Crash Course 8

Open Letter to the Haters

2008-06-17T09:12:00.002-05:00

Dear Homophobic, Right-Wing Assholes:

Your marriage was already a mockery. Don't blame me.

Love,
Frank

Istanbul 04: The Dervish

2008-06-05T09:03:00.009-05:00

By revolving in harmony with all things in nature--with the smallest cells and with the stars in the firmament--the semazen testifies to the existence and the majesty of the Creator, thinks of Him, gives thanks to Him, and prays to Him. In so doing, the semazen confirms the words of the Qur'an (64:1): Whatever is in the skies or on earth invokes God.

Monday, May 19, 2008, Turkoman Hotel, Istanbul

Ate at the Rumeli restaurant before going to the large outdoor tourist cafe to watch a whirling dervish spin and spin. He was such a beautiful boy, probably in his mid-20s with a heavy five o'clock shadow and exquisite Sufi outfit. I kept thinking of how he (the man) disappeared in his dancing à la anātman in Buddhism, yet really more akin to Western mysticism because the experience of Śūnyatā within Buddhism is not supposed to be mystical at all.

Here he was, dressed all in "death": his robe a shroud for the ego; his camel-hair hat, a tombstone. But as any mediocre Tarot card reader will tell you, death is merely a symbol for change.

Tiananmen

2008-06-04T09:06:00.005-05:00

I was in Beijing just a few days after the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was still closed to the public for “renovation,” in anticipation of protests and commemoration events. I could only get a few shots of the huge Mao poster above the gate before shuttling along to the next stop on our tour.

I was attending a conference on biography and life writing at Peking University, presenting a co-authored paper entitled “Politicizing the Trivial: Life Writings of Virginia Woolf & Slavenka Drakulić.” It was basically a comparison of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Drakulić’s How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, an evaluation of how early twentieth-century capitalism and late twentieth-century communism had failed in gender equality and how those failures resonate with each other across geography and time. I was still surprised I had even been given a visa after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade the previous month.

Since I never technically saw Tiananmen Square, I’ll rely on the description from Jan Wong’s Red China Blues, a brilliant memoir that should be required reading in literature, politics, journalism, and cultural studies.

Tiananmen is gargantuan, the biggest square in the world. It is a hundred sprawling acres in all, flatter and bigger than the biggest parking lot I have ever seen. I used to get tired just walking from one end to the other. Moscow’s Red Square was intimate in comparison. Tiananmen could simultaneously accommodate the entire twenty-eight teams of the National Football League plus 192 other teams, each playing separate games. It could stage an entire Summer Olympics, with all events taking place at the same time. Or if you put a mountain in the middle, you could hold a Winter Olympics there instead.

Tiananmen Square made me feel tiny, insignificant, powerless. That was no accident. As the geographic and political center of Beijing, it was enlarged after the Communist victory to celebrate the grandiosity of Red China. In 1949, the Great Helmsman stood on the rostrum, in front of the Forbidden City, to proclaim: “The Chinese people have stood up.”

Tiananmen, which means Gate of Heavenly Peace, is also one of the least hospitable squares in the world. There is no bench or place to rest, nowhere to get a drink, no leafy tree to offer respite from the sun. Only the one-hundred-foot high Monument to the People’s Heroes punctuates it, and, after 1977, Mao’s white and gold mausoleum. Tiananmen is also one of the most monitored squares in the world. Its huge lampposts are equipped with giant speakers for crowd control and swiveling videocameras. The commercial photographers, with white pushcarts and colorful shade umbrellas, are actually plainclothes police. For a modest fee, they snap photos of Chinese tourists posing in the square and mail you the pictures a week later. That way, they have your name and address, too.

Here is a well written op-ed from the New York Times: China’s Grief, Unearthed by Mia Jian. For those of you less squeamish, here's an excerpt from a BBC report nineteen years ago:

Istanbul 03: History is a Pile of Debris

2008-05-31T18:48:00.004-05:00

Saturday, May 17, 2008, Turkoman Hotel, Istanbul

Last night we went on the obligatory people-watching pilgrimage to Taksim in what used to be the Genoese colony of Pera that is now the trendy nightlife district of Istanbul. We sat upstairs at Baraka, eating and listening to the house band for a couple of hours. I ended up consuming far too much salty feta in my cucumber and tomato salad.

We spent all day exploring the Topkapi as well as the Archaeology Museum. Exhausted now from the throngs of tourists and number of placards read. At Topkapi, I was struck by the man in tears, visibly moved by the displayed footprint cast in bronze of the Prophet. As my interest in religion deepens, I find myself becoming less tolerant of superstitious, and hence superficial, religious experiences. I think for most people, the reverse is true, so that at the end of life, only childish trinkets remain.

