet we attribute characteristics to it, and assume that out there are people, Others, who exemplify all these ideals associated with the nation. In this way, we are all outsiders to some percieved ideal.

So where does this consideration of insider v. outsider go? It is a false diachotomy of sorts. They are most helpful as words to be manipulated... as tools to craft identity in relation to whoever is weilding them. It would be interesting to trace this insider/outsider duo to other historical situations.

in which i eat of the wonka nerds

I've just consumed three mini-nerds boxes in a fit of rage: purple, pink, then purple again. I did it in that order because I like the pink the best but because there was only one pink left I had to offset it by purples, since, afterall, I do not want a purple saturation taste in my mouth. There is too much going on in my mouth as it is right now: a cold sore and two, TWO canker sores. Consequently, I feel like a messy slob. And I know its because of the weather, and the stress blah blah but you may be wondering... why does someone in a fit of rage take the time to consider their nerd order admidst the gulps?

I guess this is not a true fit of rage. I'm sad too. Because because sometimes I'm afraid I believe just anything I read. That I read a book on feminism and animal ethics and everything that I hear makes me think we are all sexist animal abusers. Because somedays I feel like an idiot, and not a good, "ah I am aware of my lack of knowlege so actually I am wise to believe that I am an idiot" idiot-- but the actual jerkish kind who thinks they have shit to say but really dont.

Im sad because I think people play into roles without realizing it... especially in romantic relationships but also in school among educators. Teachers are no better than preachers in that they all love the converted rebel. Once you're in their orbit and actually want to learn well-- no you are immediately unattractive and their interests in you will drop OR never spark in the first place. My advice? Play hard to get because that's all people understand any more.

BESIDES measuring intelligence is bullshit so why doesnt everyone just act like everyone else is extremely bright, because they are. Really they are. We are. Even if I say the dumbest thing, I want someone to challenge me on it. And even if I write something terrible, or vague, or silly, or confusing, or half-assed, I want a teacher to go for it and treat me like someone who wants to learn. Isnt that enough? What is this nonsense where they sit back and try to ascertain "what sort of student you are" -- and then treat you accordingly after they think they've "figured you out"? The danger in this is if enough educators do it, then we start believing it. We will seperate ourselves out into our appropriate types. All because their grad school must of not have emphasised the virtues of empathy and patience. Becuase it takes time and humanity and discusssions of real things unfolding between people. Becuase it's harder to do than to decide who gets into an "inner circle" of knowledge-- dangling your intellect just out of reach of those you teach instead of fellowship and communion with those who just want to figure things out too.

Its rude. Intentional or not.

gut response, cloud nine dialogue

:Mommy, wont you save the dance?

:I'll dance with you dear when your daddy isn't home.

:Why doesnt Daddy, Daddy like to dance?

:Because its silly and special, I'll cut strawberries for it.

:Yes, lets leave him out.

:Heres your sugar, Sugar.

theory

I want to prove that "to understand" is the same as "to love." With my whole life I am afraid I will never be able to create or build something wonderful; I will only be able to understand and acknowledge wonderful things. And if this understanding is the same thing as love, if theory really means "passionate sympathetic contemplation," as some Greek once connotated, than perhaps I can strive and reach success through this avenue. Otherwise I am doomed to forever behold brilliance but never reflect it.

shifting topography, disconcerting

I got online this morning before classes to check the weather. I have a riding lesson this afternoon, and just as I suspected: thunderstorms continuing at a 70% chance through the night. I left that weather channel window (channel, window) to open and print some reading. When I clicked the bar at the bottom where this weather channel window was saved, a new window appeared in its place. IF YOU HAVE NEVER HAD A DUI YOU ARE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR AUTO INSURANCE. The weather channel window was subsumed.

book learnin

When I was small and read the books,

I found adventures and hiding nooks

Golden fish, paths to the sea

Swaddles of pillows bishops and kings

I heard a Good Voice that makes the constant word

but now I'm old, troubled, absurd.

The books have changed and ganged up on me

I fell in line from threats of monsters and witches,

now I fall from

They're not the same and neither am I--

I see them around corners armed with swords and knives

When I see them its bad, when I dont its worse

I once played at Knowlege's feet;

now I'm afraid to look him in the eye.

peter pan

I should be working on my homework. I really should. But instead I am watching Peter Pan on vhs-- "he can fly, he can fly, he flew!"

Interesting observations:

Mr. Darling, the patriarch of the family, becomes annoyed when his sons listen to Wendy's stories. He banishes her out of the nursery the same night he sends Nana, the nursedog, out of the nursery and into the garden. Nana's eliciting sympathy from the mother and children of the family cause Mr. Darling's jealousy. His worry over his sons "practical"-ness at the hands of Wendy's fancies combined with jealousy of the nurse cause Mr. Darling to enforce a certain "geography of containment" over his home. And in this way, one may have insights into sexism from a cartoon stereotype.

Words and reality take on a special meaning in Peter Pan. It is not clear from the beginning of the movie who came first-- the stories about Peter Pan , or Pan himself. There is a seamless transition to stories about Peter Pan to his sudden appearance. This pattern happens again when the children think of happy thoughts in order to fly: "a mermaid lagoon," says Wendy "Indians," "a pirate ship," say John and Michael. And as the Darlings arrive at Neverland, each of these places and people come to exist. Do their words create, or merely catalogue, reality?

Hmm is it something about the costume? -- Both Peter Pan and Robin Hood dawn similar garb to all ladies' devastation. What is it about green tights with a matching smock? Maybe its the little triangle hat with the red feather... or the similar devil-may-care, jolly attitudes of the two characters. What ever it is, oooh dah-lally!

a praise poem

Oh hallowed youth whom to you
summer days lend out
timeshares of warmth, a smiling sun
On your beauty and fun
and only playful pouts
grace your mouths
on the lake, on your decks
grilling out, eating in
You make every day bright
Every evening memorable

And when the school year begins
You waste no time to switch,
pick up your books, adopt a wise look
and the halls of college sing of your return
Computers whiz and blink with light
to give you screens filled with scholarly delight
The books, they know you need them less,
they attend in solomne reverence and readiness
And there is no reticence to bring you
whatever it is you need-- perhaps a coffee
flavored sweet to suit your similar taste

Ah, your footsteps bring Rainbows
where ever you pass
Sperry's sing from the trees
lining the student walk way
Nike's form lacks and so yearns

for your smiles that adorn

yet are never put up for display.

