Sunday, February 18, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
not exactly crazy, just a little nervous
In the seventh grade, I went to see Cyndi Lauper perform during her She's So Unusual tour. My dad took me and a couple of friends to the Mann Music Center in Phildelphia for this, my first, concert. But rather than write about how incredibly, um, gay that is, or how fantastic the show was, I want to write about something else that happened that night -- I had, for the first time in my conscious memory, what I would later learn to call a panic attack.
This is what happened: We arrived at the show and took our seats in the balcony of this theatre, which was relatively small, but cool because it was outdoors. I was astounded at how high up we could be and still have a great view of the stage. When the concert started, the entire balcony stood in their seats and started jumping and dancing. Much to my great shock, the balcony itself began to move under us, not giving way, of course, but bouncing along with us, in much the same way that a diving board does. My father, who had no opinion of Lauper except that she was "weird," brought a walkman with him, kicked back in his seat, popped his favorite Pavarotti cassette in, and conked out. My friends were smiling and bouncing up and down like everyone else.
I, on the other hand, could feel nothing but sheer terror, so much so that I couldn't even speak. As I sat there, confronting my mortality, everyone else was having the time of their life. How come no one else felt such great alarm? What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I enjoy this, too? This added to the terror-effect: No one realizes we are going to die except for me.
I imagined the breaking away and terrible crash of the balcony, what it would feel like to fall, who would be trapped underneath of us. I was convinced that at any moment concert security would interrupt Lauper's show, announce that the balcony was about to collapse, and usher us to safety. About twenty minutes passed, and a thought entered my brain: Since no one is going to help us, since no one else seems to mind, and since I cannot do a thing about this terrible danger that we are all in, the only thing I can do is enjoy it. The anxiety lifted a little. If I am going to die, I thought, I don't want to die in abject terror, I want to be happy like every one else. I started to bounce along with the crowd. The balcony bounced right under me. Every once in a while, the terror returned, and I'd have to stop. My heart would be racing and I would not be able to breathe. It sucked the air right out of my lungs. Then I'd hear my voice in my head ask me the question: "Do you want to die terrified, or do you want to enjoy what little of this life is left?", and I'd ease myself back into the "fun".
This whole ordeal, of course, was in my head. I never said anything to anyone about it. Everyone else was hanging out, dancing, singing along and cheering for Lauper. I, meanwhile, was negotiating matters of life and death. It was a difficult evening, to say the least. Looking back, I wonder if the reason no one else was terrified was because, really, the movement of the balcony was something that I hallucinated.
But I identified this night, years later, as the first time I consciously remember feeling this way. The therapist I was talking to about it noticed that I had, in fact, employed a coping mechanism that night to deal with what was happening, that I was conscious of the panic and worked towards alleviating it the best way a twelve-year old knows how.
In graduate school, my panic attacks were so bad and so frequent that, as anyone who has them knows, I would not be able to leave my couch. I didn't even know what they were. They were a part of this thing that I grew to call my "nervousness." "Nervous" was a word I used for a long time to describe myself or how certain events or things made me feel. When it got to the point that I felt like the attacks were interfering with my life, I finally took steps to figure some things out. Very lucky for me, I learned how to manage the problem, finally, without medication.
But panic attacks can come when you least expect them. Yesterday, H. took off on a long, long bike ride. Almost as soon as he left, I started to spiral. I couldn't do anything. I was a wreck for about three hours, and when it finally lifted, I was totally drained. I slept. When I woke up, I felt better, and into the evening with friends, I kept thinking about what happened, what triggered it (as I learned to say), why now, etc. I thought back to that night in the balcony -- the terrible fear of a plunge into obliteration as the raucous carnival danced and bounced around me.
