a life worth living:

here's to a woman who lived feminism before others came up with a name for it, who understood the interplay of oppression intimately, who recognized the importance of connecting local movement with international movement. to a true sister warrior.

you'll be missed, ione.

hiding.

i feel like a kid playing hide and seek and hiding and realizing how great it is to be hidden and trying not to breathe so as not to be found.

also, i was the kid that would stay hidden if in a particularly good hiding spot, long after the seeker had stopped playing until feelings of guilt caught up with me, and i'm a pretty good runner, but things have a way of catching up.

i live for the days when the words in my head are my own. so i am waiting. and i know while i wait for things like that, i may seem moody. probably because i am.

you know how it is.

food dreams.

last night, i dreamt of popeye's fried chicken. no joke. this after consuming well over half of the make-your-own bucket from kfc friday night with honey barbecue wings and popcorn chicken with a large side of coleslaw. and i found myself feeling nauseous for the first time since a bad bout of food poisoning in thailand about 3 years ago on sunday after eating 2/3's of a package of maple sausage links and way too many fried potatoes and homemade tortilla chips. in other words, a food experience that should've given me nightmares about food, but i remember waking up in the middle of the night, craving popeye's and feeling quite good about it.

i have been having wonderfully decadent food dreams lately, which all started with a chocolate layer cake accompanied with a half-gallon of strawberry ice cream early last week. this compelled me to buy ghiradelli double chocolate brownie mix (as well as some caramel turtle brownie mix, which i made a few days later) at the store along with cocoa and cream and french vanilla hot chocolate (all of which were miraculously on sale!).

almost all of the dreams i've remembered this past week have been associated with food - maybe because i went through a stretch of eating nothing except kimchi and rice. it happened to be the only thing i wanted to eat when i was sick, and i think i managed to lose a couple of pounds. but after a few days of gluttony, i think i've gained them back.

which is all to say, i have been hungry lately, for many things. i have friends who write, even if there are no blog postings to prove it. i may have a contentious relationship with my blog, but it is a fairly good chronicle of how i am writing and relating to myself, if not one hundred percent accurate. so i'm dragging myself out after an extended hibernation, dreading the soreness of muscles and awkwardness of motion with the varied rythyms of words on the screen, if only because there is a large part of me that feels as if i have not really spoken to anyone for the past month or so. truth is, i miss my conversations with myself, and my conversations with you, imagined and otherwise.

i take myself too seriously and not seriously enough without seeing my thoughts outside myself.

and after 2 weeks without a cigarette, i'm still trying to sort myself out. i feel exposed. i'm thinking about getting a top hat and a cane as replacement props, but they might not be absurd enough for how i'm feeling these days. i think it'll look like i'm trying too hard. we'll see.

and for full disclosure, of the time i have had lately where i have been cogent (not all that much, actually, what with being sick and not smoking and all), much time has been consumed with samurai sudoku. it could be the most consumptive addiction yet.

On Refuge and Language

by Suheir Hammad

I do not wish
To place words in living mouths
Or bury the dead dishonorably

I am not deaf to cries escaping shelters
That citizens are not refugees
Refugees are not Americans

I will not use language
One way or another
To accommodate my comfort

I will not look away

All I know is this

No peoples ever choose to claim status of dispossessed
No peoples want pity above compassion
No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves

What do we pledge allegiance to?

A government that leaves its old
To die of thirst surrounded by water
Is a foreign government

People who are streaming
Illiterate into paperwork
Have long ago been abandoned

I think of coded language
And all that words carry on their backs

I think of how it is always the poor
Who are tagged and boxed with labels
Not of their own choosing

I think of my grandparents
And how some called them refugees
Others called them non-existent
They called themselves landless
Which means homeless

Before the hurricane
No tents were prepared for the fleeing
Because Americans do not live in tents
Tents are for Haiti for Bosnia for Rwanda

Refugees are the rest of the world

Those left to defend their human decency
Against conditions the rich keep their animals from
Those who have too many children
Those who always have open hands and empty bellies
Those whose numbers are massive
Those who seek refuge
From nature's currents and man's resources

Those who are forgotten in the mean times

Those who remember

Ahmad from Guinea makes my falafel sandwich and says
So this is your country
Yes Amadou this my country
And these my people

Evacuated as if criminal
Rescued by neighbors
Shot by soldiers

Adamant they belong

The rest of the world can now see
What I have seen

Do not look away

The rest of the world lives here too
In America

moments.

You could drown in memories like these, but she tried to swim free of them...Past tense, future imperfect. (Zadie Smith, White Teeth, 379)



my thoughts are embedded with contradictions, exceptions, to nearly everything i can think of.

when i say that i try to be momentary, how i rate the success of this endeavor is usually dependent on how able i am to separate myself from the past tense, future imperfect. it is a cleavage that is painful, while also exhilarating. these moments are my reckless moments. these moments are culminations of my disregard, my disdain, for my compulsiveness, my strivings for perfection in everything.

as far as i can remember, i have always been a big proponent of living in the moment. it is, perhaps, a reflection of my struggles, or lack thereof, to reconcile my life with my history, my desires with my strivings. my lack of enthusiasm for commitment to people and places beyond a particular moment have been a result of my lack of enthusiasm for committing to understanding who i am beyond a particular moment.

i am trying to reconstruct the possibilities of what living in the moment can mean, trying to connect the past with the future through this moment. this is turning out to be a bit more difficult, and perhaps more painful, than not.

yesterday, i read an article in the atlantic arguing that humans are predisposed to believe in the supernatural. while i found the argument as a whole to be highly questionable, even given my suspicion of religion, what intrigued me was the observation that we tend to view our bodies as separate from our souls, or our minds.

my dichotomous thinking on this runs into my dichotomous thinking in momentary living. in most things, i'm all or nothing - very rarely do i find myself comfortable in the middle of any spectrum. i may love intensely, with fierce loyalty, but not without demands, requirements.

so i want to be more momentary, but i'm not even sure what that means anymore. you want to know what i fear, why i'm changing definitions in the middle of all of this. i can't say for certain.

ideologue.

i'm having a hard time understanding the descriptions of our most recent supreme court nominees. it defies belief that we should be excited to think that someone doesn't have an ideology. in fact, the anti-ideology, anti-ideologue message that's been going around for some time now gave me such doubt of what i thought i believed that i had to look up "ideology" and "ideologue", confirming to myself that yes, ideology is an important thing to have in the world. in today's nyt, you can find an article entitled, "Court Choice Is Conservative by Nature, Not Ideology". ummm...what?

i wonder why so little of politics makes sense to me, why i understand so few governmental actions. and today, well. today, i think i figured it out: if everyone is running away from ideology, there is no consistency or coherence to anything. we are left holding pieces, rather than looking at the whole.

and we have all these white men stumbling around, saying, well, you know, i decide things based on merits. mmmhmmm. yes you do. the merits of white hegemonic male privilege. so that's what i think when i read about junior's "nature".

the only ones who can afford to claim they don't have an ideology are the ones whose ideology already rules.

oh. and hell yes, i'm an ideologue.

laughter.

this past weekend, i caught myself in the midst of raucous laughter and realized that i couldn't remember the last time i had laughed so hard that i had to remind myself to breathe, to be conscious of trying to take deep breaths, the result of which is more of a hiccup, which sounds so ridiculous that i laugh even harder at this, partly in embarassment, partly in wonder of these uncontrollable noises exiting my mouth, and all i can do is listen and laugh some more and wipe the tears from my eyes. the fact is, me laughing deliriously sounds and feels suspiciously like me crying my eyes out, and i've been a bit short on both as of late.

after i caught my breath, the giddiness remained, and the smile lasted for quite some time. i realized that while i may think of myself as quick to laughter, i'm much more of a snorter. ugh. i'm still wrestling with that realization. the thing is, laughter is so much better than snorting - musically and otherwise. i generally disdain people who snort because i associate it with pomposity and arrogance. so how the hell did i become a snorter? when did that happen?

i vaguely remember reading something awhile ago about how laughter triggers various chemical functions in the brain. this makes sense to me kind of. but the concept i can really hold on to, is that the very act of laughing deeply and uncontrollably feels so damn good because that sort of laughing requires intimacy with another person. laughter creates a certain kind of connectedness that reminds us of the relationship we have with each other as well as the parts of us we forget sometimes along the way to becoming responsible adults striving for this that or the other. and it makes sense to me that my laughing and crying sounds similar because both require intimate touchings.