Every gym short,

a new bright color
Every t-shirt,
you casually acquire

So no matter the strife, the replaced carpet
the soririty clash, the DUI, the debt, the
beer, the rumor, the conquest, the credit card,
the debit card, the gift card,

the big game--

And no matter the unfair exam,
the workload, the stress, you will be you,

this stuff of class is put there to stay

it is not for life or your course of a day

when you hear of problems outside your world--

Christ, what are other people for?

We all deserve what we have.

Remember: Don't sweat the small stuff.
Live laugh learn. Life is good.

Above all,
We are just glad to see that you have tanned well.

strangers

I am at the fair walking around. Cecilia and I look rather stoic and aloof in our sunglasses and I like that image. This woman grabs her daughter's hand and says, "you better take my hand, there are strangers everywhere."

Which, when you think about it, is a funny thing to say. What else would they be? Did the mother come to the carnival thinking that three hundred of her closest friends and relatives would be riding the spaceship or stumbling through the mardi gras fun house?

"Honey, do you want to run out to the grocery store with me?"

"No I better not, there could be strangers there."

And the word "strangers." It must feel alarming to look at a crowd of people and just see the word stranger flashing over and over. I guess there are only two kinds of people in the world afterall: strangers and non-strangers.

It makes me think though-- to most people, I am a stranger. And if its numbers that count, my overwhelming identity would be that of stranger. Its not too hard to be a stranger; most people are really good at it with out exuding effort or becoming self-concious in their attempts. Sure there are anamolies, like occasional friendships and kin, but overwhelmingly, we stay strangers.

Whats the in-between of a stranger and a friend? Often, friends make good strangers. We are all in a state of flux becoming more or less like strangers as we move around or dont move around. Yesterday there was a man in front of me in line dressed like a woman. She had breasts and teased hair, but big sad boy eyes, even with the eyeliner. She turned around to face me and said, "Sometimes you get what you're looking for, sometimes you dont," which sounds about right. I think it was a prophesy.

She was buying a book, a book that was one of the first books my mother read a loud to me. Little House in the Big Woods. Which seems significant: we are little dots in a big place, shifting on a gray scale of strangeness.

a short meditation on playwriting

Sometimes if I am very very lucky, when I first turn on my airconditioning, the initial burst of stale air causes my car to smell like a Disney World ride. And that is a great great day.

As I am working on this playwriting project, I think I have encountered a valuable lesson. The characters must not fully have a handle on their world or their problems. That sounds like a given, but it is a really crucial thing to perfect. The characters cant fully comprehend the nature of their conflict. Which should be in the playwright's ability: to be so honest about their issues that they push (both themselves and the play) to the ends of thier know-how problem solving. Sort of like John Donne poetry, or my favorite movie, Broadcast News... both these things, the movie and the poetry, have unbearable conflict in common. John Donne's narrator as well as Holly Hunter's character absolutely are up to their neck in angst, one siding up in the protestant/ catholic rift, the other choosing between love and values. And they dont let themselves off the hook of the struggle, consequently the audience/reader have no clue how its all going to end up just as the character does not know.

Thats how you play it, thats how you write it, thats how you read it, watch it. Narratives... education... they just serve a purpose and take you down a road that exposes you to everything you dont know and dont understand.

Au la cart, Darling, Au la cart

Well, for me, I love the idea of non-local foods. What is more romantic than a New York rendezvous? Imagine, flying cross country in a jet, to dine, magnificently, on cuisine that has traveled equally as far. In Paris, in Manchu Pitchu, I eat the food of Switzerland, Japan. We meet at dinner; I sip and dine on supple palletes of subtle sauces. The champagne flows like bubbling petroleum, from my lips and down further still-- an elite tango of diet and lifestyle. I love my food as I love myself: rich, transient, global.

An Equestrian Question of Ethicality

Is it Ethical to be an Equestrian?

The worry has echoed around these last few months. When I'm taking a lesson, it is not uncommon for the instructor to yell out across the dusty arena "You're the boss! Tell the horse what to do, not the other way around!" When you hear this, the horse is coughing from the dust and you are on your 10th lap around the ring; the end not quite in sight. And amidst the heat and the sweat and the crop you use to motivate your steed to acceptable speeds, you have to ask yourself, "Wait. Is this right?"

Sure, Ayer would just say "Boo horse-riding boo!" and leave it at that. But the non-logical positivists amongst us still feel unsatisfied.

I've never arrived at a solid answer to the query on if animals have souls or consciousness. Heck, I'm not even sure if humans have souls or consciousness (best, for maximum societal meshing to assume that they do; sorry if that sounds cynical). But let’s say they do have souls/consciousness, as everyone loves to imagine of their beloved pet. Well if that’s the case, what about what the horse wants?

If a horse has a soul, shouldn't we enter into an equal, peer-like relationship with them? Or are their more qualifications to consider when deciding to treat an animal as an equal? Some might say intelligence. Humans are more intelligent than horses, so it’s alright if we command them. But to me this logic just doesn't fly. Enlightened Despots never lasted long being enlightened and leading the ignorant masses. When dealing with people at a societal level, one person's lack of "intelligence" isn’t grounds for different treatment. Or it shouldn’t be.

On top of that, what are our values that we decide what makes up intelligence? Is it fair to judge all creatures on a human scale of intelligence? Horses may have a totally different value system than ours and it could be completely outside of our imagination or understanding. Do we just give our values preference because we communicate amongst ourselves for consensus?

All I'm saying is... if aliens land on earth and start riding us around to play polo, I'd be pretty pissed that they would assume that because they couldn’t comprehend us they would use us as ends for their own game and, as a default, prefer their species over ours.