This is what happened: We arrived at the show and took our seats in the balcony of this theatre, which was relatively small, but cool because it was outdoors. I was astounded at how high up we could be and still have a great view of the stage. When the concert started, the entire balcony stood in their seats and started jumping and dancing. Much to my great shock, the balcony itself began to move under us, not giving way, of course, but bouncing along with us, in much the same way that a diving board does. My father, who had no opinion of Lauper except that she was "weird," brought a walkman with him, kicked back in his seat, popped his favorite Pavarotti cassette in, and conked out. My friends were smiling and bouncing up and down like everyone else.
I, on the other hand, could feel nothing but sheer terror, so much so that I couldn't even speak. As I sat there, confronting my mortality, everyone else was having the time of their life. How come no one else felt such great alarm? What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I enjoy this, too? This added to the terror-effect: No one realizes we are going to die except for me.
I imagined the breaking away and terrible crash of the balcony, what it would feel like to fall, who would be trapped underneath of us. I was convinced that at any moment concert security would interrupt Lauper's show, announce that the balcony was about to collapse, and usher us to safety. About twenty minutes passed, and a thought entered my brain: Since no one is going to help us, since no one else seems to mind, and since I cannot do a thing about this terrible danger that we are all in, the only thing I can do is enjoy it. The anxiety lifted a little. If I am going to die, I thought, I don't want to die in abject terror, I want to be happy like every one else. I started to bounce along with the crowd. The balcony bounced right under me. Every once in a while, the terror returned, and I'd have to stop. My heart would be racing and I would not be able to breathe. It sucked the air right out of my lungs. Then I'd hear my voice in my head ask me the question: "Do you want to die terrified, or do you want to enjoy what little of this life is left?", and I'd ease myself back into the "fun".
This whole ordeal, of course, was in my head. I never said anything to anyone about it. Everyone else was hanging out, dancing, singing along and cheering for Lauper. I, meanwhile, was negotiating matters of life and death. It was a difficult evening, to say the least. Looking back, I wonder if the reason no one else was terrified was because, really, the movement of the balcony was something that I hallucinated.
But I identified this night, years later, as the first time I consciously remember feeling this way. The therapist I was talking to about it noticed that I had, in fact, employed a coping mechanism that night to deal with what was happening, that I was conscious of the panic and worked towards alleviating it the best way a twelve-year old knows how.
In graduate school, my panic attacks were so bad and so frequent that, as anyone who has them knows, I would not be able to leave my couch. I didn't even know what they were. They were a part of this thing that I grew to call my "nervousness." "Nervous" was a word I used for a long time to describe myself or how certain events or things made me feel. When it got to the point that I felt like the attacks were interfering with my life, I finally took steps to figure some things out. Very lucky for me, I learned how to manage the problem, finally, without medication.
But panic attacks can come when you least expect them. Yesterday, H. took off on a long, long bike ride. Almost as soon as he left, I started to spiral. I couldn't do anything. I was a wreck for about three hours, and when it finally lifted, I was totally drained. I slept. When I woke up, I felt better, and into the evening with friends, I kept thinking about what happened, what triggered it (as I learned to say), why now, etc. I thought back to that night in the balcony -- the terrible fear of a plunge into obliteration as the raucous carnival danced and bounced around me.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
she's giving me way too many (dream)
Last night I dreamed that I was trapped in some asbestos-contaminated building's crawl space. But it wasn't just me -- there were others in there as well. A smooth concrete walkway was just to my left, and if I could get to it, I reasoned, there would be a less-likely chance that I would be inhaling the dust all around me. Suddenly, something shifted, and I was dragging myself through the dust to an opening, and I was out, covered in crumbling dirt. There were people (EMTs, police, fire fighters) waiting for me.
When I emerged, it was clear that I needed to be taken to the hospital right away. In the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, I was asked if I had swallowed any of the dust or gotten any in my mouth. The answer was yes. Lots.
In the emergency room, I rested on a cot, hooked to some tubes. Every once in a while a doctor came by and gave me a shot of morphine. She was a gruff doctor, uncommunicative, and her needle sticks were surprising and painful. She's giving me way too many, I thought. Soon enough the doctor told me that it took at least three times for the drug to kick in. As she injected me a third time, I felt a complete and total calm wash over me, and a profound nausea that kept me from going under completely.