so i guess i've spent a lot of time this weekend reflecting on all these things because i know that i've spent way more time snorting than laughing and crying combined for quite some time, and i've found it troubling because that tells me i haven't focused as much on my relationships with those i love as much as i need to. and if i haven't done that, then clearly i've been spending some time with myself, but it's been mostly about stuff that doesn't really thrill me. i haven't finished reading a book in months. it's been a long time since i've even picked up a book that wasn't about the lsats. i've read reviews of books, articles, things like that, but no books. i've spent so much time striving lately that i've largely neglected this woman who is doing all of this striving. hence the propensity for snorting. so there it is. not very pretty.

but here's the good news for me: clearly, i am still capable of laughing with my entire body. all is not lost. and to be honest, i really do think that some situations/people demand snorts. that's true. and dammit people, it's not just my fault that i haven't been laughing.

so it's monday, and i have law school apps to send out this weekend, and i'm premenstrual, and already feeling anti-social and grumpy about the aforementioned things and more i'm sure, but sometimes, i just need to remember who i don't want to be. i think george w. bush is a snorter. that's all i need to remember. that's enough to make me cry so hard it makes me laugh.

call me a cynic...

is anyone else uneasy about the media portrayal and the left's response to the fuss around sandra day o'connor's replacement? to be honest, i think karl rove's a helluva better political operative than the media and both wings seem to be giving him credit for these days - did anyone really think that harriet mier's had a shot in hell of being confirmed? her nomination did, however, suspiciously set the stage for a study of marked contrasts that has eased the way for samuel alito, jr. (please note the addition of another junior) who, by most accounts will not be facing a filibuster. after all, it's hard to filibuster a white man with such impeccable academic credentials and 15 years of judicial experience when everyone was busy a week ago vilifying harriet miers for her lack of intellectualism and experience before the senate hearings were even scheduled. and then she pulls herself out of consideration on thursday, and bush announces junior on monday. bush and his administration brilliantly shifted the conversation away from wanting another woman to replace o'connor (and/or a hispanic), to a demand for "credentials". and who has better credentials for the supreme court than white men? after all, it requires a vow to uphold the constitution. consider this your timely reminder that the constitution was written by rich white men who sought to protect their property rights, of which women and men of color were included. i've gotta admit that strategically, karl rove is hard to beat. call me a cynic if you want to, but i think the man is smarter than what people have been saying about him lately. i have a hard time believing that the bush administration is really in as bad of shape as the media claims, even though we all know that it is worse than the media will ever admit.

honor.

"You honor me with your grumpiness."

i gotta admit, the first time i heard that, i thought it was pretty corny. that was over a month ago. but sometimes, when a certain phrase refuses to leave my head or comes up most unexpectedly, i know it's something i need to think about. i love the woman who said this - i am hard pressed to think of anyone who matches her gentleness and grace in dealing with the world - and i learned of the quote from a retelling of the conversation that inspired her saying it, but i just thought it funny when i heard it the first time. because it is funny, i think.

but i've been thinking about it because it's been one of those things that i haven't been able to not think about, and maybe i found it funny initially because that's precisely opposite to what most of us are socialized to think about grumpiness and bad moods in general. most of the time, i'm just offended by pissy moods, which puts me in a combative pissy mood. i have a tendency to put on my *game face*, as it were, around people i care about because i don't want to worry them and frankly, because i have a lot of pride.

and part of it is that those who are closest to me bring out the best parts of me that i struggle to maintain otherwise. but i wonder how many of us alter our realities because we're afraid of what it would mean not to, especially around people we love. it's about how honest we are with each other about what's going on, but fundamentally, how honest we can be with ourselves. it's a tough proposition, this honor thing.

this is the first conceptualization of honor that doesn't make me sick. it just makes me notice myself more in relation to other people.

Tribute

"I want everyone to remember me as a person who wanted to be free."

- Rosa Parks

cracks.

our conversations are terse - meaning is incidental and accidental, though that is what we both yearn for. the words we send to each other are staccatto piercings of the silence we struggle to hold, and the words get embedded in the silence as we look on, not without hope, but knowing nonetheless that our words will not survive this noisy silence between us. i would that i were brave enough to show you this woman in front of you, to move from behind this silence, but vulnerability and honesty are difficult, and you have long since shielded your eyes. and i wonder how the tears distort your vision when you do bring yourself to look for those brief moments.

so i talk quickly about the mundane, the business of my life that i think you want to hear or that i hope will make you proud, and you respond, just as quickly, of your business, with your quick affirmations. we talk of external things, making notes on the weather, but the closest we get to sharing our internal lives come from the subtle cracks in our voices. the weather inside is still raging, but we do our best to pretend that the devastation is not there - both of us too polite, too proper, too scared to point it out. and as time passes, we have gotten better at playing our parts. the cracks are less frequent, more subtle, and i am wondering if i am willing the cracks as i am willing us to have the type of relationship we just don't have.

these days i find myself desperately saying more words, trying to pound through this silence we have created with our disappointments and hurts and confusions and fears, and we are saying less and less. but it is in these pauses while we are busy catching words to say to each other that give us any reason to have these conversations of ours. every time i hang up the phone, i am willing you to hear what the words didn't say. and every time we speak again, we begin anew - neither one of us able to translate for ourselves in this noisy silence, both of us too busy trying to hold ourselves together as the cracks compound, and we are left holding the pieces, afraid to drop anything, losing the meanings of the varied subtleties we pass between us.

dc love.

the end of the day finds me exhausted, which is not all that surprising when most mornings find me crawling out of bed, unwilling and pouting at the prospect of dislodging bella from the warmth generated from my body underneath the covers where she has just gotten settled. i can't remember the last time i slept through an entire night where i haven't woken up thirsty or needing to pee or jolted awake by the loud whirring by the large machinery right outside my window that flips on and off at random it seems or the sounds and movements of bella doing her thing whatever it happens to be or too hot or too cold or by some other unaccounted reason. of course, when i say i can't remember the last time, that could mean that this has been happening for weeks or this could be just the past couple of nights. it's hard to say for certain.

last night i realized that i've been in dc for just over a year now, which surprised me because it seems like i've been here for much longer, and it's hard to remember what life is like not in dc, although i tell myself that it was more interesting and meaningful and, you know, *deep*, since i spend as much time as i think of it convincing myself and whoever else happens to be standing there, listening or not, what a "thoughtful" person i am. and i am reminded of what i was told once by a writer: "show, don't tell". mmmhm. well, you know, we're busy and distractable, and just in case you might have missed it, or wished you had, i like to tell just to hammer the point home.

this might prove to be problematic in my incipient writing career i've convinced myself i will have. and by career i mean, having a partner who will financially support my writing, while also agreeing to pay down the $100,000 + in loans that i am told is a reasonable estimate of indebtedness by the end of law school. i am really looking forward to it. by which i mean, i'm really looking forward to my partner's career that will finance mine. of course, she might also appreciate the advice that my two lawyer friends have been giving me about applying to a broader range of law schools that will be more likely to give me scholarships. i'll keep that in mind.

anyway. dc. for as much as i whine about wanting to move to another city that i've decided is more livable or intellectual or something, perhaps i need to remind myself that for someone who doesn't necessarily like a whole lot of people, finding a city she likes all the way down to her painted toenails is going to be difficult at best. sometimes i think i have the affect of a crotchety old woman. okay - a lot of times.

at the end of the day, though, dc's seen me through some things that no other place has, so i like it for that, in spite of myself. and even if i'm not here in another year, i know i'll miss it in the way that you miss those places where you experienced changes and revelations you never knew you needed or wanted and took you in when you were wanting to get away and held you there while you were licking your wounds and never judged you when you realized that you were wrong all along because you found out that what brought you there turned out to be not at all what you wanted. i'll miss it like that.

and on a grey day like today, a little cool, fall breeze, a little damp, i'm reveling in the too-hot bus, the too-cold office, the suits, the tourists...and this is home. at least for now.

built.