Which leads me to some ethical schools of thought. When I try to apply this question of horse-riding to The Big Three (as I affectionately call them) Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue Ethics, I get some confusing results.

I.
Utilitarianism is problematic from the beginning. Every human being in this schema is worth "1". Well animal bias is built in! How much are they worth? .5? .3? Is their score based on their "usefulness" to human people? Come on! One person riding and having fun is worth 2 hedons, but one Horse getting ridden and just not feeling like it is worth 1 doller... this is nonsense. Next ethical school of thought, thanks.

II.
Kantianism. Ah, Kant. I just wish I could sit down with this reclusive man and ask him myself over a cup of tea. We would probably get further than I could ever get with Miller's mummified head (another doller on Utilitarianism's likeability tally!)
"Now, Emmanual, I need answers, can you tell me if this horse riding business is ethical?"
"Ah yes, well, you must ask yourself the question, does this act use the horse as a mere end, or as a means as well?"
"Well, if I understand the question, I care for the horse in addition to just riding it around. I look out for its general health, and not just because I want to keep riding it, but because I like it too."
"That’s a good start, but are you respecting the full agency of the horse? Giving it a choice?"
"Oh, I see what you are saying but what if that’s not what a horse wants? And if it had a choice, it might choose to be in a wild heard, running over craigy land, then soft fields, rocks and grasses, under stars. Well I took that life from that horse. We drained the Colorado River, and we posted letters on the hills. I've created a world where the horse couldn’t live without me, so how does that figure into my reckoning? Am I morally obligated to care for this dependent creature?"
"Is that what you would wish for universally?"
"I don’t know, I guess, but that’s only because I can’t imagine a world any different. Does this universal application account for a revolution of how we interact with animals?"
"Have another cup of tea."
I am getting ansy in this parlor, I have to get up and leave. Virtue ethics is next.

III.
Now my initial problem with virtue ethics is more of a personal problem, hardly worth mentioning since I am nearly sure no one else experiences this. Its just that... when in virtue ethics you are supposed to imagine what a perfectly virtuous person would do, and then do that, I imagine a kingly-type man, rather like a knight, riding a noble steed. I never critiqued this mental image until I started worrying about equestrians. It was then that I realized that my perfectly virtuous, perfectly fictitious role model was a reflection of an activity that has a dubious moral nature. I have to scavenge around my brain for a more neutral candidate to emulate. Still... I must plough on.

Would a virtuous person ride a horse?
Would a brave person ride a horse?
Would a wise person ride a horse?
Would a temperate person ride a horse?
The answer to all of these questions is, historically, yes. So what do I do if I want to re-imagine a new world? I can’t use the custom of how things have been to dictate how things will be!

I think on this mental image I've had, of the knight-ly king, king-ly knight, whichever, and it is still causing me some concern. He is like some drawing from a children's book published in the 1960's ... something that would be in my Grandmother's bookshelf of books she read to my mother. I emulate a 1960's perception of a chivalrous male? Before I can think any further on horses, I need to re-evaluate my life some more.

So here I am where I started. Concerned. Speaking of youth (children’s book illustrations that is) I can’t help but note the basic homogenization of horses in literature, especially children’s books. They are often romanticized. An excerpt from Mary O'Hara's My Friend Flicka shows the epitome of horse-portrayals. The second excerpt, from Lucy Corin's Everyday Psycho Killers: A History for Girls is aware of the standard dealings with horses in literature and rips it right open.

They struck at each other with their forefeet, then, curving beautifully,
dropped sideways. The hairs of tails and manes stood out strongly, moving with a
separate life of their own. One head rose, curling over the other to nip at the
back of the neck. The other stallion twisted out from under, reared higher,
striking. They coiled and uncoiled inside the floating fringes of their hair in
flowing, incessant movement, and the sun blazed down of them, making shining
mirrors on thier round haunches and the bulging neck muscles (O’Hara, 70).

The horses run around and around the track. At the track, the highest compliment
you can pay a horse is to say it’s a machine. That horse is a real machine,
you’d say… The horses run around and around the track until they break down.
That’s how they say it, breaking… Either way, at the track or at the farm, the
horse is in a box, or moving in circles, one of the other, all life long (Corin,
73, 74).

It is almost cruel to put the selections side by side. Yet I am convinced that both accounts of horses are true, nearly incompatible, but true. So how do I decide what is ethically encouraged? I turned in my equestrian team dues yesterday. And all I have in the argument is a handful of mental images: a mummified head, a cup of tea, a knight, happy horses, broken horses. More polished thoughts are necessary.

George and the Placenta

Fancy, the grey mare, gave birth to her colt yesterday. Instead of waiting for some murky dusk to slip out the baby, it happened in the afternoon, hot and heavy. Exciting as it was, we nearly forgot the wet sac that came with the baby. So while Archie tested out his new legs in the feild and his funny knees matched his funny eyes (one brown, one blue) something else was left behind of equal wonder and beauty.

Corinne, the barnhead, held back her excited dog from the fleshy placenta: gripping him by the collar and butting her hip and leg into his side to close him away.

"Easy, George!" She said. "Not for you!"

George is a good dog, some sort of labrodor breed. He has his own agenda. Sometimes I see him jumping into the horse water trough on hot days. Other times he wanders among people, not looking on either side until he finds Corinne. She is never far from him.

Corinne kept the placenta over ice, to show the kids that came through. We examined the skin, the hundreds of veins that covered it, better than any leaf. It was a fine bit of engineering; and I couldn't understand why something so complete and well thought out would pass right through the body. Wouldn't Fancy want to keep that? I touched it with my finger.

The week passed on and I imagined that George the good dog had eaten the placenta meal because he was wild and his own self and he would devour the placenta and it would nourish him. Instead, the smell from the top barn wasn't of horses and dirt and hay. It was the sickly stench of meat like the time I accidently left the thrown away chicken in the trash instead of taking it to the dumpster.