“Disappointing” is too meager a description of my visit to the Byzantine exhibit at the historical museum. So little to actually look at and study. Certainly, there must be more to the Byzantine collection housed in Istanbul, unless, of course, the legend is true that the splendor of Constantinople was indeed hauled off by the cartload as the vanquished disseminated the glory of the classical world across western Europe, sowing seeds of Renaissance throughout the continent. But a thousand years of Christian Byzantine rule should not be so easily erased. I guess it is good to be a conqueror so as to reshape history into one’s own image.

Case in point: reference to the Anatolian architectural consistency expressed in the city walls of Constantinople. Apparently, they were patterned after the fortified Hittite capital of Hattusa. But since neither the Hittites nor the Byzantines were Turks (or Muslims), we’ll reduce it all to a footnote in history. Or worse: to a blog entry by a mediocre hobbyist who doesn’t even believe in history.

Unfortunately, I can’t just dismiss this obvious absence to the Turks since even periodically throughout the Christian Greek empire, radical iconoclasm was official state policy. (And don’t even get me started on those damned European Catholics who plundered the city during the Fourth Crusade!)

Istanbul 02: Travel Journal Except

2008-05-29T16:57:00.002-05:00

Friday, May 16, 2008, Hotel Turkoman, Istanbul

After what seems and certainly feels like two lost days of traveling across continents and time zones, the beginnings of my third day in the same clothes due to a lost bag by the ever-incompetent American Airlines, I know why people don’t travel like this, like me. But sitting atop our hotel on the terrace over breakfast, overlooking the Bosporus Straits in front of me and the Sea of Marmara to my right, over strong coffee, after waking at 5:00 am by the call to prayer at the Blue Mosque across the street and a subsequent leisurely stroll around Hagia Sophia, and now surrounded by squawking seagulls who have nested on the roof, plates of dried fruits, sweet melons, and cakes topped with sesame, and spoken foreign languages, I cannot for the life of me figure out why people don’t travel more often, more like me.

We’re waiting to be joined by Chris and Mary before deciding on a plan for today. Cars and tour buses honking. A ship’s horn. The sun is breaking through and dispelling the haze over the water.

We saw a group of attractively dressed boys crossing the hippodrome on their way to school this morning. Seeing the beautiful Turkish lads reminded me of all those accounts about the sultan’s seraglio and how the conquering Ottomans fought over the choicest Byzantine girls and boys after breaching the walls of Constantinople in 1453. Runciman writes that even the Emperor’s godchildren were not spared: “The girl, Thamar, died [in the seraglio] while still a child; the boy was slain by the Sultan for refusing to yield to his lusts.”

Istanbul 01: Call to Prayer

2008-05-28T16:25:00.012-05:00

Five times a day the call issues forth from the amplified speakers mounted atop the minarets. These days, the muezzin need not bother climbing the steps up the tower. Because of my training, I wonder (fully aware that I am alone in this) about the metaphysical implications of relying so on technology.

You hear the short buzz and click of the microphone being turned on before the call actually begins. Sometimes you can make out a word; most notable, of course: “Allah,” even though it’s stretched beyond comprehension like countless amen’s of so many Christmas carols.

We arrived too late the first night. Old Istanbul was fast asleep by the time our shuttle reached the hotel. In the morning—even earlier, perhaps, with jetlag and insomnia factored in—the call shocked me awake, but not before shifting my otherwise mundane dreams into vivid Technicolor animation about a drunken vampire. I wanted it to shut up, to go away.

But when the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) is directly across the street from your hotel, just beyond the paved track of the ancient Byzantine hippodrome, it is up to you to get used to it.

When I see Arabic written, I think of snakes, thanks to Sonia, who, so many years ago, once referred to it as “that snake language.” Every letter looks like a serpent—some with eyes, some with curved tails. Each hissing out the mysterious beauty of that ancient desert tongue. Hearing it—and I’m only assuming that the liturgical language of Turkey is (still) Arabic—made me think of snakes flying through the air, twisting their way into the ears of the devotees.

The call lasts for several minutes. At times, it seems endless, and at other times, abrupt and too quickly ended. And the echoes across Istanbul from the other mosques make it seem even more enigmatic and not of this world.

The evening call retained its splendor and sublimity throughout my entire stay, but already by the third day, I was sleeping through the morning call like a local.

Sublime Porte

2008-05-13T14:40:00.004-05:00

View Larger Map

Just a short trip to Istanbul and an even shorter stop in London on the return flight. I'll post photos when I get back.

