Tiananmen

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:

Overview

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.”

Indefensible Offense

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....)

Fidelidad

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!

A Valentine's Day Revolution

So six alleged terrorists who have been incarcerated for the past several years in Guantánamo will finally have their day in court, albeit a military court, but a court nevertheless. When will the confirmed terrorists who have been in charge of such prisons for the past several years finally be brought to justice?

And in the “do as I say and not as I do” category: was it Israel or the US (same difference, I know) who planted a car bomb in Syria to take out Imad Mugniyah?

Car bombs. Secret prisons. As the joke goes: if it quacks like a terrorist....

And on an even more political note, here’s an excerpt of Nikki Giovanni’s “When I Die” to help set the mood this Valentine’s Day:

and if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that touching was and still is and will always be the true
revolution

American Justice/Global Injustice, or Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I just finished reading two articles from the IHT: German claiming CIA torture loses final appeal and 40 years after Che's death, his image is a battleground after doing some serious thinking since finishing my class this afternoon. I taught the Hindu creation myth today.

Brahma grows bored and so creates Maya to play a game with. She convinces him to create the world of illusion: the universe, the stars and planets, the animals and plants. Then she tells him to create an animal that would be intelligent and aware, one that could appreciate Brahma's creation. So after creating humans, he asks Maya when the game would begin. She cuts Brahma into millions of tiny pieces and puts a piece in each human. Then she makes the pieces forget who they are. The game consists of the pieces finding themselves again.

So, what's the purpose of the game? To win? To lose? To move beyond the illusion of the duality of winning and losing? Is the purpose of the game merely to continue the play? These are all questions that washed ashore during discussion. Is the Holocaust or the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq just humans taking the game too seriously? Am I taking their game too seriously? How serious are the charges of kidnapping and torture made by Khaled el-Masri? (Alas, not serious enough to be addressed by the US Supreme Court.) Can anyone take Che Guevara seriously after forty years since his murder (also conducted by the CIA/US government) and after the sale of millions of T-shirts with his iconic, revolutionary gaze?

I think the game makes me sick. I only find myself nauseated.

Remembrance

One of the many blemishes part of Putin's blemished legacy, Anna Politkovskaya was murdered a year ago.

Observance

Today, on Columbus Day (Observed) I’m sitting through a lecture on early American history—yeah, academic calendars don’t quite match up to national holidays. (When I was at UD—boo! hiss!—I was told that we would not be off on Labor Day because “we are not laborers.”)

But today, I too feel like Columbus: discovering something that millions of people already knew about. (Thanks, Lisa Simpson!) My discovery: I need a break from sitting through lectures and spending far too many hours in front of a computer doing research and writing.

A modest proposal for renaming the day observed today:

• Stolen Continent Day
• Genocide Day
• Taino Heritage Day
• European Legacy Day (celebrating the effects of smallpox and “conquista”)

Indeed, perhaps we all should just walk backward into the ocean….

Bullet-Point Friday

• Conversation over breakfast of Swiss oatmeal this morning included Alan Watts’ lecture over the coincidence of opposites, Huston Smith’s Zen training, and the metaphysics of becoming (as opposed to the Heideggerean notion of Gellasenheit, a letting be). All this before 7:30 a.m.
• There is no front without a back, no heads without tails, no sickness without health, no I without you.
• Now that it’s almost 9:00, I can also think about bringing in Parmenides’ attempt toward deduction: one can’t make negative existential statements, nor can one make positive existential statements (because by saying what something is, then one is implicitly saying what something is not—if this is a dog, then it is necessarily not a cat—which takes you back to the first premise).
• Therefore (in all of its metaphysical/rhetorical glory), all is one.
• There is no Buddhist monk without a dictator-general.
• And every poet has her other.
• But who is the poet’s other? The rhetorician? The philosopher? The linguist? The poem’s reader? The poem? The poet herself? All and (n)one::all is (n)one.
• It’s now 9:02, and I still have so much more work to do....

What there is to learn

If nirvana is reached only after the extinguishing of desire, which, of course, includes the desire not to desire, because desire causes suffering, which defines the life of samsara, yet Buddhist monks can march toward a greater freedom from suffering within samsara on the way toward nirvana, can we not too desire their success? I can only pray that when Rangoon is painted red it won't be with their blood.

Il y a / n'est plus

A hundred years of his undying death articulating as if the singular unsaid, unsaying, unsayable, in its fully exteriorized impossibility against the homogenized totalization of a text, an other. He always already (yet) exceeds his own excessive supplementarity. I hereby sign and countersign your centenary as we both recede in our mutually singular oblivions.

Lord, give me strength...

On her own, Jaime's most noted enemies were the Fembots, a line of powerful androids that she fought twice in the series....

And a little something I wrote years ago.

Memory of Loss

The dead will always outnumber the living.

One of my favorite works at the Art Institute was Chagall’s 1938 White Crucifixion. In it Chagall chooses to depict the crucifixion of Jesus (the “King of the Jews”), including this scene as the crux of a long history of pogroms against the Chosen—a history with its own chiasmus at the Cross, that damnable and lamentable inversion from Chosen to chastised, from blessed to bereaved. And somehow we good Christians (and post-1948, Judeo-Christians (if such a hyphenated beast/bestial identity exists; and why not Judeo-Christiano-Muslim?)) only remember the last 2000 years of victimhood and not the prior 5000 of gloating victors against all the other desert peoples (with their own desert gods). History will teach us nothing, for even the Palestinians (these new Philistines) will rise up and slaughter new innocents. It reminds me of a recent headline: “army battles militants,” and yet the unasked question still heard in the depths of language: who more militant than the military? And you too do not exist … nor I. Auch du und du. I’m reminded too of all those Japanese I befriended and loved whose fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers probably shot at my own grandfather, filling his mortal body with shrapnel and environmental detritus so that even weeks before his death metal was still winnowing its way from beneath his skin more than sixty years after the ceasefire. And when will this fire finally cease? And who will burn for more? And whose father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather was absent—absent in the way of a missing limb or a lastborn son—due to a shot fired from my grandfather’s rifle? How the missing trace their absence(s) down through the generations so that in my clinging I cling only to that which absences itself, that missing part, that lifeline of longing. Each near-death experience (and I know such a hyphenated beast exists) brings me closer to the death that awaits only me in its mortal vastness, in its singularity and solitude, for only that one death will make it all better by making us one.

Vegetal Carnage

One of the most exciting things about living in Tornado Alley, USA, is every spring when the tornado/severe weather sirens begin wailing, and you have to rush into the hallway, grabbing the shortwave radio (and making sure that fresh batteries are nearby), the cats (and their food ... and hopefully a litter box), your cell phone, a flashlight or two, and some blankets (in case of flying glass) on the way. Usually you have about a five-minute warning before the storm is right on top of you. I never much worried about such quick preparations before Hurricane Katrina, but now the thought of losing everything--absolutely everything--seems much more like a possibility. (Thank you, George Bush, for all that you do!) In the past three weeks, the sirens have sounded twice. The last time warned of wind gusts of up to 100 mph. Listening to the news the next morning, you'd have thought that we had survived a major storm. All the Dallas news reports were broadcasting the damage all throughout north Oak Cliff. Apparently the small square where I live was the least damaged. Funny, but throughout the entire night we kept hearing screeching breaks; when we got out the next day we learned why: several trees and power lines were lying in the road right outside of the gate blocking traffic. The road remained closed for a couple of days. Walking and driving around the neighborhood, signs of devastation were everywhere. The main casualty: the lovely trees that make this section of Dallas the most beautiful and tolerable. Here are some photos of some of that (vegetal) carnage.