"I'm built to love. Isn't that clear to anyone who knows me?"

yes, z. yes, it is.

and i'm huddled on the front stoop, half-heartedly smoking a cigarette, my jacket zipped up, hood on over my hat, and i have no words for you. i'm silent because what i'm thinking is that i can't think of a better way to be known or remembered. and you do make that clear, and you have made that clear from the moment i met you.

and in this moment, you made me realize that stripped away of everything else, all the superfluous strivings, this is the one that matters. and this is the one that i want to be known for.

yeah, she's my roomie...

and what? check out today's nyt:

To the Editor:
Re "To Sir, With Love" and "The Trouble With Harry" (columns, Oct. 8 and 12): Maureen Dowd's last two columns made me cringe. I know that they must be deeply hurtful to conservative evangelical Christian women I have loved as best friends, mentors and relatives.
They confirm all suspicion that women and men on the left jointly sneer at their intelligence, accomplishments and sexuality.
I am a feminist who has done work and organizing around issues with which there will be no reconciliation with women like Harriet Miers. Yet I recognize that in a profoundly misogynistic world, women must make no-win choices all the time.
Ms. Miers made hers; I make mine. And I resent Ms. Dowd's alignment with allegedly progressive leftist men who would try to divide us.
Laura NixonWashington, Oct. 12, 2005

well said.

packing up.

pure silence is hard to achieve, even for a woman who likes quiet. as we sit together, my mind travels through yours and yours through mine, and we are having the best conversation we've had in a long time, but the only sounds we are making are barely audible - the ones that come from the reflexive tightening of the throat when we hear something that is so true we have a visceral response that we don't even notice until after it happens. for once, we're not worried about the exact way we need to say things, we're not worried about having to explain this that or the other - we're just moving together, dancing through and around, weaving the stories of our lives. and the quiet permeates. but i think it's the most i've really said in awhile.

i walked out of my apartment this morning into the fall rain i love so much and started smiling immediately - a real smile, the likes of which i rarely display before noon. on another day, i might have been grumpy about having to leave the warmth of my bed, the thought of a day of a sterile office too much for my weary little head to contend with as thoughts of hot tea and good reading in the softest clothes i own, with the blanket pulled up to my chin, with bella curled at my feet, make me toy with the idea of calling in sick. but not today. because i am awake. and loving the too short of walk to the bus stop.

today is moving day at the office, and it occurred to me on the bus that my belligerence as of late has come from being forced to pack my life neatly and nicely so that others can poke and prod, and i have my doubts about whether they will really see the good stuff - the stuff i value the most. but that's the stuff that's hardest to see and the hardest to find, nestled deeply within the mundane and the various things i may or may not have accomplished.

so with two days left, i wonder if i need a new approach, but i think it's just about figuring out how i can hold it all out there, making the writing seem effortless. making it about us, sitting in the quiet, engaging in mental acrobatics, channeling the excitement of taking you by the hand as we run from place to place, inadvertently showing each other the best versions of ourselves.

pure joy.

for real. it's true. a triple decker double-stuf oreo. mmmm... what an auspicious happening. and i am lovingly staring at it as i type. it doesn't get much better than this, my friends. no no. you are witness to a magnificent occurrence, and i am just thankful that i have enough time on my hands to fully appreciate and share the situation. do i need to say why i'm in a wonderful mood at the moment? i think not. i think not. enjoy.

on the verge.

of something i'm sure. the shallow breathing, the tightening of my heart, the feeling of tears that may or may not come at some time as yet undetermined. fall has always been my favorite season. i think that it's the juxtaposition of brightness with the cool wind and the crumbling leaves. the fluidness of memories that come from smells i notice for brief moments - those same leaves i hated while raking them as those same leaves i've loved when they made me an itchy bed.

i've been reading and re-reading more than usual it seems, although that may or may not be true. what is different is that i have been unable to read anything not written by the lives of my sisters. and everytime, the multiplicity of living the way they do - with hearts first - creates paradoxes i can't seem to get out of.

and i've been trying to avoid it all day - this feeling. this culmination of feelings. trying to ignore how heat has resided in my shoulders, my neck, my head. it occurs to me now that maybe what i'm trying to say is that there is a part of me that's wary of something - i think what i am wary of is an impending implosion. the heat. the tightness. the breaths that are just enough.

the words are all in my head, and just to make sure, i read them again. and i think that in this moment, this dull droning pain, while not getting actually louder, gets perceptively louder because it won't go away. and i think that it is the noise of love i can't contain. i wonder what an implosion of that sort would look like.

on writing.

i've been having really vivid dreams lately. this afternoon, i was suspended in this space where i wasn't entirely sure whether i was awake or not, but it felt real, and it could've been real, i think, and i'm still not entirely sure if i was awake and thinking those things or sleeping and dreaming those things. i've been sleeping a lot - rather, lying around a lot, which bella loves. it took over 24 hours for me to realize that i was actually sick, as opposed to being just overtired, and i guess that's a sign that i need to get more sleep regardless.

anyway, dreams. i keep dreaming about my personal statement. it's intense. and while i've written a couple variations, most of the writing has been imagined. and the words have taken me to unexpected places, which means that i don't really love anything i've written, in my head or otherwise, because what i was expecting was something clean and smooth, with an overarching abstract theme. you know, me stroking the egos of legal academics and their various institutions.

turns out, the words have been of me, rather than about me, and i'm not sure what to do about my vulnerability on the page. and i haven't been writing as much as i should because i'm a little bit scared of where it's going to take me.

a friend of mine has been writing on why she writes, and this is part of what she came up with: "During my journey in Jordan, I realized why we all wrote: we were on a path to master our own narrative, our own story, in our own language. We were activists and embraced the written word as our weapon, each word a vehicle of liberation."

when i read that for the first time, i thought, exactly. that's exactly it. and as i look at all the words i've written, i'm trying to piece together even a jalopy of liberation, but even that can't be mustered up. and as crazy as it is, there's a part of me that knows how lucky i am that i can have this space to define myself on my own terms, that i am being forced to define myself, but i've been wondering how to do that when so much of my life has been based on other-definition. and i wonder if words will allow me to go everywhere i want to go, and i wonder if readers will allow themselves to go with me. but lately, i've just been wondering if i know where i want to go.

and then, there's the nagging problem that all i've been able to come up with are fragments anyway, and if the words are going to insist we do it this way, then i'm going to insist that it's whole and true. and it's just not, and i'm not sure how to put it all together. what does it look like, what does it feel like, this mastering of one's own narrative?

and i wonder if a lifetime of words will get me there.

disappearance.

where did i go? what happened this past month? it's hard to say, really. sometimes i think time catches me and wrestles me to some other reality that has very little resemblance to the life that i like living, to the life that i feel comfortable living, into a harried mess of responsibilities and dramas, such that i have found myself wondering too many times lately where i went. i get so caught up in chasing butterflies that it's kind of a convulated mess trying to get back to where i started.

these days, it's a big accomplishment fighting off the urge to sleep during the day and being able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, while remembering to smile and nod at appropriate times because people generally are a bit put off by my contracted eyebrows that indicate that i'm thinking (or not) intensely about something, which usually involves trying to remember what i forgot to do during the day or what i can have for dinner since i haven't been able to make a real trip to the grocery store in a few weeks now or wondering how to make something that's ostensibly about me not be annoyingly narcissistic and/or egomaniacal - how i can write something like that and still like myself in the end. it's embarassing, really. everytime i see myself in the mirror lately, i just notice over-tiredness - the eyes will give it away every time. so, now, i try to avoid the mirror, which actually isn't all that difficult all things considered, but man, it's sad.

but it's not all that bad, now, is it? not really. i dodder around like i always do, flip-flop-ing around the city, but it's mainly for necessary things, like getting home or something like that, as opposed to near-necessities like wandering with junior wherever it takes me. focus has never really been my strong suit, but i've given up for now on any pretensions of controlling where my mind goes these days, which is actually pretty amusing. at least to myself. which is all to say, i'm rummaging through, trying to put myself back together. but i'm slow because i get distracted a lot. and i have a lot of things on my mind. and i have a lot of things to do, actually, which i never like, but there's very little that can be done about that at the moment.

anyway, i have a date with myself on sunday. i'm pumped about it because it's been much too long. i hope i don't get stood up.

taxed.

what if, instead of saying some people get taxed too much, we asked what people got paid too much for what they actually do? seems that would take care of the tax question. instead, we have politicians of the right and the left fighting over how to make government smaller and even more inefficient, while increasing their pay scales for doing what would seem to be proportionally less work, no? meanwhile, the uber-rich get more in tax breaks than the rest of the population combined, but somehow, that's still not fair, and what we really care about is the 1-2 percent of the national budget we're spending on social welfare, which includes, by the way, paying for the unemployment that is a result of the excesses of those who own capital in squeezing more and more production out of fewer and fewer workers. interesting. these are no longer just u.s. questions - the social democratic countries lefty americans love are succumbing to the forces of the eu, the forces of globalization, the forces of multinational, transnational corporations, revealing a less than stellar commitment to the actual people who comprise labor parties who ostensibly are represented in parliaments amongst some of the largest european countries. progress keeps trucking along, leaving hordes of people in its wake.