Overview

2008-05-11T12:36:00.002-05:00

Is it over yet?
Now is the time when my prick of a professor contacts my colleagues to let them know when the revised deadline is for their obligatory rewrite. Graduate school is so much easier when the professor dies and everyone automatically gets an A.

Overkill
I’m still a bit shell-shocked by the death toll in Burma. Day one: 400; day two: 4,000; day three: 10,000; day four: possibly 100,000. And how many of those deaths by “natural disaster” are really and ultimately a result of the political fiasco of a corrupt and illegal government? Only one news report claimed that the military had killed about 40 “inmates” because of a “riot” situation. Of course, ultimately, all these deaths are the result of a failed policy of institutionalized terror and abuse hanging over the Burmese people, but will we ever know the proportion of those killed by the storm (and neglect by the government) to those directly murdered by the government over the past few days? Has anyone heard from Aung San Suu Kyi?

Over Easy
Please don’t get me or my politics wrong: I think Obama is a fine candidate. Hell, I voted for him in the primary and was more than willing—initially, at least—to serve as a district delegate for him. But it makes me sick to see him swallow the bait—hook, line, and sinker, as the saying goes—from the incessant race baiting over his relationship to Rev. Wright. The only reason Rev. Wright was an issue was because he was black. The only reason Obama (felt he) had to respond was because he was black. And the race situation in these United States rolls happily along as it always has.

It aint’ over till the fat lady sings.
Decades after these United States congratulated itself for passing along democracy and capitalism to the Soviets, we see a new Soviet-era and Soviet-styled passing of power out of the hands of the peoples of the former Soviet Union and into a handpicked puppet. Former “democratically-elected” President Vladimir Putin passed the position on to “democratically-elected” Dmitry Medvedev, who in turn appointed him Prime Minister. All this in time for Victory Day celebrations in which triumph over the (other) fascists was observed in true Soviet-era fascism—er, I mean, fashion. Perhaps the Russians have become a little too proficient in American “democracy.”

Compretensile* Tales

2008-05-02T09:35:00.004-05:00

Okay, so everyone is clear on the fact that I’m a bit of an elitist as well as a smarty-pants wearing kind of guy. But for fuck’s sake, I was raised on a farm in east Texas. I’ve earned by stripes.

Last night at the Fulbright meeting—granted, a rather elite organization in and of itself—I was struck by how certain kinds of intellectuals, academics, and students were much more palatable to me than others. Namely, I felt quite at ease chatting with sociology and music professors. Even the high school language teachers were remarkably worthy of my time. And as always and as for most people, I’m impressed with neurologists and anyone else who sticks her/his hands inside other humans. (Within limits, of course: I’m only referring to trained medical professionals here.)

But when one student announced he was earning an MBA, I felt a wave of Sartrean nausea wash over me. There is nothing like one rancid, quasi-academic apple to ruin the whole barrel. I mean, why don’t we just start handing out Fulbrights to applicants from the American Truck-Driving Institute or any of the mock universities like DeVry or Phoenix?

I have no problem with people merely wanting to make more money, but don’t try to pass yourself off as an intellectual or cultural diplomat in so doing. Moreover, how completely self-unaware does one have to be in order to merely want to make more money but ask for funds from American taxpayers via a non-profit organization such as the Fulbright Commission? I guess if we’re willing to hand out the cash, then they will always be more than willing to take it. Greedy bastards! Which is probably what led them toward an MBA in the first place.

I have no respect for the “degree.” I do have, however, several friends—many whom I respect and adore—who have undergone such remedial common sense programs at supposedly respectable institutions of higher learning. But don’t ever try to tell me that they’ve ever done a bit of good aside from increasing their salary. You want to study cake decorating at the Art Institute (an arguably laughable amalgamated moniker)? Fine, go ahead. You want to earn a higher wage for not a lot of effort? Sign right up. But if you want to truly be educated, your only recourse is to enroll in a real academic program at a real school.

After submitting an outstanding panel proposal to a conference yesterday, I thought one of my next creative projects would be to organize a bogus panel filled with “academics” from the above-disparaged institutions. Perhaps something along these lines:

“Lévinasian Semi-Ethics: Meontological Theology and the Eighteen Wheeler” by Billy-Joe Bobblekopf, ATI, Automotive Repair Program
“Heidegger’s Word: Dasein (as Design) from the Ground of Being” by Suzie Galvan, Art Inst., Fashion & Retail Mgmt. Dept.

Now it’s time for me to return to my underpaid academic world that remains utterly superior to everyone else’s. (Even though it is a public university.)