As I nodded off in this sleepy dream-within-a-dream world, I was given a battery of tests to check the extent of poisoning. When I finally came to, I was told that, while I had a low toxicity level of asbestos, it was a good thing I showed up to the hospital because it turned out that I had to have a portion of my spine removed. In an x-ray, the doctor showed me where the top knot of my spine was freakishly huge and painfully jutting out of my back. The only option was surgery, I was told, and that would mean not only removing the vertebrae, but the surgeons would have to drill in through my skull, down past my brain, and pull the spinal knot up from there. Once the bone was removed, I was told, I would experience a pain-free life, since the overgrown top of my spinal column had been, for years, exerting an extreme pressure on the alignment of my entire skeleton that was causing me pain so severe, but so normal, that I could no longer detect it.
This dream was gone in an instant. I woke up this morning thinking about the work I had to prepare for today, and have been focused since. Just right now, as I was about to leave the office, the dream came up, vivid and baffling, in precise detail.
When I emerged, it was clear that I needed to be taken to the hospital right away. In the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, I was asked if I had swallowed any of the dust or gotten any in my mouth. The answer was yes. Lots.
In the emergency room, I rested on a cot, hooked to some tubes. Every once in a while a doctor came by and gave me a shot of morphine. She was a gruff doctor, uncommunicative, and her needle sticks were surprising and painful. She's giving me way too many, I thought. Soon enough the doctor told me that it took at least three times for the drug to kick in. As she injected me a third time, I felt a complete and total calm wash over me, and a profound nausea that kept me from going under completely.
As I nodded off in this sleepy dream-within-a-dream world, I was given a battery of tests to check the extent of poisoning. When I finally came to, I was told that, while I had a low toxicity level of asbestos, it was a good thing I showed up to the hospital because it turned out that I had to have a portion of my spine removed. In an x-ray, the doctor showed me where the top knot of my spine was freakishly huge and painfully jutting out of my back. The only option was surgery, I was told, and that would mean not only removing the vertebrae, but the surgeons would have to drill in through my skull, down past my brain, and pull the spinal knot up from there. Once the bone was removed, I was told, I would experience a pain-free life, since the overgrown top of my spinal column had been, for years, exerting an extreme pressure on the alignment of my entire skeleton that was causing me pain so severe, but so normal, that I could no longer detect it.
This dream was gone in an instant. I woke up this morning thinking about the work I had to prepare for today, and have been focused since. Just right now, as I was about to leave the office, the dream came up, vivid and baffling, in precise detail.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
panic!
Yipes! The pepper plant has aphids (and, of course, some ants)! Ew!
Any suggestions for how to get rid of them without chemicals? The internet tells me to mail order ladybugs (a fine idea), but I would like to move on this.
Any suggestions for how to get rid of them without chemicals? The internet tells me to mail order ladybugs (a fine idea), but I would like to move on this.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
earliest memory?
I'm trying to concentrate hard enough to have my earliest memory come forth. I can remember before kindergarten, and I remember pre-school with Mrs. Chimes. I remember living on Aqua Lane, before Kathy was born. But we lived in a little house in Northeast Philadelphia for two years before we moved to NJ, and I have no recollection of that.
Here's what I can remember from living on Aqua Lane:
I remember asking my mom who the devil was.
I remember having dreams about water coming through my bedroom window and washing me down the short flight of steps to the kitchen.
I remember listening to 45s on our children's record player, and thinking the song "Animal Crackers in My Soup" was eerie.
I remember when four of my cousins spent the night and we got up before it was light out and my youngest cousin, Mark, turned the radio on really loud and woke up my mom.
I remember Mary Anne and I would, every single morning, say goodbye to my Dad as he was going to work and we would yell out the door after him, "DON'T FORGET TO FEED THE MONSTERS!!!" (I do not know where we got that from. Sesame Street?)