damn the man.

save the empire. i'm pissed that my sister is wondering if she's another notch in some white man's belt who claims he may be white on the outside, but he's brown on the inside. but really, we both know that we have all been reduced to notches on some man's belt, knowing that without us, their pants would fall down and everyone would know that the emperor has no clothes. so props, sister, for walking away with grace and wit and exposing his tight grip on his white male ass.
of course, she gently reminds me that things aren't quite that simple - since when does the phrase "walking away" really encapsulate the complications involved? so, perhaps more appropriately, here's to your honesty sister warrior, and while we may never be able to get rid of the fear of living in the contradictions, poking at them, staring at them, trying to understand them, i love that you are more afraid of not recognizing, acknowledging and exploring the paradoxes. "walking away" is really an imprecise phrasing since i know that to walk away doesn't mean to let go necessarily. and maybe you're not built to be able to completely walk away from things, but it seems i've spent much time lately trying to develop or listen to inclinations to stick around, rather than walk away, because maybe i am built like that. and maybe that's why i love you, sister. because we both know that how we're built isn't an excuse for how we live.

such is life, indeed.

exactly.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050914/cm_ucru/charitiesareforsuckers

sirens.

we sit in silence as we stare at the lights flashing so hard, i am convinced that they are the source of the loud whining sirens that causes us to reflexively tense. as they fade, you ask what i was thinking about, so i tell you that i was wondering what would happen if we really saw people we looked at in our day to day. whether we would see the lights signaling emergency, and whether we would do anything if we did, and what difference that would make.

this isn't a lie, but what i really want is to tell you a story. it would begin with me telling you that there are things we all carry around with us, accumulated from past experiences that, for whatever reason, we can't let go. sometimes, we can't let go because we've never found a place where we could set it down that isn't already occupied or someone else's. but the weight of accumulation makes us immobile, sometimes imperceptively. what i want to tell you is the story of this woman sitting next to you, who doesn't like to set things down, even when they no longer have use, even though she likes to pretend otherwise. partly because you never can tell when something is no longer useful. but mainly because setting something down means occupying space that she's not convinced is hers to occupy.

the funny thing about setting something down that you've carried so long, it's really become a part of you, whether it started that way or not, is that when you become so tired that you know you have to risk what it means to finally let go, is that this weight has left a conspicuous imprint that stays, no matter how far away you get. and you're so used to carrying it around, that the psychic weight replaces the actual weight, and it's hard to say for sure which is heavier. and i'm still doubled over.

this is true - it isn't just not a lie. it's honest. but it's not much of a story, is it? there's no clear anything, let alone a beginning, middle and end with a definable plot, the leading up to the bold moment of self discovery or other discovery. i've never been much of a storyteller, actually, and your eyes contain expectation that i am sure i can't fulfill. maybe what i'm really thinking about is a collection of desires of how i long to be seen in this world, coalescing in this moment, but there is very little poetry to be found in such blatant honesty of self-involvement. so i lean forward in my chair, placing my hand on the table, and i open my mouth in hopes of telling you this or something similar, but instead, i put another cigarette in and reach for the lighter, letting the tar and nicotine seep in over the rough formations of a story that i know is there to tell somewhere, burying it, lost forever in that moment.

newsbreak.

BUSH CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN STRATEGERY TO STOP NATURAL DISASTERS

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush is warning that he will not stand for this sort of devastation inflicted on American soil. Political insiders are wondering what plans are being formulated in the notoriously secretive Bush administration, but so far, true to form, White House staff members are being noncommittal. According to Scott McClellan, “We’re not ruling things out. We’re looking at what needs to be done to address problems.”

Bush has commented that there needs to be careful consideration of the collective American response to Katrina and others like her, because fighting natural disasters is a difficult task that requires coordination and sacrifice. Pointing to the Iraq war, Bush disdainfully noted the plummeting American support with every billion dollars that disappears from accounting spreadsheets into the pockets of this or that Halliburton official, and said that while his administration was being cautious because of the fickleness of the American people generally, he retained faith in the goodness of common Americans to come together and respond forcefully to the wreckage of Katrina and insisted that he had a mandate to engage in whatever means necessary to prevent another such occurrence from happening. Bush stated, “New Orleans is more devastated than New York was.” The seriousness of the situation is underscored by Bush’s cutting short his “working vacation” by coming back to DC one day before he was scheduled to return.

For a brief moment at the press conference earlier today, environmentalists were excited at Bush’s comments, noting that perhaps he was implicating the role of humans on increasingly devastating weather conditions across the globe. However, after some deliberation, many environmentalists have had a shocking change of heart, being amongst the first to organize protests and other such campaigns before Bush has even gone public with his plan. After interviewing some of these environmentalists, one gets the sense that the rapid mobilization of protest is being propelled by a sense of fear of what pre-emptive tactics Bush is going to use this time.

One thing is for sure, though. With Bush’s public support dropping in every poll, even those put out by the Heritage Foundation, he is in dire need of a popularity boost if he is to fulfill his dream of being a historical figure on terms separate from former father-son presidents John Adams and John Q. Adams.

According to a senior official who insists on anonymity, Bush is currently consulting with the heads of states of Poland and Britain, among others, to form a coalition of the willing. If Bush declares a War on Natural Disasters as many political insiders are anticipating, he would be the first President to start a war, while engaged in another one, during his lame duck period.

President Bush, the American people are looking to you for forceful leadership in these uneasy times where the enemy is just waiting to attack, coming from every direction, from extreme heat to extreme cold, from extreme drought to extreme precipitation. Now is the time for steady hearts and strength of will. It is in times like these that we can take some small modicum of comfort in Bush’s maxim, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us”.

beginning.

My head is filled with clichés about knowing where one comes from, knowing and honoring one's roots, along with constant reminders, real and imagined, to remember, both literally and figuratively – the kind of remembrance that is visceral and beyond words, even for a woman who spends the better part of each day engaging in wordplay, sliding unsuspecting words together, gently or otherwise, hoping that the mere existence of words together on a page will create the illusion of solidity. This is, I think, what it means to be a New American. It is about re-connecting, re-creating and re-collecting.

Memories are many things, but I find memories to be, more often than not, betrayals. Or more accurately, the absence of memories with real shape and substance betray me. This absence defies my yearnings and struggles to place myself within the context of my own life. Born in South Korea, adopted when I was nearly five years old with my biological brother who was seven, into a white family in the rural Midwest, giving me another older brother and an older sister, the pattern of my life thus far has been a search for an identity that I can claim as my own. I know that my history is something that I cannot escape, even if I cannot remember.

One of the major disappointments of my childhood was finding out that I could not become the President of the United States, contrary to what my parents had been telling me for several years. This is my first memory of being denied access to something based on a technicality that I did not control, rather than my substance, and perhaps I have yet to fully recover. What I remember most vividly from my childhood is what I know I have been told over and over. I know that I entered kindergarten knowing enough English to say the primary and secondary colors and to tell people I loved them, though I have my doubts about whether or not I meant it. By Christmas break, I was well on my way to English fluency, with my grasp of Korean quickly fading. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized that my brother and I constituted half of the Asian population in the Three Rivers school system.

recollections.

sometimes memories catch you most unexpectedly. sometimes you go back to get something and stumble and stub your toe on something else entirely that you had forgotten in the darkness. the funny thing about recollections is that even when you gather up everything you can find, you still don't feel whole - you're collecting these parts of you, and when you try to put them altogether, they don't create what you want, even if you're not entirely sure what it is that you want.

memories are our way of aging our lives. when you dehydrate something, you completely change the nature of what you started with. you lose the messy juiciness and vibrance of flavor and are left with something with only enough resemblance of the original product so you vaguely remember what it started as. it's a muted version of when something was alive, pulsing, vibrant.

sometimes i like the aged version of foods - like raisins. i'm not a fan of grapes, but there's a tinge of sadness contained within raisins.

i know i don't like to remember some things just because i miss the messy boldness of what it was to live those moments. i resent the muteness. i resent the lamination of real life to protect it enough to carry it around with me. so i pretend i don't carry those memories - not because they were bad moments necessarily, but because there's a hint of melancholy involved as i also remember what it was like to be alive in those moments. and that's in the best memories.