* a combination of comprehensive, apprehensive, pretentious, and prehensile

May Day, May Day

2008-05-01T11:02:00.004-05:00

As if to prove the rule from yesterday’s post, today’s headlines included “U.S. airstrike kills top Qaeda agent in Somalia” and “Car bomb kills at least 9 in Baghdad; U.S. troops kill 18 militants.” How smart our bombs—how intelligent their design!—must be to only kill “militants” and “insurgents” but never a single “civilian” or “freedom fighter.” Or even a single American soldier. (You have to love the grafted-together nature of the second headline, as if to call further attention to the us vs. them nature of the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.) Yet the dangerous statistics remains: over half of all war fatalities are women and children. Perhaps we need a new math to go along with our new language and new logic. And new extra-judicial killings in the name of justice.

On a more “peaceful” note, the tit-for-tat political posturing between DC and Minsk has escalated: the US has closed its embassy in Minsk and has ordered Belarus to close its embassy and all consulates here. Everyone sing along: There’s no diplomacy like no diplomacy, like the no diplomacy I know.

I wonder how many questions on the standardized (yet altogether lacking standards) TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills) test this week will deal with such issues. How many will even concern the topic of May Day, a day that commemorates the benefits of labor? One glorious benefit from this less-than-glorious revolution in education: the golden opportunity to read such priceless statements like this from my college-level philosophy course essays: “This makes me wonder what will we enlighten our people on next?” It does make one wonder, no?

I (modestly, of course) propose enlightening “our people” on patriotism:

“What, then, is patriotism? ‘Patriotism, sir is the last resort of scoundrels,’ said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.” [from Emma Goldman’s essay “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”]

On this note, I bid all working peoples of the world a blessed day of rest. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” And God bless Saint Emma.

Indefensible Offense

2008-04-30T12:28:00.003-05:00

Obama, radical leader of the Obamanations, has finally denounced his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because of assertions the reverend has made about the United States’ role in worldwide terror. The senator claims that such statements “rightly offend all Americans.” As a patriot not running for office, I disagree.

Why should anyone be offended by the truth? Our foreign policy lacks as much moral integrity as anyone else’s. Considering that that policy is based on an inability to examine the skeletons swinging from our own poplar trees, is it any wonder people hate us/the US? (Since I feel obliged to answer all rhetorical questions: no, it is no wonder.)

From what I can see, the only thing Wright is guilty of is taking liberation theology—that found in the “Old” Testament, not the all-too-easily digestible version popular nowadays—seriously. To understand his context, I suggest reading any of the Prophets, perhaps starting with Wright’s namesake himself: Jeremiah.

If the U.S. is seriously against terror, then it needs to not only refrain from terrorist activities but it also needs to stop creating terrorists as well. Chomsky knows this. Wright knows this. I and a couple of other people know this. Lao-Tzu knew it more than 2,500 years ago. Jesus knew it about half a century after him. (If you don’t believe me, take a look at Matthew 26:52.)

What I find despicable is Obama’s denunciation of Wright on purely political grounds. The politician finally shows himself. Now can we finally stop talking about race in America and get back to the task at hand: deciding who the next American Idol will be. (And I’m not even talking about that damned singing contest....)

Ask me no more questions...

2008-04-21T17:59:00.005-05:00

Here's an excerpt of an email I received from a friend a few weeks ago. (And yes, I do keep emails in my inbox for several weeks at a time: one never knows when one will actually take the time to respond.)

How did the gym go? Is your little ass worked off now? I hope not! I happen to adore your ass! (In a friendly way of course! I'm a Democrat, so I adore all asses....) Actually, have I ever told you that you have the coolest walk of anyone I know? Seriously you do.... It's like molten metal moving, like a Richard Serra being made right before your very eyes, and yet it's also graceful, but not so graceful that it doesn't suggest just a bit of "don't fuck with me." ...It's the best, really....

Of course, everything she wrote is absolutely true. In fact, Richard (as in Richard Serra) often designs his sculpture after watching hours of video of me just walking. It's true! I have an inspirational ass! An ass full of inspiration ... and a few other things as well: deflated soccer balls, lost Frisbees, an old box of Girl Scout cookies....

Now, of course, is the time for me to spend several more hours on my ass as I write and write and write all the necessary final projects for my classes as well as grade all those essays, quizzes, and exams. Thankfully I've been hitting the gym fairly faithfully for the past couple of weeks, just to give myself a much needed and deserved break from continual warfare (aka "my jobs"). And so my ass won't embiggen itself from all the sitting.

Note to self: buy a decent chair as soon as the semester ends. It's starting to kill my ass!