I remember sitting around the kitchen table and my parents asking Mary Anne and me, with enormous enthusiasm, "Who wants to go trick-or-treating tonight?!?" and, instead of saying "Me! me!!", Mary Anne (who was in kindergarten) quietly raised her hand, and then so did I.
I remember sitting around the same table and my parents telling us that we were going to have another brother or sister soon and how exciting that was.
I remember running home from this kid P.J.'s sandbox [as if he owned it. We all called it "P.J.'s sandbox," even his older sister, Heidi] and, when I got to the front door, I was surprised that there was a giant pumpkin decoration on it. (That's the second memory from Hallowe'en that year. I must have just turned four that September.)
I remember an older girl in the neighborhood, Barbara Weiner, told me that Ronnie Ferro (a neighbor) poured a whole bottle of ketchup over his head and said "Bloody Mary" in the dark in the bathroom and she appeared to him in the mirror. (I mentioned this to her a couple of years ago when I saw her while visiting Delran and she looked at me like I was out of my mind and said she did not remember, which was disappointing for so many reason.)
I remember that I liked the pink crayon in our Crayola box because it was mottled from having rubbed up against all the other crayons but pure pink on the inside.
I remember my two favorite books: The Laughing Dragon (top favorite) and Stand Back, Said the Elephant, I'm Going to Sneeze!! (second only by a smidgen -- my dad would do all the voices of the different animals).
I bet I could keep going. I wish I could remember stuff from northeast Philly, but I don't think I can. I know there was a girl named Darah who lived on our street at that time, and I feel like I could picture her, but maybe that's because my parents always made fun of her parents because her parents were of the belief that they should never say "NO" to their child. And, one day, when Darah was over and doing something she shouldn't have been doing, my father yelled the word so loudly at her that she got scared, started to cry, and ran home. That was before we moved to New Jersey.
How about it? Do you have your earliest memory? What was it and how old were you?
Here's what I can remember from living on Aqua Lane:
I remember asking my mom who the devil was.
I remember having dreams about water coming through my bedroom window and washing me down the short flight of steps to the kitchen.
I remember listening to 45s on our children's record player, and thinking the song "Animal Crackers in My Soup" was eerie.
I remember when four of my cousins spent the night and we got up before it was light out and my youngest cousin, Mark, turned the radio on really loud and woke up my mom.
I remember Mary Anne and I would, every single morning, say goodbye to my Dad as he was going to work and we would yell out the door after him, "DON'T FORGET TO FEED THE MONSTERS!!!" (I do not know where we got that from. Sesame Street?)
I remember sitting around the kitchen table and my parents asking Mary Anne and me, with enormous enthusiasm, "Who wants to go trick-or-treating tonight?!?" and, instead of saying "Me! me!!", Mary Anne (who was in kindergarten) quietly raised her hand, and then so did I.
I remember sitting around the same table and my parents telling us that we were going to have another brother or sister soon and how exciting that was.
I remember running home from this kid P.J.'s sandbox [as if he owned it. We all called it "P.J.'s sandbox," even his older sister, Heidi] and, when I got to the front door, I was surprised that there was a giant pumpkin decoration on it. (That's the second memory from Hallowe'en that year. I must have just turned four that September.)
I remember an older girl in the neighborhood, Barbara Weiner, told me that Ronnie Ferro (a neighbor) poured a whole bottle of ketchup over his head and said "Bloody Mary" in the dark in the bathroom and she appeared to him in the mirror. (I mentioned this to her a couple of years ago when I saw her while visiting Delran and she looked at me like I was out of my mind and said she did not remember, which was disappointing for so many reason.)
I remember that I liked the pink crayon in our Crayola box because it was mottled from having rubbed up against all the other crayons but pure pink on the inside.
I remember my two favorite books: The Laughing Dragon (top favorite) and Stand Back, Said the Elephant, I'm Going to Sneeze!! (second only by a smidgen -- my dad would do all the voices of the different animals).