the thing about recollections is that it's rarely re-collecting anything. it's re-creating, trying to force the life back into something that was left for dead long ago. and there's a part of me that remembers just enough to know that there were these times that filled me so that i could no longer contain it, and i know that every time i write, i am yearning for definition, for precision, but sometimes, the more i write, the clearer it is that the moments have oozed beyond the barriers of any container i thought to put them in, and the more i write, the more sullied they become, the more i re-create rather than re-collect.

i like to think that i fight for truth every day. but what is true is often fiction, or so we're told. so i just tell myself, just as long as it's not false, that's all that matters. maybe facts are never true without a little fiction. and so i busy myself with recollection, trying to mute the emotive responses that accompany my re-creations.

fortune/desire.

fortune:

Maybe you can live on the moon in next century.
- last fortune cookie

desire:

and in the brief moment that is today
wild hope this dreamer jars
for I have heard in whispers talk
of life on other stars.
- Audre Lorde

quote of the day:

"shoot to kill in order to protect policy" - Sir Ian Blair

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4159310.stm

i thought that *pre-emptive war* won the prize for tautological logic, but i was wrong.

excitement.

http://www.walken2008.com/index.html

profiling.

sometimes, i read commentary, and i cringe at the display of imprecise thinking being presented as truth, the disingenuity presented as self-awareness of the most honest sort. it is hard work, this providing commentary struggling with troubling issues in the world justifying one's own bigotry. the struggle for most paid commentators, it seems to me, is one of how best to present the irrationality of bigotry as the objective truth. it is so convincing, that i have to remind myself sometimes that i am not crazy, that my friends have to remind me that what is crazy is what is being presented as truth.

i was told recently, "all muslims aren't terrorists, but it is unfortunate that all terrorists are muslims". this is, of course, what we are being told on a daily basis, sometimes with subtlety, most of the time not. to question this very basic assumption is to raise suspicions from those around you. although i expect very little from people of either the right or the left variety, the discouragement compounds as i realize that courage is so loosely defined as to be rendered effectively meaningless - as in, does a rubber band have a purpose if you take away its elasticity?

courage these days is used to describe questioning of not the fact that we are engaged in policies of systematically taking away rights of members of certain groups, conceiving of more and more laws that can be used retroactively, hoping to assuage the fear of the powerful majority by exponentially increasing the fears of everyone else. rather, courage these days is defined when people thoughtfully consider which profiling is acceptable in which circumstances. which is to say, thoughtful people seem to agree that as long as policy is not intentionally racist, racism as a byproduct is something that no one has to like, but must be acceptable considering the circumstances. to disagree is to be hopelessly naive, or even worse, a traitor.

in other words, there is a price to be paid for security. many people seem to be willing to accept that price, but i wonder if they would hesitate a bit more if they were the ones actually paying that price. in britain, a brazilian man was shot 8 times in point-blank range because he looked like he could have been a terrorist. no one asked him if he was willing to pay that price so that others could see that anti-terror forces were doing their jobs, shooting to kill, and sometimes mistakes are made, but that is the price for white security. in a world of majority rule, the majority has dictated that that price is acceptable. indeed, the fact that he tried to run away displays his guilt of something - of what, we're not quite sure, but certainly he was no ingenue.

on the other hand, white men find the us-canadian border conveniently porous for their purposes; post-war stress explains civilian violence for this marine of the year; trying to smuggle a bomb onto a plane is emptied of the symbolism of hate if it occurs in oklahoma, a reaction that seems incredibly mild considering the state's experience with the boy next door; the most outrage we've managed to muster around the eric rudolph case is the supposedly unfair implication to supreme court nominee john roberts, jr; and shooting a gun is a good way to let off some steam. how much more evidence do we need that profiling is just bad policy?

i wonder how much it will take before we demand an interrogation of white male privilege that serves to legitimize the highest incidences of violence internationally. when are we going to hold white men accountable for this violence that is systematic? when are we going to stop pretending that violence is radical?

forgiveness.

it seems that we all have many lessons to learn in how to live, and they keep recurring in our lives until we've learned them well, every new lesson adding more nuance to that which we already know. i like to joke sometimes that i'm a slow learner. the thing about humor is that the best humor is subtle - it has enough truth in it to give one pause. an obvious joke only elicits a groan at best, and in my residual attempts at being the smart-ass kid that can make everyone laugh, i know that most of my humor is a bit wry, a bit edgy, a bit dark, and lately, a bit more self-deprecating. my friends who know me the best do not appreciate much of my humor these days. but getting back to the matter at hand, the concept of forgiveness has been something that keeps coming back in my thoughts, no matter how far i push it away, never satisfied with this or the other cliche, attaching itself, rather obtrusively i might add, to other conversations.

awhile ago, i read an article about the rwandan genocide, and paul wolfowitz in his new position at the world bank issued a formal apology stating something to the effect of "well, there's really not much we can do about it now, but we should at least say we're sorry for what happened". the thing about formal apologies is that they are rarely, if ever, real apologies. real apologies happen face to face, in moments of intense vulnerability. real apologies are perhaps the most intimate we can ever become with another human being. i have a hard time imagining wolfowitz allowing for that sort of intimacy and vulnerability, but i have also been told at times that i lack a certain capacity for imagination. the thought that i've been holding on to since reading that article has been "let's not confuse an apologist for an apology". i'm pretty proud of that line. but taking that line from the macro-critique of the crazy world in which we live, to the lives which we lead, is another thing altogether. suddenly, it's a lot less poetic and a lot less clever. now it's just damn judgemental. that's just mean.

but i want to talk about forgiveness because i yearn to understand it, viscerally. none of this talking around it that i've been engaging in for the better part of a year now. i wonder sometimes if we ever really forgive others in our lives for slights, real and imagined because intent to cause pain is really beside the point. it may be imagined to you, but it's real to me - that sort of thing. it occurred to me recently that perhaps we never really forgive those people who have hurt us the most - at least not in the way that all the self-help books tell you you should be able to forgive. you know, be the bigger person, practice love, let it go, move on with your life. no doubt, i'm a mover. i move quickly and often. but in my interactions with people, i know that my guardedness stems from not being able to forgive somebody else, in some other time.

and sometimes, i am so thoroughly convinced that i have managed to forgive somebody for that thing that happened however long ago that i can't even remember now what exactly happened and who said what and who did what, but then something happens that triggers the memory, and you can't always control what happens after the trigger is set. one of the most perplexing paradoxes seems to me to be the fact that those you love the most, can also be those you just cannot forgive. because it's the most hurtful things that are the hardest to forgive, but also the most necessary to forgive.

the trick about forgiveness is that i think that real forgiveness occurs when i can say that in those moments that i have such a hard time letting go, things did not go as i would have liked, setting me in a slightly different direction than i intended to go, but looking around now, i like where i'm at and can appreciate it enough to say that whatever got me here, was worth experiencing to get me through that which allowed me to be exactly here. it is, i think, perhaps one of the most difficult tricks we have to learn. it is also about forgiving one's self enough to really like her.

i like to think of it as a sort of method acting. there is always a space between who we are and who we want to be, and in order to get from here to there, we do our best to pretend that that space doesn't really exist. the more we can disappear into the role of who we want to be, the more convincing we are, and at some point, perception becomes reality. much like hegel's concept of thesis, antithesis, synthesis process on a personal level. i think the people i admire and respect the most are the best method actors. they have an uncanny ability to disappear into that role, such that there is no role.

i forget sometimes that truth is always simple. i like to pretend that forgiveness is complicated because it is difficult to execute, and i lose sense of content for form. but i think it's this simple: forgiveness is about practicing love until you can just live lovingly, because love demands acceptance of others and the self for who we are, in this moment, not who we want to be or wish others could be. forgiveness is about being able to see the difference between what is and what is possible.

image.

the power of image lies in its subtleties, in what is hidden from first sight, in the possibilities that remain after the immediate gratification of what is known. the best images present more questions than answers - a sense of intrigue. the best images make us reflect on the spaces between the parts that, together, result in what we consider the image. the less imagination required, the lesser the image.

image seems to be placed somewhere in between mirage and truth. maybe the best images achieve both. i was told recently "you are not the laura i fell in love with". it kind of blew me away for a lot of reasons, but i've been trying to hold myself accountable to this idea of emotional honesty, considering my various rythyms, and i know that, in fact, i am a horrible dancer, and i try to hide it by posturing from one end of the room to the other, with a shiny something or other in hand for diversion. when it comes to emotional honesty, i've got some very convincing moves. so i wonder about the nature of this other laura.