The New Empty of Graduate School

2008-04-19T17:30:00.005-05:00

Here's a sample of some of the crazy shit I end up saying in class:

Just as the Skeptics refuse to rely on the senses, so too do the Buddhists. But in Buddhism, the mind (or mentality) is considered one of the six senses, so that every thought construction is as susceptible to error as every sense impression. In this way, prajñā too is empty (śūnyatā): it is not a knowing of a thing, or any thing; rather it is a way of knowing that all things are not things-in-themselves or things-as-such. Prajñā is a knowing that everything is beyond the conception of thingness; it is a knowledge void (śūnyatā) of content.

If it weren't for Andy's whispered admonitions and sometimes passed notes that read "Don't hate," I think my head would explode from frustration with my classmates, particularly the one who attempts to reduce (meant in the most derogatory manner possible) everything that is not Aristotelian metaphysics to Aristotelian metaphysics. For fuck sake: is that your frame of reference for everything? Including all those things that aren't really things at all?

Andy's right, of course. What's even more frustrating, however, is that I have no vested interest in Buddhism. No intention of being a Buddhist. No design to convert anyone. But if we're talking about Buddhism, should we not use terms and metaphors proper to it instead of imposing and superimposing our own sorry worldview, opposing a new thought or a new way of thinking, disposing of an opportunity for transformational thinking, hiding ourselves--what we conceive to be ourselves--from possible exposure to something wholly other? I suppose so. Otherwise, education becomes more of an unnecessary travesty and a waste of time.

Two days after my last class meeting, I still find myself seeking composure, a releasement toward letting-be. Away from any egoism or intentionality. À la Buddha himself. But there's still another class next week with the same sorry people. Thank G-d Andy will be there to remind me what I most need to learn.

Taxing Day

2008-04-15T15:33:00.002-05:00

First off, I oppose all taxing situations. Secondly, read my lips: “No new taxes.” Finally, I’d like to modestly propose a revision to our investment scheme in the United States. Let’s rid ourselves of taxes altogether and instead make investments in our nation’s infrastructure as well as in our commonwealth.

A sensible percentage of all income and transactions—with exceptions for all persons below the age of 18, fulltime students, active military, and anyone who earns less than the arbitrary (but judiciously round figure of) $30,000—should be invested in ensuring

that roads do not have potholes,
that everyone has access to wireless and a computer,
that education and research facilities are properly equipped,
that drinking water is safe and clean,
that teachers are properly paid,
that the military is suitably outfitted,
that all citizens and visitors have access to healthcare,
that environmentally conscious technologies are developed and implemented,
that everyone on the planet has a decent meal every day,
that rehabilitation facilities exist and operate to help addicts recover so that prisons are not overpopulated, and
that accessible transportation exists for everyone in every community.

Things to cut altogether:

subsidies for farmers,
bailout funds for corporations,
tax-free status for “religious” institutions,
tax shelters for the extremely wealthy,
toll roads,
passport fees,
utility fees (yes, it’s time for water and electricity to be basic human rights!), and
education fees (yes, it’s time for education to be a basic human right!).

Oh, my lists could go on and on. Ultimately, we pay so little in taxes in the U.S., especially compared to more civilized and democratic societies like Sweden and Denmark. But if everyone were to pay her/his fair share, then there would be a surplus of investment monies to revitalize our economy as well as our society. Yet no American leader exists to do anything about it.

Unhappy Tax Day!

Anger (Under New) Management

2008-04-13T15:27:00.004-05:00

I could login here almost daily and list a dozen or more complaints about bothersome conditions that invade my otherwise placid world, but I’m tired of bitching. Tired of being a bitch.

Yeah, that’s right: you read it here first. Being a grumpy, middle-aged, overworked adult—despite all justifications—just isn’t who I ever thought I’d be. Primarily because I’ve been saving that up for when I’m 80.

So in an effort to conserve, to preserve, to reserve all that is good about who I am, I hereby list the conditions of my life for which I have every cause to be thankful. Enjoy.

Two beautiful and delightful cats.
A partner who still adores me after almost 17 years of washing my clothes.
A handful of intelligent and beautiful friends spread over the globe who refuse to acknowledge my many flaws (or at least hold them against me).
My passport as well as my ticket to Istanbul.
Esteemed colleagues and mentors who challenge my intellect even when we’re drinking and laughing our asses off.
Enough money to pay the bills and then some.
A lifetime of experiences, loves, passions, and thrills both behind as well as ahead of me.
The good sense to know what I need to do not to lose my mind.
Stable (and relatively healthy) relationships with (what’s left of) my family.
Good manners and a sensible diet. Remarkable hygiene. Straight teeth. A wicked sense of humor.

Demockery for All!

2008-04-08T21:33:00.003-05:00

... or why women and blacks should not be allowed to vote.