4th of July

Fourth of July is big here at this summer camp at which I work. A day of patriotic festivities ends with a fire works show in the camp director's backyard. Impressive and expensive: the ultimate American display. As the show blasted and glimmered along, a soundtrack played in the background of old-fashioned marches and yankee-doodle type songs. I felt while I was laying there on the blanket, gazing above the glow sticks and glowstick bracelets, like I was in turn of the century America ... circa 1903. I remembered just then the historical breadth of the country, a different direction to consider than iconic displays of the Fourth of July that are on holiday table place sets.

Last week and the week before I went to D.C. -- saw the monuments. My favorite was the Thomas Jefferson dome. It was peaceful there on the other side of the water. I wandered at one of the quote panels inside though. I looked it up again. It says:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

And I wonder if its true that societies evolve, if we really become more "enlightened" as time passes. My history teacher once said that each new technological advance promises leisure and enlightenment for the masses. Instead, well that doesnt happen. Is it just an inflation of problems and solutions, more solutions breeding more problems?

I was thinking about that while I was watching to fireworks. The colors traced over and over until I could see them even when my eyes were closed.

Dreams

Do you ever hear yourself speak and not recognize your voice? Do you ever tell a story from when you're a kid and feel like your talking about someone else? When you study history sometimes it becomes more real than you; when you focus into the future you find an endless projection. Whats left is a fluttering present thats barely there, balancing on the edge between two deep abysses. For the seconds that you do find it, its a questionable dream, a memory, a shining dot like your ring that slipped of in the river or the sharks tooth that you barely saw before the surf took it away.

Think Pink

A strange glance in Charleston, I came face to face with this beauty. I shot it quick on my camera phone to preserve here. Yet I feel like others may contract this same sight in other places.

What is striking about this Victoria's Secret ad is the traveling of the word "Pink"-- from a slogan on the label of their clothing line, to a subject noun in a simple sentence. This is a mighty ascent. A subject noun that loves: if Pink is elevated to the status of a subject noun what else might it do accomplish with the aid of various verbs?

Seriously, why does this campaign work so well? Who is "Pink"? A theory: pink catches every association of feminity. Instead of displaying a beautiful model, "Pink" transcends to every perfection as an unembodied concept. Much like John Keats' Ode to a Grecian urn, perfection is only such when it is not embodied, but remains instead in the realm of ideas. "Pink" works like this. It is begonias and ribbons, milkshakes, nice shoes, whatever a person can connotate with ultimate femininty... without the baggage of a physical body, fitted with limitations or narrow definitions.

As a word to capture the imagination, "Pink" is open to everyone, as an ink blot is open to everyones interpretations. But as a single word splashed across store windows, enjoying music-video-life-spans of pool parties and yoga class with never a boring day, "Pink" is attainable for no one.

Taking Time, Version 2

aka "poetry magnet version"

A life time of systematic, wholesome production yeilds predictable time. What is a plea to slow down in unknown softness? A journey, a path, an adventure: a look to swords, moss, duty, and light.

"adult poetry"

My first poetry contest entry since 4th grade:

“Adult Poetry”

Each entry fits into a category (i.e. adult-poetry) (i.e. child-fiction) (i.e. adult-nonfiction)

Ad ult poe tree

Ad Ult

See how the first word jumps and hooks? It is an orc in the mud-- an irk in the mind

But now the last word, the last word

Poe Tree

It grows small to tall, nice and filled with lights.

This is adult poetry. An entry.

Taking Time, Version 1

I am going to preview this post with a warning and a summary. First, the warning: this will be a long and rambling post. Next, the summary: I will tell a story about high school; I will link it to a tendency I have when approaching a project; then I will lament the feeling of a lack of time to do something which inspired me from a recent NY Times series-- I will post a reference to this article from the series; next, I will blame the "McDonaldization" (link provided) of the industries and institutes of the world for heightening this feeling of pressed time, and lastly I will contrast that state of mind (McDonaldization) with excerpts from Lord of the Rings and the characters' ethical decisions.

***Also, I want to note that I might try re-writing this post several times in several different ways to experiment with saying something effectively. I want to balance an "effective post" with a "patient post." So this is more of a self-conscious exercise and isn't for the readers benefit, so they may skip it if they wish.***

I. The Story

In high school, I took a photography class. The curriculum was based upon the "old school" version of film development: that is, the dark room, the chemicals, the canisters, the whole nine yards. I was excited to be in the class, proud of my clunky camera from my mom's college days. Soon into the semester however, our art teacher had her first baby and faded fast to mother-land, not to return for another semester. We had a substitute, but like many subs, she did not know the subject. We photography students were left to languish in unproductive woe. It wasn't that bad actually. We sat around during class and talked or worked on other assignments. I was, for the most part, easily one of the more disappointed students. I took my camera out anyway. I took lots of pictures. I figured that I could experiment with my camera, and that way if Ms. L returned, I'd have rolls worth of experience to show for the time. But I didn't know the way of things. The dark room was a mystery to me, and before I learned how to develop pictures to see what worked and what did not I had too many canisters to know what to do with. I was left with film that (once developed) showed poor picture taking ability and no memory of what aperture or focus was what.

This high school experience of "jumping the gun" and "half-baked ideas" is an allegory for similar problems that I fear now. I see from experience that I have this tendency to become really excited about something jump in an effort to produce something, anything. This personal habit may tie to larger things at a work, namely "Mcdonaldization" discussed below. Even with this blog website, I feel a mounting pressure to produce blog entries, one and then another. I keep several ideas on the back burner so that I will always have the momentum to write. I do not think this is a bad thing, but I fear that by rushing to produce something I will neglect to give an idea its proper time to germinate and unfold. Given, the whole point of this blog is to have an informal "space" to write. So I'm not trying to produce a finished thesis here or anything. Ultimately I guess I am trying to negotiate the area in between off the cuff impressions and polished rhetoric.