i am so intent on trying to prove my invulnerability, my brashness, my strength, that i position the pieces so that they are jammed up against each other, as a sort of dare for anyone to try to see past it. i don't like to leave anything to the imagination - i'd rather tell someone who i am, rather than have them figure it out on their own. maybe because i like the image i can present better than the unfiltered version of who i actually am. and i dislike ambiguity so the spaces between the contradictions and uncertainies and loves and whatnot, all hold something that will betray the woman i want to be. i am sure of it.

i said once that i consider myself to be a smiley person. the laughter was deafening. i forget sometimes that most of my smiling is done out of sight. after all, as any thai person could tell you, smiles are subtle.

hanging on

because i read something like this, and it renews me. rhian, i'm not sure that your words would have meant anything to that man or his children, either, but keep writing, sister, because this is the reason why i keep reading. because there is always the possibility that i might stumble across something that is worth reading, and most often, the things worth reading are those things that people write because they need to write it for themselves. have your freeze-dried strawberry ice cream if you must, but you know that it is not sufficient to sustain you. and it shouldn't be. astronauts have the luxury of ignoring gravity so can survive with lighter fare. let's not pretend that we should be able to do the same. there are things we know exist, even if we can't see them. things we feel, even if we can't touch them. your words mean something to those who can listen to what you're saying, and know enough to sense what it is that you are not saying.

Waste nothing, chica, not even pain. Particularly not pain.
- Eudora in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde.

Terror?

this is a draft version that came from lack of sleep for many reasons, of which this is only one.

Last week, Tony Blair announced an ostensibly new policy of deporting "extremists", regardless of the human rights policies of the country of origin, defying international law. Ostensibly new because this is actually the de facto policy, justified by this extended War on Terror, now made de jure. Forgive me if I am a bit reticent in accepting that this is what must be done to protect ourselves and each other from terrorists. I question the ethics of governments that so narrowly define terrorism as individual acts, except for when referring to an entire group that they can now conveniently vilify since they did not agree with them anyway.

When I think of things that I am truly terrified of, it is not the possibility of a terrorist attack so narrowly defined. I realize that this is partly a luxury of knowing that where I live, what I do, who I am, doesn't make me the most appealing target. But mostly, it is because what terrifies me are my everyday realities.

I am terrified that my nephews are growing up in a world that encourages them to disown me because of who I may choose to date and partner with. I am terrified that my stubborness in acknowledging the truth (on my best days), will someday be the end of me. I am terrified that another man I know will choose to see me as an object to be assaulted. I am terrified that the last question I will ever be asked will be "Did you live ethically?" and my response will not be an unqualified yes. I am terrified that people will continue to refuse to take my experiences as an East Asian woman seriously. I am terrified of not knowing reciprocal love. I am terrified that my various addictions and ways in which I cope with the world will reduce my ability to be an actor in it. I am terrified that those I love carry these and other terrors that prevent them from falling asleep at night and make them reluctant to wake up in the morning. There are many many things that I am terrified of, but most of all, I am terrified that all of these terrors I carry around with me, will never go away. Will have no reason to go away.

As Blair and Bush continue their asinine strategies to maintain lies as if they were truths, it occurs to me that policies rooted in terror of what would happen if one were not the oppressor have never been, and never will be, ethical. I like to think that eventually, what is right has, and will, prevail. This, I know, is optimistic to the point of hurting.

But let us each hope, for the sake of letting go of at least some of our terrors, that this is true. And that this will happen sooner rather than later for those whose terror is the terror of waking up, knowing that one's very existence is enough of a threat to justify one's nonexistence.

the perfect set.

last night, as i was belting out my best renditions of a gritty, world-weary, southern whiskey-drinkin', pall mall smokin' throaty voice, trying to keep up with lucinda williams, i discovered a new dream. maybe someday, given a little time to work on my voice to get it to the point where perfect pitch doesn't matter, adding in a little inflection, i have dreams of being among the elite east asian country singer-songwriters. i figure it can't be too hard since i don't really know that there are any right now, and maybe somewhere, there are some more east asian lucinda williams-philes, but still. i think i have a good shot. my birthday's coming up, so if you must get me something, my wishlist is a a carton of pall malls, unfiltered, and a bottle of scotch. just so you know. i'll start slowly with the alcohol - perhaps beginning with a nightcap. and i think i have enough practice with cigarettes to make a real go of it. at that point, i might have enough songs about *beautiful losers*, as she so eloquently put it last night, to make a full length cd. she was so wonderful that a man screamed out a marriage proposal to her in the middle of her set. a gay man. that's how good she was. i was trying to think of something similar that i could yell out to her, but i couldn't come up with anything shorter than "lucinda, i love you. if i believed in marriage, i'd propose, but you can best believe that this offer is as close as i'll ever get to a marriage proposal!". for some reason, i thought that that would be a bit hard to fully comprehend. it's amazing to me that someone is able to write for themselves, and yet still be able to make everyone in the room feel as if she were having an intimate conversation with her.

hence the marriage proposal. and hence the consideration of the non-marriage proposal.

and her songs were all about brokenness and loves she had and lives she's lived and all of that stuff that you know if you just thought about all of that hurt and nostalgia and melancholy, you'd be kicking your own ass or your friend would or whatever, for being so deeply self-involved and self-indulgent, but somehow, she makes it seem as though that's the only reasonable thing to do. and she wasn't missing the idea of anything - she was just missing that which she once had or thought she knew.

me, too, lucinda. me, too.

but she sang it all in a way where you just knew that she was alright. that maybe she was tapping into a lot of anger and bitterness and resentment about what various people wanted her to be to them, about people asking her for things she was unwilling to give, about people unwilling to accept her on her own terms as she stood in front of them, about not being enough for the various people she's loved, about fucking up and not being forgiven, about not getting somewhere quite fast enough to make it work, about desiring herself to be somebody she knows she isn't, about desiring someone else to be someone she knows they aren't, about all of that that we all carry around with us all the time, but her wryness and honesty were enough to make me believe that she knows she has more living to do and more songs to write. that she saved the hardest things for last - that writing love songs is harder than writing any other songs.

i'm getting there, lucinda. i'm getting there.

what i mean when i say i'm a writer.

i said that i'm a writer, an aspiring one at that, and offered to write some words if that's what she wanted. she looked at me hard for a minute, reached into her pocket and pulled out a dollar. she said that she'd pay me five cents a word, so they'd better be worth it. and maybe if they were good enough, she'd see what else was in her pockets. i looked at her for a second and told her i'd probably be able to come up with something. after some thinking, all i could come up with was three words. she asked for her change, and while smoking my cigarette, i muttered under my breath that some words are worth more than others - there's no change left. i wrote "fuck this shit" on my 7-11 receipt and walked away.

i guess i'm not a paid-by-the-word type of writer. at least, i'm hoping i'm not.

sometimes, someone will look at my work and comment that it's great. they loved it. except for this one thing, you know, just change this one thing, and then it'd be perfect. then it'd be what they've been wanting to read and wishing someone has written. i've wasted too much time trying to make what i write what someone wants to read. what i write is who i am. if there's something that someone's wishing they could read, they should write it their own damn selves.

working.

laura asked me a couple of times yesterday if i'd read the news of the day. i hadn't because there's something very freeing about not sitting in front of a computer all day looking at news that all looks the same, no matter where you're looking. but this morning, i walked outside to have a cigarette with my first cup of coffee, sitting on the stoop like i like to do, sweating, but blissfully enjoying the hot hot sun, in a way that's only possible when you know that you can go back to your air-conditioned apartment whenever you want, and there was the saturday new york times at my feet. i'm a sucker for the news - i can never go too long without it, so i picked it up, and just reading the front page was enough for me to be disgusted and unwilling to read the rest of the paper. my resistance. haha. as if resistance can ever be feigned indifference, deliberate ignorance. but then i worked out and worked up a sweat, pulling my mind back to where it left my body. i'll let the outrage simmer for a bit, just to boiling, and see where it takes me.

but at the moment, there's shopping and cooking to be done. because lindsay and josh are in town!!!

sinking.

slowly. not so slowly as to be preventable or controllable. just quick enough to assert the futility of resistance. it's more of an added weight; increased inertia. but sinking only earns its negative connotation if you're below sea level. otherwise it's just another mode of transport. not necessarily the most efficient perhaps, but the most solitary, yes?