Yes, children: it’s that time again when Uncle Skajlab resorts to name-calling and racist comments in order to make a point about politics in the good ol’ US of the A-hole. Today in the great state of Texas was the run-off election for candidates who did not receive a majority of votes during the primary. I waited until 1:00pm to cast my vote, knowing full well what I was about to find out anyway: nobody fucking bothered to show-up! I was the eighth person at my polling station, which is in one of the largest Democratic districts in the Dallas area.

All those goddamned women and blacks who were all up in arms about ensuring their “own” candidate wasn’t going to get cheated out of a single vote just a month ago apparently couldn’t be bothered to ensure that the best candidate from the Democratic party was going to make the ballot come November. When it comes to declaring their own victimhood, they’re at the front of the line, but when it comes to actually participating in the political process, they are just too busy eating fried chicken or sloughing off another uterine lining.

Way to go, girls! It’s time to go back the “long way” you’ve already come, Baby. This angry, middle-aged, white Anglo-Saxon male is glad to do your job for you. Now get back in the kitchen and make me a grilled cheese!

And woe to you goddamned Obamanations who have shot your wad on the one time a “black” candidate ever made it this far. May it take another century before another Half-rican makes the ballot! (‘Cause you certainly don’t think a real black man would’ve made it this far, do you? You know you can’t run for President with a criminal record, right? I’m just saying….)

Finally, just let me say: you fucking useless “Democratic” fucks deserve another eight-year Bush administration.

Me So Hijab

2008-03-29T10:49:00.003-05:00

Walking the halls of my large, very international, urban university, I often find myself face to face with what I once considered human-sized jawas: Muslim women wearing hijab. In fact, over the past few semesters I’ve even befriended a few such women who work in my department. But when our eyes meet, I feel their gaze bore straight through me. As if I were naked. In fact, I’m a bit unnerved by the intensity of their stare. I am always the first to look away.

The interaction starts out mundane enough: light chatting about students or professors, general academic conversations. But then they invariably make some kind of inappropriate comment (insofar as Muslim law is concerned!) about my hair. Or my earrings. Or my clothes.

Growing up in Texas, I of course have been conditioned to be friendly and (as the infamous joke goes) even to say, “How nice,” when in fact I mean, “Fuck you.” Typically, when I receive some compliment on my clothes, I can just unthinkingly respond, “You look nice too.” I realized quickly that even the most kind Muslim woman would think I was being an asshole should I make that mistake.

How would I recover from such a faux pas? “Your shroud is so much nicer than Nadira’s!” or “How do you keep your cloak so dark? Is there a special detergent you use?” All-purpose purdah Tide perhaps?

When I’m among my female Muslim colleagues now, I reign in the niceties with a simple “thank you.” But sometimes their comments continue: “You change your hair so often!” “You’ve shaved your head again!” “Why did you take out your earrings?”

It seems I’m nothing but a western inkblot upon which they project their deepest desires: to wear multicolored clothes, to apply hair gel liberally, to slip a little bling into their otherwise drab lives. I wish they could see me for the person I am underneath all the sales-rack wardrobe, expensive cologne, and perfectly coiffed mane.

As one online Islamic “boutique” claims: “Islam liberated woman over 1400 years ago.” But when will I be liberated from being a mere object of fancy to these charming women in chador, to these burqa’d babes gone wild? Their dress is supposed to protect them from the lustful gazes of men, but who is protecting me?!?!

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to...

2008-03-27T17:29:00.001-05:00

Here is what I wrote:

I was elected to be a delegate to the district convention, but I will be unable to attend. Would you please select an alternate to go in my place?

Here is what I should have written:

There is no way in hell I’m giving up my precious few free moments to be part of the mockery known as American party politics. After seeing the organizational fiasco the night of the primary and the cartoonish/buffoonish personae with whom I would be forced to contend, I really have no desire to see any of you again.

And remove me from the email list populated with incessant rants about the other candidate and the latest conspiracy theory about how “our” candidate is going to be cheated out of votes/delegates/brownie points. Classroom elections in junior high were never so asinine!

I cannot see how my participation in this corrupt system would benefit freedom, democracy, or justice. Should I continue serving, I would be merely supporting a system that needs much more than an overhaul in order to serve properly the people of this country.

If ever you need help completely dismantling this injustice, give me a call. Until then, I do not want to play your reindeer games, particularly when the result will be the election of yet another politician in a regime devoid of intelligence, morality, and insight.

2008-03-16T15:57:00.003-05:00

Bolesław Leaf
March 19, 1994 - March 16, 2008

Rest in peace, my little orange baby.

I can't believe it's not Tuesday...