II. Lament for the Incessant Pull of Time, NY Times Link

I still am amazed by this sense of rush, however. As cited in a recent NY Times opinion series, (credit to Keaton for the link) to philosophize means to take time. To paraphrase, A philosopher, unlike a lawyer, slows things down to consider them at leisure. Many people, including myself are uncomfortable with this idea. I am actually nervous that if I slow down now, things will move fast past me. Is it a symptom of a "McDonald Age" or "McDonaldization"? I was talking about this with some theatre students a few weeks ago, how the rise of the fast food industry and its standards of assembly, cost efficiency, and productivity are now echoed everywhere in many industries and institutions. For example, schools now could be argued to run like little McDonald's. Students must be effectively sent the through the system, systematically achieving suitable grades in a cost efficient way. Indeed progress is measured in a break down of points, levels; teachers meet quotas. This normalized way of functioning further heightens that distrust of lingering, the sort of lingering that philosophy calls for.

III. Lord of The Rings

I would like to consider how far now we have come. In a time where stillness and silliness seem more and more marginalized, reading Lord of the Rings is a breath of fresh air. Sam and the

other hobbits often sing songs to mark an occasion or entertain for an event. Even in the midst of a strenuous journey where time is of the essence, time is still frequently made to tell stories or sit guard over a campfire. Lastly, and importantly, it is the way that the characters make decisions that I most admire. Among the chapters, the need to choose a course of action arises constantly. The characters, be it Gandalf choosing to trust Sauruman in Book I or Aragorn choosing to ride out in battle with the king of Rohan (in book II), all make decisions not based on the consequences, but rather what is in line with their duty and what is right.

I will maybe write a longer post on the Kantian ethics at work in LOTR, but for now the main point is, is that when Sam, believing Frodo to be dead at the end of Book II, decided to take the ring from Frodo, he turned back. Not because it made sense. In fact, the journey of the ring demanded that it be kept from the enemy and destroyed. Turning back to watch over his "dead" friend's body made no sense to Sam's assumed position, but he did it any way because it was the right thing for him to do. (As Tolkien loves to do, there is a karma-twist to this Kantian take, where doing the right thing in the face of defeat (Kant) yields unexpected rewards (Karma). Tolkien throws versions of this scenario all over the pages and of course the over-arching narrative of the ring is one master-version of the Kant-karma-twist). Either way, these decisions, based on virtues like kindness and bravery seem to be lacking today. Often now, decisions are made seemingly in purely terms of consequences (think cost efficiency and results). Maybe this is how it has always been, and "McDonaldization" is made up. But does that make it the best way?

I am trying to tie this together by saying that I wish for the wisdom to conceive of time as something I may manipulate and slow. I want time to tarry with me, so that I may have the leave to discern and philosophize without the consequences of debt and bills, lineage and expectation. This anxiety to choose, and to choose efficiently and quickly and reasonably, are weights to the leg, a heavy gold ring, a hamburger off the dollar menu, an anxiety in the night.

Red walls, small for crumbs, and leaky windows--

Mold for mice left in corners to stew, I cried eating sweet corn

I cried over my kitchen sink, I filled it full for you.

"Kirikou and the Sorceress"

A small movie thought: we watched an animated cartoon, some French extra credit for Leslie's class... yes a foreign film. Set in Africa. A small boy of a village bests an evil sorceress. This evil sorceress has many minions, which are called "fetishes" in religions like Animism which believe in souls belonging to inanimate objects. This sorceress's fetishes all have a quality in common (besides them all being inanimate objects); they were also all machines. Odd, considering the pre-industrial nature of all the other movie's drawings. The villagers wear swaths of colorful fabrics, carry water in jugs, wield spears. The sorceress commands machines on mechanized wheels and submarine-style periscopes to spy on enemies. What was this linking, or camaraderie, between the magic and the scientific technology? Aren't these two spheres and their respective bailiwicks considered opposed to one another? Not in this movie. Magic and mechanized technology are cohorts in cahoots against the villagers. In the end, the small boy wins out over these forces through virtues like courage and compassion as well as common sense. This "triumph" gives me mixed feelings. I am not sure if I should buy into the values, or raise more questions. Now, I cant think of any more questions to ask, or anything more to say.

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Ah, a neglected freshmen reading requirement. I scoffed at the back cover description. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder"... account how one man [Paul Farmer] can make a difference in solving global health problems..." Immediately, almost unconciously, I was hesitant to show any interest or empathy in social justice, because the danger of caring for one thing is that you must care for it all. Acknowlege sickness and poverty in one child, multiply by millions across nations? It was a path I did not to begin on, because I feared where it would lead. I did not read the book, and instead wrote it off as preachy.

Obviously I was wrong. And now that I've finished off the read, I can say that it is not a feel-good biography... but rather a hopeful challenge: to stay engaged with the world and do what you can and more. I would love to just rattle one quote off after another. But instead I will say this: I want to have the courage to care, and care deeply, about patterns of life that are radically different, yet more common place, from my own.

And about going down a path of empathy? Ok, maybe one quote, or rather paraphrase. Paul Farmer, at some point on a hike to visit a patient in Haiti, says he has aligned himself with the historical "losers": the world's poor. By accepting this battle, he knows it is probably a life time of defeat, but he must still fight to win. This past month I have been crewing (working backstage) for one of UT's musicals The Man of La Mancha. If anyone is familiar with the show, this is the sole ballad of knight errant, Don Quioxite (character and plot based on the famous peice of literature by Cervantes). In order to battle the evil of his world, Quixote goes insane. Yet the audience knows, it is not Quixote, but the world that is probably mad. Paul Farmer challenges orthodox ways of doing things, approaches infectious disease and health care from new angles, and doesn't accept anything has "just the way things are." To dream, the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe...

Camp Town Ladies Sing This Song...

Doo-Dah! Doo-dah! The beautiful colts and fleet fillies of the world are on parade tomorrow for one of the year's toughest equestian competitions: The Kentucky Derby. True to form, I have little insight on the odds of the race (prettiest dapple or best name often gets my vote). But, in the words of the wise, "Ill bet on the one with the blaze, because you just don't see a blaze like that every day."


If you're near a television set, I encourage you to catch this race: the athleticism of the both the horses and jockeys is breathtaking as they gallop down the track. "Come one Dover, moving your bloomin' ass!"