I bet I could keep going. I wish I could remember stuff from northeast Philly, but I don't think I can. I know there was a girl named Darah who lived on our street at that time, and I feel like I could picture her, but maybe that's because my parents always made fun of her parents because her parents were of the belief that they should never say "NO" to their child. And, one day, when Darah was over and doing something she shouldn't have been doing, my father yelled the word so loudly at her that she got scared, started to cry, and ran home. That was before we moved to New Jersey.
How about it? Do you have your earliest memory? What was it and how old were you?
Thursday, January 25, 2007
pass the peppers (raw, please, and hot)
See this little orange pepper? It's the last one hanging from the Carribean Red Hot Pepper plant I purchased out at the Feed'n'Seed [?]with my friend, MaGreen, over the summer. Since the weather has been so chilly, I brought it indoors to hang out in the sunroom. At its most fertile, the plant was bearing seven full peppers at once. We've eaten all of them. Hank ate one or two raw, right off the stem, and they are incredibly hot (nearing the Habanero-level of heat), but when you cook one of them, seeds and all, into a pot of vegan chilli or just some black or pinto beans, it lends the food a hot smoky flavor, almost chipotle tasting. It's astonishingly good.
You know, I grew up eating baloney and ketchup sandwiches on white bread, with a side of spaghetii-o's. We shook oregano flakes and garlic salt on our frozen pizza, and it was "spices." I remember when I first moved to Texas, I was invited to a Sunday brunch with a bunch of graduate students at my friend Louise's apartment in the Heights. Salsa, for me, was a ketchup-y sauce that came in a Tostitos brand jar. More sugar and vinegar than anything else. But at Louise's brunch, one of the guests, a Texan, made pico de gallo with fresh jalapenos, seeds and all. I remember being so hungry, and probably a little hung over, and going for this chopped tomato and onion concoction with drool coming down my chin. When I bit into the first scoop, a blast of hot pepper burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth like nothing I had ever experienced before. Trying not to be a rude guest, I stepped outside. The fire was so intense, I thought I would hyperventilate. I began to cry from the pain. My panic escalated everything. Something horrible had happened, and I wasn't sure what it was, but it was now in my esophagus and headed for my belly. As I was having this physical breakdown, Louise, good hostess that she was, came outside and found me red-faced and in tears. When I explained what happened, she reached up and patted me on the back (she is a full two-feet shorter than I am) and said, "Oh, it'll be okay, darlin'. Think of it this way: You probably knocked out every cold you might have had coming for the next couple of months just with that one bite." And she went inside. Cold? What?
Since this time, I have become more acculturated to hot food, especially peppers. A few years ago, before my friend Cake's apartment burned down, she had a potluck with a few friends -- black beans, tortillas, guacamole, etc. etc. Cake had a dish of freshly sliced jalapenos in a dish, and I think it was our friend KP who popped one in her mouth after the meal was over, saying something cavalierly, like, "Mm! O yeah, this will suck all of the heavy metals right out of my system." Really? Heavy metals? Hank, Cake, KP and I went, watery-eyed, through several rounds of whole pepper eating, registering the heat and the intensity of the fire, the oiliness of the chili, the sweetness lingering after the heat, and the crispiness of the flesh itself. I pictured all of the lead or copper or whatever heavy metal I might be storing in my cells sizzling as it came into contact with the pepper's oils. Each successive pepper was not quite as hot as the last, but still something to remark on as a flavor outside the realm of the ordinary. It was a severe high, elevating us into a realm of strange calm and sheer experience that lasted for about an hour or two. I will never forget how serene and communal the intensity of the experience was, and how we struggled to describe all of it in words.
The transition between the two pepper experiences was a weird and shaky road, but now I feel like I can savor the differences between these shockingly hot fruits. And I am proud of this little plant in the back room, bearing its last little fruit like a miniature sack of healthful dynamite.