2008-03-11T16:50:00.007-05:00

My calendar tells me it's spring break this week, despite the fact that spring doesn't begin for a another week and that over my "break" I have to write a midterm exam for my students, re-evaluate the grades for a handful of not my students, organize and type reading notes over several books and articles, begin research on my next essay due in two weeks, read a text for my Reading Group, and try to find time to begin reading another text that I put down a month ago and should've finished by now. Fuck spring break!

Tonight some friends and I are heading to Denton to hear some bands play at Rubber Gloves: WHY?, Cryptacize, Sunburned Hand of the Man, and Astronautalis. The band I'm most interested in is WHY?, meaning it's going to be way past my bedtime before they take the stage. (Please remember that I have at least three diagnosed sleeping disorders before you judge me an old, useless man. Which reminds me: I should try to take a little nap before going out.)

Last Thursday we had two inches of snow, and today the temperature is above 70. The forecast for the next few days should see us in the 80s. I try not to dread the summer coming on, but it's really what I do best. How did I manage to live in Texas for as long as I have?

A game I play with people who look ridiculous and sad: "What bad decisions led you to this?" The game consists in seeing someone ridiculous, sad, disgusting, ugly, unlovable, etc., and asking under my breath the question: "What bad decisions led you to this?" If I were to play this game with myself, I'm not sure even I could win. And I'm the one that invented the rule.

Now it's time to go back to my sweaty spring break (that is no break at all) and try to take a nap so I won't be entirely useless when my band comes on sometime around tomorrow morning.

the grandeurs of risk

2008-03-08T19:16:00.005-06:00

I'm convinced that such a circle [that is, the unclosable circle of an encounter, which revolves around the undesirable] only exhausts the strength of those who don't enter into it with the grandeur of risk, the amorous and loving truth, slow devastation which breaks every tie with a life that is still immediate. To forget that is the obverse of disaster, because time's subtle desire upsets every foundation. A faithful weakening must meet the other and immemorially lose the other in the self.

--from Abdelkebir Khatibi's Love in Two Languages [Amour bilingue], translated by Richard Howard

This desire and promise let all my specters loose. A desire without a horizon, for that is its luck or its condition. And a promise that no longer expects what it waits for: there where, striving for what is given to come, I finally know how not to have to distinguish any longer between promise and terror.

--from Jacques Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, translated by Patrick Mensah

The principle that birth is presencing-of-total-working concerns neither the origin nor the end. Even though it is the great earth and empty space, it neither obstructs birth-qua-presencing-of-total-working nor death-qua-presencing-of-total-working. When death is presencing-of-total-working it becomes the great earth and empty space and it neither obstructs death-qua-presencing-of-total-working or birth-qua-presencing-of-total-working. The great earth and the empty space exist exhaustively in birth and death.

-- from Kigen Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, qtd. in Geron Kopf's Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self

Broken Wing

2008-03-07T15:27:00.006-06:00

There are few things more tragic than a suffering animal, whether that animal be human or not. Watching the demise. Witness to the dissipation. All you want to do, all you feel you can do, is hold on to something no longer there. If it ever was. Knowing full well that nothing you do can effect any change in the situation of our own mortal vastness.

I’ve studied enough Hinduism to know that it’s all illusion: the pain, the suffering, even the conception of life itself. But the illusion is all we have. All we can know of life.

The post-structuralists are accused of nihilism, but only by those who don’t understand them. They gesture toward the im/possibility of death. It is always already outside of our phenomenological experience of life. It’s a death that lives on (sur-vivre as survival), that dissolves ontology, absent both the ontic as well as the logos. Something singular yet universal, embracing all horizons.

And yet it’s not death that concerns us, as the Cynics would agree. It’s dying. It’s the slippage from being to nonbeing. The erasure of all but the trace. The omnipresent absence neither here nor there. The unbearable void that muffles the word, the name, the universe.

But everyone—even the so-called Christians—agree: it is only through dying that one becomes immortal. Too bad none of us will be around when it happens.

Please keep Bolesław in your thoughts.

Gay for Democracy

2008-03-06T18:07:00.002-06:00

I wonder if I’ll ever post to this blog again. I wonder if my days will ever stop being so damned full of foolishness and nonsense and incessant busywork. I wonder if I’ll finally slip over the edge of sanity and land in a puddle of my own full-blown, hard-core, crazy-assed lunacy. I wonder if my neck will ever stop hurting.

These are all good things to wonder about as I get to luxuriate by not having to drive to campus this evening for the worst class in graduate school. Thank the heavens for crappy winter weather! Snow day in Texas in March—just two days before “spring” break? Why thank you very much.