Just consider this excerpt from Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend,

"At the top of the stretch Special Agent faltered. Pollard pulled Seabiscuit's nose to the outside and slapped him on the rump. Seabiscuit pounced. Richards saw him got and gunned Rosemont through the hole after him, but Seabiscuit had stolen a three-length advantage. Speacial Agent gave way grudgingly along the inside as Indian Broom rallied up the outside, not quite quick enough to keep up... He was coming into the homestretch of the richest race in the world with a strong horse beneath him. Behind them were seventeen of the best horses in the nation. To the left and right, sixy thousand voices roard. Ahead was nothing but a long strip of red soil." (122)

I especially enjoy the contrast between the abrupt and action-packed play by plays occurring between a noisy and surrounding excitement ... and the distinct focalization on the "long strip of red soil"-- some peace and quietness that must have be some zen oasis for Jim Pollard, Seabiscuit's jockey. You can bet not much has changed in the seventy years between tomorrow's race, and the races of yester-years'.

The Tyson Park Haiku Series

Ozone: three oxygyn

Atom warriors embrace--

Jealous lovers in air.

Freshwater water

Cress, pearls, green and wet, rush fast past

That three-headed frog.

A rusty route which

Leads to none but more

Sofas in the woods

Japanese beatle,

I found you in the earth, born

And raised, Tennessean.

Vested workers will

Plug holes with trees. Embankment,

Low risk of landslide.

Styrofoam cups dot

The hill, white dandelions

Find their home to please.

Dear Community,

Mobolize! We have a garden.

-The AmeriCorps

Last time we were here,

I saw someone from my class,

In my tennis shoes.

Tanks and trains, metal

And stain, a long procession.

The noise is nice.

Third Creek Trail, how I

Wish I saw a mermaid on

your cluttered banks.

A Cultural Read on the Representation of Elevators

I found this paper I did last semester. And since I rather like it, I am posting it here.

A Cultural Read on the Representation of Elevators

If we are to believe Youtube, the authorial social archive of film footage, then the representation of the elevator in media is that of a fascinating “hotspot” for the traveler avoiding the stairs. We can conduct a quick survey that deposits a long list of thumbnail clip options on the popular website’s search page; and, while the drama that unfolds in the small space of each elevator is seemingly varied, closer inspection yields indubitable universality in this structure.

For the elevator in film and television promises the allure of fear and fantasy, often within the same breath or within the span of a five-minute scene. One anime clip depicts two wide-eyed characters, trapped in an elevator by some scepter-wielding sorcerer. With another wave of his scepter, an incantation, and a shift in music, part of the elevator’s floor breaks away and the cartoon girl mysteriously floats towards the cavernous hole and falls down, down, down. The falling sequence repeats, the boy screams, but suddenly the girl comes floating back up sitting on a winged, glowing pink sphere. She is saved, and they embrace. The sorcerer restores the elevator and the colors resume from gothic grays to bright pastels as the doors slide open so the hero and heroine may exit.

This general form is mutated and carried out in Topgun, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Shallow Hal, and many other films. Fears and fantasies at every turn or rather, between every floor. For that is the quality of these elevator representations: time is short between floors and buttons; the allure of the affair, of the promotion, of the entrapment, has only minutes at best to manifest itself. The tension, or suspension, for these matters to arise mirrors even the mechanics of the vessel; it’s up and down limbo of transit echoing the rollercoaster expectations of the people within.

Another observation of elevator scenes: elevator etiquette. The sliding metal doors meet across to their frame, containing the traveler. There is never enough space, but the space there is well balanced-- that is, the space between each stander and waiter is kept perfectly equal. For example, one clip from Spiderman II, shows that small side step an original passenger makes to accommodate the new boarder, in this case Peter Parker. And there are more rules. Everyone knows them and the implications of breaching them. They concern the etiquettes of door holding, stifling one’s cough, and small talk when it is necessary.

Ultimately, this politeness in movies and television clips is a precaution taken in the name of elevator fears and elevator fantasies. Either one will be trapped in the elevator with strangers “using up all the oxygen” as one panicked character in a video states, or in open fire like The Departed or Star Wars Episode III, or one will be trapped in a romantic encounter, however bizarre (consider Jim Carrey’s character in the elevator in Liar, Liar who can not repress his comments on a woman’s large breasts). So in case of these circumstances, it is most advantageous to be on one’s best behavior!

It may be argued that elevators are not just hotspots, but places of diffusion as well. The “awkward moments” of elevator scenes are easily a familiar and identifiable quality of elevator clips. In television series Grey’s Anatomy, “Dr McDreamy” encounters an elevator ride with his ex-girlfriend and ex-wife. Needless to say, not a word is spoken in the course of the clip except for a co-worker mumbling in McDreamy’s ear, “I bet you wish you had taken the stairs right now.” However, whatever “awkward moment” that is captured in these elevator representations, besides used as a source of humor, is also used as an indicator of all the elevator fears and elevator fantasies that go unsaid (in other words, the fear of being cornered with these women, and the fantasy of their past affairs). These awkward elevator moments then only strengthen and support the notion of these fears and fantasies.

But before we think that we have reached any conclusions here by observing scenes of elevators, noting their linear movements as objects on the y-axis of the coordinate plane, and otherwise drawing all the limits around the elevator and performing to the elevator what the elevator does to us: box us in— let us last consider the Great Glass Elevator in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

In this text, one may find an elevator that all at once escapes, defies, and reinforces the expectations of other representations of elevators. It zooms forwards, backwards, and sideways—it is the exception that proves the rule. In Chapter 28 of the children’s novel, Willy Wonka, Charlie, and his Grandpa Joe whiz toward the ceiling of the chocolate factory. In their platonic ascent, the glass elevator shatters though the ceiling and “rockets” into the sky, despite Grandpa’s Joe’s fears and misgivings. “The elevator has gone mad!” he cries at one point. Yet the elevator makes the cross over and the sunlight streams in through the transparent walls as the passengers admire the view from “a thousand feet up (145).”