getting home after a long day, longer than any day has a right to be, stripping myself of clothing and other gratuitous trappings, stumbling to that well worn chair that knows the slight curving and sloping of my body, the parts that never seem to relax, the things i can never let go, and i sink. sinking into that comfortable space that knows me so intimately, cradling my imperfections, somehow discovering those parts that have managed to be unsullied in my encounters with the world. sinking. and my jaw slowly starts to unclench for the first time, my fists unravel. and i'm laughing with my entire body at the absurdity of it all. i had thought that i needed to jump in order to get from there to here, but i've never liked heights. at the end of the day, all i want to do is sink. it's not glamorous, i suppose, this sinking thing, but it's hard to jump with this chip on my shoulder and baggage in hand. today, i don't need to jump. i just need to sink.

reading material.

so, i'm just curious, uh, why do you always have newspapers here?

umm...so people can read them...

oh, okay, just curious.

right. what's up with people? god, i can be a really big bitch.

today i finally finished alphabetizing the office library of one of the senior fellows who is currently on vacation. it took me so long because i'm a horrible procrastinator. i must say, i'm impressed with some of his books, and i wonder if he's read all of them. there's something very intimate about going through someone's book collection, but i'm saved from too much intimacy because i'm sure that the books that tell the real story are probably at home. the ones that are in his office, though - i wonder about those. it's a collection of an academic who takes the idea of rationality and balance and objectiveness seriously, it seems. and then, all of a sudden, there's a collection of poems by june jordan. hm. a bit incongruous. interesting.

anyway, whenever i have a chance to look at the books people deem important enough to own, i do wonder about that space between having a book in one's possession and having a book in one's mind. and then i think, maybe this guy has read all of these books. hm. which then presents the interesting question of how we read. as someone who checks out books at various libraries for him, i would bet that he's a hard-core skimmer. he goes through too many books to actually have digested all of that mess. and i don't blame him - most of the books i've seen him reading have looked rather uninteresting and uninspiring to say the least. i wonder what he actually enjoys reading.

i have dreams of a large living room lined with bookshelves. my very own personal library. not so concerned with projecting an image of detached objectivity as opposed to confrontational subjectivity. that seems to me to be the only rationality worth attaining.

when i was a kid, i'd disappear for hours, only to emerge for brief periods of forced niceties, after which i would escape again to various worlds that were not my own, but which often felt more real and definite than i ever imagined mine could be. the difference now is that i escape within books that reinforce my reality in various ways. i have grown up to be much more of a critic, but what is it that is so addictive about reading a story that is not your own, and yet, you can imagine it as if it were? reading, i think, was my first real addiction. the monkey on my back that i've never been able to shake. i have to cut myself off from the constant access of online bookstores that make searching for books so simple, buying them with just one click. and what? there's a recommendation for me! how thoughtful. and so it goes. and then i remind myself of the stack of books by my bed; the books on my shelf that i haven't gotten to just yet but have every intention to do so soon; the books that i'm currently reading and have been reading, but with the attention span shorter than i am, the delicious possibility of yet another book is always waiting, gently pulling, feigning patience for my attention, as i think, yes, well, this book, this book could be the one i've waited my entire life to read. this is the book that will grant me clarity. purpose.

right on, k.

i've fallen in love. again. and yes, k, it would be amazing if coffee came in flavors of music. in your imagained coffee house, i just ordered a large cup of shelby lynne. with a refill. i'm just waking up. her subtleties linger on my palate as only well-written verses can. at the moment, i'm convinced that our crises of identity not be contained to a particular moment, but rather a track that comes up in the shuffle again and again. or maybe that's me projecting. heh.

sometimes the bus ride is too short.

i figure i should put this down before i lose the receipt i wrote this on (it was a long-ass receipt related to the new jack nicklaus 5 pound notes put out by scotland, which by the way, are a bit difficult to acquire.)

i am forever criticizing this, that, or the other. there was a woman reading Lolita at a bus stop. beyond wondering what the allure is of reading about a supposed love affair of an old man with an adolescent girl (rave reviews notwithstanding), seeing this woman made me think of the conversations i've had with friends about Lolita in Tehran. rather, not much conversations about that in particular, more than a reason to speak more generally about representation. for much of what is written, my question is whether or not the writer has questioned power and privilege deeply enough. is something really feminist if one is still holding on to the ideal of white bourgeouis womanhood (consciously or no)? is something really radically anti-racist if one is silent about the oppression of women or explicitly women-hating? i think not. is something rational merely because it assumes, without acknowledging, white male power? i misunderstand rationality if that is the case.

when i write, this is one of my greatest fears; one of my greatest impediments to writing - that reading something i've written, if reading from my critical lens, will cause me to frown at the end because of its incomplete/dishonest attempts at truth. my insecurity about writing that others see has everything to do with my ego, but it's really my criticisms that are the most debilitating. those are the ones that cause me to set down my pen.

so i remind myself to always be cognizant of my roots and where my relative privilege comes from. and i wonder sometimes how that is possible, having spent most of my life deliberately dis-engaging myself from memory. it is unclear to me still what parts are mere imaginings, and which are memories. as in, this happened at this particular time, i felt this at this particular time, i did this at this particular time, etc. and i wonder what the difference is. how to delineate that difference. and i question my ability to see myself in the lives and experiences of others. which lives and experiences i choose for myself. i fear my co-optation of someone else's living so that i can better understand my own. or perhaps, so i don't have to understand my own on the most intimate level of self-awareness. i fear that i use others as a metaphor for myself. this is, of course, beyond forgivable.

plodding. plotting.

dc is uptight. for real, uptight. more uptight than i am. even in clothes that fit a little too well for my comfort. conversations about love are in my head - real and imagined. last night, in between deep inhales and extended exhales, i caught myself wondering if i had walked away from the few people i have been in love with because i've never really believed that my capacity to love them on their own terms was as much as they deserved. i had a moment. with myself. but then i thought, well shit, i've only been in love with 2 people anyway. and i might've walked away from one, but they both walked away from me in one way or another. just, i didn't really fight for either one of them the way i could've maybe. the day love can be controlled is the day i won't want it anymore, but the day that the compulsive part of me might finally join in on the ride.

speaking of which, here's a wonderful new joke (thanks, molly!):

knock, knock.

who's there?

control freak. okay now you say control freak who!

haha. i'm chuckling on the inside just writing it out. sigh. it's hard to find good jokes like this anymore. speaking of which, i managed to come home from cleveland with 3 new books and - wait for it, wait for it... - that's right. a 2-in-1 game board. on one side is candyland. flip it over, and it's chutes and ladders. it doesn't get much better than that.

better thought than mine

"If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want". - Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

request.

someone just asked me, "ummm, laura, can you only send happy news stories from now on?" ummm...sure. when there's only happy news to report. meanwhile, while you're holding your breath, i'll keep sending along the stories that display the truth as i see it. me, i'll keep breathing.

flair.

do it with flair, baby. do it with flair.

walked out of work today, and macy gray kept getting through the shuffle..."i am a sex-o-matic venus freak when i'm wit you, and i will stop it, only when you tell me to". i like the image of me walking through the k street lobbyists singing macy, stripped of my annoying work shirt. flip-flops, dress pants, white tank, ipod, cigarette in hand, shades, hat by ray hands. do it with flair. even if you don't know what the hell you're doing, do it with flair. make the white men in suits and shiny shoes cringe at your boldness. singing like i don't give a shit, making a fool of myself, but sometimes that's what you gotta do. especially when macy's on. because if she tells me anything, it's that my heart may be broken, but that's no reason to sit out this dance.

more macy gray..."it's been three days since you called and hung up on me when all you wanted was to hold me tight. now you're sorry and wanna make it up to me, but i think i need a little more time. when. i. see you. i'm gonna kiss you all over your face. when. i. see ----" whoa. i saw you. woman walking down the street with just about the best muscle definition i've ever seen. shoulders back. infectious smile. just came back from the gun show. do it with flair, baby. do it with flair. i saw you. make me wonder where your joy comes from. loving the flair. loving the rain falling on my body. umbrella in hand. unopened. nothin' but love. and macy's on again.

powered down.