Today I was thinking about tautologies and dogmatism … and how dogmatism is always a form of tautology: what could be more dogmatic and tautological than I AM THAT I AM? Even the skeptic critique of the dogmatists’ syllogism is based on the uselessness of tautology: premise A, that all human beings are mortal, is necessarily always (and in all ways) no less tautological than all black chess pieces are black. Dogmatism asserts its own meta-self-recursivity. And all must bow before it(self).

Truth however asserts in perfect Heraclitean fashion that I am that which I am not. Truth embraces its own opposite. In balance. And resonance: a non-Narcissistic echo that decenters and destabilizes its own frame of reference. The truth is big enough to embrace that which it is not. In my opinion, the apophatic god is the only one/not-one (not) worth worshiping!

And yes, I did vote in the Texas primary Tuesday. I even returned to the caucus afterwards to experience the glory of the chaos and insipidness of democracy. Sorry, Iraq. Sorry Afghanistan. Sorry Iran … eventually. Sorry for bringing all our overwrought freedom your way! And my small role in democracy is not over just yet: I’ve been elected a delegate to the district caucus. I’ll report back near the end of the month how absurd that procedure is.

Y.O. y Yo

2008-02-23T14:18:00.006-06:00

Yesterday I went to hear Yoko Ono speak and be interviewed at the CAA Conference downtown. I've been a fan of hers for such a long time that I got all silly with a smile on my face when I finally made it to the conference center.

She began the session with family films taken from before her birth up to her first trip to San Francisco in the mid-1930s to reunite with her father. Home movies, some originally in color, from the 30s! And shots of the Golden Gate Bridge before it was even completed! I guess it was good to have a banker (or "frustrated artist") as a father.

San Francisco always reminds me of Yoko Ono ever since my first trip there was specifically to see the retrospective of her work at the SFMOMA.

Having openings and events at her loft in New York in the early 60s with Duchamp and Cage and Ernst in attendance. Claiming the title of "Dragon Lady" after the press called her that for years as a criticism and thus finally ending the use of that nickname. Suggesting her health and happiness was a byproduct of all the bitter medicine doled out by her critics and enemies. Questioning how by wearing pants in Japan she provoked the ire of Mishima Yukio. Her experiences in Tokyo before the US firebombed it.

The question I wanted to ask but didn't have the opportunity: In The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse argues that art that is purely autonomous and for its own sake inherently contains a cultural critique as it is necessarily informed by a radical political praxis, even more so than art that purposely seeks to effect change. Would you talk about that tension in your own work, for example between some of your Fluxus work as opposed to your more obviously political work, such as the "bed-ins." Do you see art as necessarily and always political? Can autonomous art effect social change? Must art have obvious political content?

When she was studying music as a very young child, her music instructor assigned this work to the class: go out and transcribe everything you hear on staff paper, including each and every noise. How would you notate the honking of a car? The buzzing of a bee? The trickle from a fountain? What key would it be in? What time signature? She credits this assignment with beginning her life in art. For you teachers: your assignments also have ethical demands. Don't kill a child's spirit but open it up to the world.

She concluded the session with a video/documentary of "Onochord":

i
ii
iii

And I do. Afterwards, she passed out shards of broken pottery, announcing that in ten years we would all meet again to glue the vase back together. I can't wait.

Fidelidad

2008-02-19T15:57:00.001-06:00

Just let me say amid the shouts of self-congratulatory glee across DC and Miami today: the problem with Cuba has never been Fidel Castro. Cuba’s problem has never had anything to do with anything as embedded in Cuba as Comrade Fidel.

From its colonization under the repressive thumb of the Spanish Empire—may you and your conquistadores de terrorismo (todo en el nombre de Dios todopoderoso, por supuesto) rot in hell—Cuba and the inhabitants of Cuba have always gotten the short end of the stick, and the rotten end of hegemonic imperialism. And when Spain was finally banished, the US came riding in atop a brown horse named Little Texas, no less, to take charge, subjecting Cuba to de facto American rule for half a century.

Both corrupt American political parties have played along in the game of World Domination. From Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco (don’t worry, children: he got his just a few years later in Dallas) to Clinton’s signing of the Orwellian-named Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, Democrats have been just as thickheaded and insular as Republicans when it comes to dictating policy toward one of America’s closest neighbor-nations.

So on this glorious, sunny day in Havana, the “Cuban problem” still remains and will be around for quite some time, for as long as Americans keep electing imbeciles, for as long as crazy “refugees” in Miami keep dictating a bankrupt policy toward their homeland despite reasonable proposals over the past 50+ years, for as long as that pinche Dios todopoderoso sits on his shiny gold throne puffing away on his El Rey del Mundo cigar.

Until then: ¡Viva la Revolución!