What fuels this remarkable elevator but the same fears and fantasies that recycle through Youtube’s endless march of representations-- and the final wish that despite our fears, we may fly, no strings attached, on candy power.

Works Cited/Works Consulted

Barthes, Roland. Acts of Cultural Criticism. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Andrew Dubois. Close Reading The Reader. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2003. 216-25. Print.

Michel, Foucault. "Of Other Spaces." 1967. MS. Berlin.

Roald., Dahl,. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Puffin, 2007. Print.

"YouTube - elevator scenes." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. .

Coyotes

I am house-sitting for one of my mom's friends this weekend. Its a nice gig because as I am here the low-maintenance dogs are quietly resting near me (one on the bed with other on his mat).

Actually the only non-peaceful one of the bunch is me. Mom mentioned coyotes in this neighborhood, she all but passed out when I told her Dooley was still out in the backyard past sunset. So now I am here in this bedroom dreaming of coyotes that prowl circles around the house-- waiting and spying. Coyotes are always no good characters, and probably with just reason. First of all, they're wiley. Which anyone will tell you, we all know that. Also, they DO make off with small animals that may possibly be someones pet. I've never personally seen this happen; but, I am assured that it does occur and not infrequently.

For these reasons I am wary of going out to my car for some backseat-stash pajamas. Not that I actually think that something could happen to me in the four feet between the front door and my parked car. But you never know. Coyotes can be a tough bunch, and I just don't want to mess with that. This house has quickly become an island fortress that sheds warm comfort against whiskers and snouts.

In other news, I read on a website that promotes publication of "censored" topics that the Somalian piracy issue is rather a local volunteer coast guard acting in absence of a formal government. They are aggressively acting out against foreign ships, partially for money ransoms and also because foreign governments are seizing Somalia's current political weakness as an opportunity to fish illegally and dump toxic waste off their coasts. Naturally Somalian citizens are frightened and livid now that they've discovered that they are being used and abused by the rest of the world. Look it up.

lets talk about this picture

Lets talk about this picture. I don't know this girl, but this is what I dislike:

You cannot see her hands.
Her feet are in pointy-toed heels.

These two details render this female helpless.

Her hands which are her physical access to tools, technology, aid, aggression, and defense... seemingly disappear into thin air. I would be interested to take a brief survey of ads that include a model's hands.

Her feet which could run or kick box... are instead fitted inside a high-heeled shoe. This not only limits her movement (as typical of any elevated foot-wear), but also disguises the original shape of her feet.

I see a vulnerable and grotesque body, backed against a wall. Her back and feet are arched suggestively, but her face is scared. The independence inherent in appendages has left her. Is their absence erotic?

Lastly, I am reminded of a Marge Piercy poem that we had to read in high school once. If you follow the link, please note the irony of the margin ads.

Lovers and Madmen

We saw the play.

They ran around,

and used the campus as their ground.

They led us round from scene to scene.

We followed growing whimsically

through the bush around the corner--

we spot her just as our loner.

And when they meet and share a kiss,

we huddle closer to dare not miss,

we zoom in-- a camera lense--

that fills with tears at Ignorance's sins.

Because, for sooth, at the end they died.

And my friend, sweet Stephanie, cried.

I made it back to the car in the cold

before remembering you,

you who knew the show

without ever learning the lines.

internet writing advice

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book"

-- Freidrich Neitzsche, a star prototype for the economical blogger

the crepe and jam morning poem

We made a sticky mess of pancakes fried deep in better butter- stuck with jams and creams. we ate on the floor.

Big Ears

I had the unforeseen and lucky privilege to obtain (through volunteering (side note: go UT VOLS side side note: compare/contrast "UT Volunteers" with Jesuit ideals of "community service", interesting, no?)) a STAFF PASS for this past Sunday's Big Ears Festival line-up.

In other words, I gained access to a little-known, yet amazingly attended experimental music festival. Thought it is only in its second year here in Knoxville Tennessee, Big Ears hosts "experimental" artists such as Joanna Newsome, Terry Riley, The Books, St. Vincent, The Caldera Quartet, Tim Hecker, and many many more.

This, in many ways, was my ideal music festival. I have never been so excited about live music before; I generally prefer going to plays or a number of other activities before I pick to see music.

I liked this festival because (1) it was mostly indoors which means calm, cool, cushioned seats. I find I am instantly more comfortable and attuned to listening carefully when I am sitting calmly rather than standing in a crowd (2) the music selections were all creative, exciting, and mentally stimulating (3) several things I noticed and enjoyed have distinct tie-ins to another blog I am contributing to, namely "Reading (w/) The Digital Human," those things being: (i) A band called The Books, which used live accompaniment and composition structured around audio and video feeds. This mixed media presentation offered an emotional and mental experience much like a book yet with an absence of books, perhaps even replacing a book and (ii.) when I sat on the ground level to a stage, the strain on my neck and posture proved distracting, yet when I sat in a balcony softly gazing down, I was immediately at ease in my position. I attribute this effect to technology because gazing slightly down at a computer or laptop screen is more familiar to my body where-as gazing slightly up is unusual and therefore uncomfortable.

More links and thoughts to come.

But first,

Birdy sat in his sun room. The perfect yellow sunroom. The ornate crown molding seemed to simper along with his mood. He was eyeing a cat. The black and white cat. He did not know when exactly the feline appeared; rather he was not looking at the black and white cat, then he was. Of course, Birdy was unsure if he should be oogling the cat. They both shared the space, sunny under the crown molding. Perhaps he would offer it some food? Or milk. Birdy thought that cats liked milk but maybe that was only a myth touted around in cartoons and had no basis in actual cat-needs.

Would you like some milk? He magnaimously asked the cat. The black and white cat did not look at him. Not that he need to, reasoned Birdy. In fact, how stupid of me to assume to talk at him if its not his fault he doesn't understand. Eye contact also is not necessarily part of cat communication. If Birdy couldnt speak to the black and white cat like a human, could he speak to him as a cat? Birdy flicked at his cigerrette. It made a soft sound as only pressed paper and tobacco can. He flicked again.