so, i spent most of my day traveling and waiting and traveling and waiting and traveling some more. it made me a little nervous and anxious - i don't like anything too far outside my routinized daily life, i guess. at the moment, craving nicotine. had 2 packages of smarties - why is something as chalky and almost tasteless as smarties so damn good and addictive? i guess it must be the same part of my brain that considers smoking to be the closest i've gotten to having a religious experience. people at work are being friendly and playful today - it's catching me a little off-guard. particularly since i tend to be guarded and paranoid while at work. my neck is starting to ache from the sudden movements. someone is yelling *yikes* down the hall. yikes, indeed. i am officially hooked on sudoku. just so you know. oooohhh...usher's on. no sense in trying to concentrate on anything now.

guest blog

because sometimes people say beautiful things that need to be shared. and sometimes people get bored with my incessant posts. lucinda williams has got nothing on you.


a country western song, with no rhyming

I leave my new job each night more or less forgetting to call the friends who have called me, instead spending my evenings in a new town probing the gap in my heart where my friends were, when they were with me. I'm so tired of consulting a map to find a particular grocery store. I'm a tourist in the town where I live, temporarily a tourist in my own life. When I'm exhausted by the lack of my own meaning, I find myself grasping at the meanings supplied by makers of books, tv and movies, and by the events in the lives of people whose window shades stay up after dark. I worry that my previous, noisier life, was just a firmer grasp on a meaning just as ephemeral as the ones that flash before me now. This town feels like a layer on top of another place, a Saran Wrap keeping me from the odors and flavors of something nutritious underneath. I drink a lot of water and pay attention to my food and exercise, as if training for a life, but not this one. Last night I sat and read on a library lawn, and the children playing around me search for walnuts under my purse, as if I were not there. I shared their doubt.

stealth.

after finally finding my futon mattress late last night, which i'd been looking for all day it seemed, bella pushed the door open, the way she does every night, peeking into the darkness, on guard, as it were. she stands there for a minute, surveying the scene, then cautiously enters the room. slowly. so slowly. as if unsure that the laura she knows so well is the same laura after a day out in the world and in her head. never can be too cautious. when all of her was in the room, i got up and pushed the door shut again (timing is everything - do it too early and it scares her so we have to start the whole process all over again as she'll retreat back into the hallway), which inevitably makes her jump. i laid back down, willing sleep, but also following bella around my room with her familiar sounds - licking whatever plastic she can find, sharpening her non-claws. as i fell asleep, i wondered when it was i fell in love with her. i felt her circling my body, finally nesting in the space she managed to create between my calves. about 30 minutes later, i woke up suddenly, maybe from the heat generated from bella, but i don't know. last night was a night of getting up and laying back down and getting up again. bella stubbornly refused to move through all of it. she just looked at me balefully with her big sleepy eyes every time i turned on the lights or moved. this morning, as i lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering if the day was worth getting up for, bella moved up and crawled on my chest, purring like the mad woman she is as she sprawled out as if she owned me. she does. i've decided i fell in love with her because she bided her time. she never asked more of me than what i wanted to give. i guess i'm not an all or nothing kind of girl. if you want love from me, you have to be patient. and willing to follow me around sometimes. and willing to not follow me around sometimes. i wonder if my restless sleep as of late reflects how i've been sleeping through my days.

trouble.

the admonitions are frequent. i talk with my mom on the phone about once a week. often more. always, there's a reminder to "be safe". "be good". and i think, if only she knew that my wild days and wilder nights consist of me meticulously (sometimes) recording my thoughts. my life. which makes me wonder at times, at what point does one stop having a life for fear that there's something in the living that she'll miss? some thought that might slip away from an already precarious grasp, never to be seen again with the slightest break in concentration. perhaps this is where my intensity comes from. does my mother intuit, like i do, that my greatest dangers come from what i allow myself to think? what i allow myself to see and then roll around in the batter of my thought? perhaps this is where my yearning for a deep fryer comes from.

oh, and did i mention that the highlights of my week have been, fairly consistently, rousing games of trouble? i'm confident in asserting that it's the pop-o-matic combined with the bright colors (the primary colors plus green - why that secondary color? good question. i've been wondering that as well.) that does it for me. and if laura breaks it with her heavy handed pops, there will be hell to pray. at least, that's what i told her last night. hand to god (that's what she said). sometimes i find myself saying words and phrases i had never considered before. and sometimes, after moments like that, i find myself sitting there, grinning like an idiot, so thrilled at the possibilities of language. there will be hell to pray, my friend. there will be hell to pray.

that's hot.

laura, i have some work for you to do.

ani's pulse. that night we got kicked out of two bars and laughed our way home. that night you leaned over and threw up into your hair. and i held you there thinking i would offer you my pulse if i thought it would be useful. i would give you my breath except the problem with death is you have some hundred years and then they can build buildings on our only bones. a hundred years and then your grave is not your own.

laura,

two white cops.

i

let's just hold here. keep holding. let's just stay here.

colors of bennetton ad: driving along the potomac, looking for a place to sit. looking for respite. hunger.

have some work

two white cops.

for you

pulling over the colored ads. passing over the whitewash.

to do.

my pulse.

why would you do that while i was standing here?

i would offer you my pulse

translation: why are you trying to drive past me, while i am standing here?

if i thought it would be useful.

laura,

car in front: black man.

i have

car behind: black woman.

some work

car in the middle: pulse

for you to do.

cars on the road: luxury lives in luxury suvs pondering why the cops are wasting time questioning the terrorists when the policy is shoot to kill, craning their necks for a better view.

laura.

i start sweating the moment i step outside.

you

(reminding myself to breathe, deep breaths, not the natural shallow ones caused by this heat)

have

her hands were shaking.

work

why were her hands shaking?

to do

8 shots fired in point-blank range. not 5. 8.

fuckabees

white cops, watching the cars go by.

laura.

waiting for an opportune moment.

you have work

waiting for an illusion of luxury that they can shatter.

i would offer you my pulse

to do.

but the problem;

the problem may be that it's no stronger than yours.

wanderer

so, my brother just left town after a weekend in the big, bad consumptive city of dc. he stayed just long enough so that he could take his soul with him on the return flight. i wonder if i will be that lucky.

i'm not so sure what i'm doing with this whole blogging thing. okay. that might be a bit of a lie. i decided recently that i have aspirations to be a writer. for real, a writer. no qualifications. at the moment, there are many many qualifications that i attach to *writer*, and the goal, i suppose, is to write through the qualifiers so that in some auspicious moment, as i'm sitting outside, listening to my ipod and watching the people walk by, watching my life go by, i might be able to say, yes, i am a writer. no qualifiers necessary. i'm not there, though, so i want to put my thoughts here, so i can access them without having to try to find all of those random pieces of paper with the scribblings of my pilot pen that holds the best parts of me, perhaps - the questions, the tangents, the confusion. all of that. and i am forever losing, at least temporarily, these parts, and i know that there is a loss there for me, even if i'm not entirely sure what exactly it is that i'm losing. i'm hoping that the sense of loss i carry around with me will somehow lessen with each word that manages to find its way out of this convulated mess i'm in.

maybe i crave conversations but dread talking with people. hence the blog. hence a lot of things. and, i figure, with no luck in finding a physical space that i can call home, this might be it. building it, as it were. and, some of my friends have them, and it's just nice sometimes to read those thoughts that they'd probably forget to tell me about by the time we saw each other again, the space of which is almost always much too long. enough explanation, though. it seems as if i am forever explaining something or another.

anyway, my brother got me thinking about a lot of things. his older-brother protectiveness/truth-telling (laura, that's what love is. you make compromises. that's what people do when they're in love. how can you be mad at someone who would give up everything to be with you because all they know is that they love you and they have faith that that's enough? or, laura, isn't this what life is? of course you're always striving for the next thing. that's what we do. that's what we're supposed to do. when does it ever become enough? never. never. or, me: hey kev, what would you think if i just quit my job and put everything i had into being a boxer? him: what?! i'd think you were an idiot. me: oh. or, laura, who the hell wants to eat an elephant? or, unnamed 3rd party to kevin: hey, you need to toughen up your sister - that's what big brothers are supposed to do. kevin: actually, she's the toughest out of all my siblings. and so it goes.) managed to cut through some of my bullshit. but there's more there, i'm sure of it. i'm working on it, though. this is the best weekend i've had in a long time - something about being with someone who's known you forever and loved you forever, even if, maybe because, actually, we're very very different. but alike enough such that when i'm around him, i'm not frantically trying to put words together to try to explain why i think in the ways i do sometimes. and he had tickets to the gun show. rockstar.