He would communicate with the cat as a cat would. He sat. He did not look at anything in particular, and he attained some captivation for the things that he was not in particularly looking at. He swished his imagined tail. He was both there and not there. Yet this was all no good. Was the cat offended that he dared attempt to mimic his cat-ways? Was he, Birdy, merely projecting the human condition of being offended when he assumed the cat might be?

No, no, since they seemed to meet on neither plane thus far, now he would have to forge a whole new way to connect with the cat. Birdy thought about this for a while, thought until he was not thinking. He let himself melt and then vibrate through the room, around the cat, thinking. His concentration was so bent, that when he moved toward the black and white cat it was as if a hypnotic glacier rocked forward and flowed from the wicker chair to the floor, so smooth the creak was gone. The cat appeared transfixed. Birdy reached out and wrapped his hand around the black and white cat's tail. He pulled. But pulled so fully, so softly, a tug. The cat, equally fully leaned away from the pull, sustained. Ah a pull, to pull, I've got you, thought Birdy.

The telephone rang, he screamed, the cat screamed, and the day went to hell.

When I Make Time,

Things I want to blog on,

AKA "coming soon"....

"Sex, Modernism, and 'The Rite of Spring'"

"Themes of Technology in Avatar"

"Absence and Presence: Does it Count if you Dont Know?"

Poem on my Crepe and Jam Morning

Envisioning E-readers

Are we overlooking the physical implications of an e-reader?

Already as it is, tooling around on a laptop all the time has given me unmistakable "computer-posture." The neck jutting forward, the head out of alignment with the rest of the spine. This mal-aligned posture is just one symptom of the (literal) forward-thinking of contemporary culture. We are so enamoured with what is in front of our faces (T.V.'s, laptops, ipods and mp3s, e-readers...) that it seems as if we have forgotten the rest of our body in the jump into the digital.

I want an e-reader that has extendable arms that fold out from the main frame. They delicately reach out and wrap around the base of my skull. Every so often the device gently reminds me to breath deeply, re-align, and rest my eyes. I am not sure yet if my e-reader will have a robotic or human voice.

Also, I think e-readers should come in different colors.

hashbrowns

And we were walking around

downtown

it was pretty.

Telling stories

mostly about when we were kids

and I thought of these stories

how that they are different from mine

and you grew up differently

and learned different lessons

and know things that I do not know

and the things I do not know scare me

I am scared of everyone and what they know

and what they dont, what I know and what I dont.

I think I will fry you up something,

or just hit you over the head with the skillet.

Anthro II: Disgruntlement

I am disgruntled with my anthropolgy class. I mentioned a selection from the text book in a recent post but my focal issue now is with the lecture.

Generally the class is bothersome because our instructor presents material in such way that we breeze through cultures, in time and space, by blips of facts. Fun facts sprinkled around that we write down in our notes and then repeat faithfully back for scantron tests every few weeks.

(Besides the limited engagement this produces with the material) I think what to critique here is the whole frame-work of gen-ed classes. Made to be thrown away, like single-use ziplock bags and tampons. If taught this way, with this attitude in mind, they are a waste of everyones time. Introductary overveiws. Its more beneficial to get down into the nitty gritty of the topic instead of superficially skowering the surface of topics. In this troposphere of education, partial information is equivalent and as lethal as mis-information. But thats a side note.

In particular I am bothered becuase of today. Today's lecture subject is human marriage and kinship. With a special emphasis on human sexuality. What confuses me was that it seemed our professor pointed to biology to reason out all sorts of things at every turn.

One particular incidence: Human females are different than other primates becuase they have concealed ovulation. AKA their sex organs dont get red and swollen and pharemones dont ooze in the air around them when they are ovulating. Prof says this allows females to be continually receptive to males' sexual advances, and keeps males on thier toes because they don't know when they are going to get some (in so many words). Consequently, this set-up promotes bonding between the sexes.

I am deeply unsatisfied with this explanation.

And can't I be?

This isnt a law of science. Its one theory. And I think there are better ones out there. Or waiting to be thought upon.

If I read my text book correctly, humans' largest tool to succeed from generation to generation is culture. Being part of, and communicating with, the group is more essential to surviving rather than making physical adaptations. Otherwise, wouldn't humans in colder climates grow more body hair to keep warm? Instead they make coats and distribute them to other humans. We stay warmer faster with out taking centuries to develop. In this way, humans who are quick to problem solve and communicate are selected by evolution to succeed.

As I type this, I am remembering that there are some exceptions to this in regards to skin pigmentation. But still, when is it biology? When is it culture? Is always a bit of both?

But, besides that, why do we neccessarily need biology to explain this aspect of human sexuality stated above? Females have "concealed" ovulation, true. But human females also have the capacity to communicate, to say hey "I'm on my period" or "Hey I've been counting my cycles and its ovulating time." Wouldnt this feature of culture trump this strange biological explanation?

In fact, within this same lecture he had us copy down the phrase

cultural success=reproductive success

And what I said above seems to agree with this.

So why this stuff about biology when its not the biology that matters but how we innovate around it?

Lastly, I do not appreciate this interpretation of male dominance over females in the animal world. Our professor described the large genitals of a chimpanzee are useful for taking a female chimp by suprise and getting the deed done quickly. These interpretations are not fully objective. I would like to read what zoologist and philosopher Donna Harraway thinks about all of this. I am ordering my Primate Visions book off of Amazon today. According to wickipedia,

"In her book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, Haraway explicates the metaphors and narratives that direct the science of primatology. She demonstrates that there is a tendency to masculinize the stories about "reproductive competition and sex between aggressive males and receptive females [that] facilitate some and preclude other types of conclusions" (Carubia, 4). She contends that female primatologists focus on different observations that require more communication and basic survival activities, offering very different perspectives of the origins of nature and culture than the currently accepted ones."

Ultimately, I think it is a damage rendered to a receptive classroom when a professor runs through facts without taking time to ruminate over contradictions that may arise.