Friday, January 19, 2007
o my humunculous
Two days ago, when the freeze was here in full blast, I went about cooking to keep warm. I concocted a recipe for a delicious pot of split pea soup (now totally devoured) that I began in the morning and cooked through to perfection into the evening. It was excellent. That night, I put on a pot of steel cut oats for breakfast the next morning. It takes about 30 minutes to cook oatmeal in its non-instant form, and when you grate fresh nutmeg and cinnamon into it, it fills the apartment with a sleepy, incredible aroma all night long. It'll be cool in the morning, so you just have to re-heat for a few minutes and then off you can go to the first day of school, bright and shiny.
So, in any case, I had these two green apples sitting in the fruit bowl, and I thought it would be a good idea to slice them up and add them to the boiling water to mix in with the oats. Isn't there an instant oatmeal flavoring called "green apples and cinnamon"? It sounded like something you'd see in a television commercial, where everyone is warm and protected from the early morning gloom. As I cut into the first apple with a recently-sharpened knife, my aim was not true, and I sliced right through the tip of my thumb, which didn't really hurt (at first) but produced a lot of blood. In fact, I bled all over the apple slices and they were stained a weird pinkish color but, you know what?, I added them to the oatmeal anyway, and then went and bandaged myself up. As for the blood-oatmeal, Hank and I both ate it the next morning and, since you couldn't tell, I didn't even bother to mention it. (Surprise!)
This morning, the thumb is pretty much healed, although still a little sore. The flap of skin has come off, and there is an incredible dent at the tip of the digit, where it used to round itself out into completion. It's weird for me to look at and, for this reason, I've been reciting the following (hilarious) poem in my head:
Cut (by Sylvia Plath, 1962)
What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Humunculous, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
So, in any case, I had these two green apples sitting in the fruit bowl, and I thought it would be a good idea to slice them up and add them to the boiling water to mix in with the oats. Isn't there an instant oatmeal flavoring called "green apples and cinnamon"? It sounded like something you'd see in a television commercial, where everyone is warm and protected from the early morning gloom. As I cut into the first apple with a recently-sharpened knife, my aim was not true, and I sliced right through the tip of my thumb, which didn't really hurt (at first) but produced a lot of blood. In fact, I bled all over the apple slices and they were stained a weird pinkish color but, you know what?, I added them to the oatmeal anyway, and then went and bandaged myself up. As for the blood-oatmeal, Hank and I both ate it the next morning and, since you couldn't tell, I didn't even bother to mention it. (Surprise!)
This morning, the thumb is pretty much healed, although still a little sore. The flap of skin has come off, and there is an incredible dent at the tip of the digit, where it used to round itself out into completion. It's weird for me to look at and, for this reason, I've been reciting the following (hilarious) poem in my head:
Cut (by Sylvia Plath, 1962)
What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Humunculous, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
f-f-f-f- . . . .
it's (almost) f-f-f-freezing in houston!
apparantly, we have a heat-pump system, and not a heating system, so there is no real "heat" in our apartment (took us two years to figure this out), but, instead, the system taps the outside air for any trace of heat, and sucks it into the vents. as a result, there is cool air blowing through the rooms.
it is very, very cold. pass the groovy quilt . . .
we brought the plants in, so please do not freak out if you are worried about the pepper or citranella plants, they have been brought inside, and are doing well.
are you wearing long underwear? i am not.
apparantly, we have a heat-pump system, and not a heating system, so there is no real "heat" in our apartment (took us two years to figure this out), but, instead, the system taps the outside air for any trace of heat, and sucks it into the vents. as a result, there is cool air blowing through the rooms.
it is very, very cold. pass the groovy quilt . . .
we brought the plants in, so please do not freak out if you are worried about the pepper or citranella plants, they have been brought inside, and are doing well.
are you wearing long underwear? i am not.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
well-placed objects (and does it matter to memory?)
I got up early yesterday so I could accompany my friend Stephen to the airport with Melanie. Maybe it was that whole wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese, or maybe I got a good night sleep, or maybe I was desperately needing to re-establish some kind of order to my life (I feel like I've been traveling since before the holidays, even though I've been in Houston for the past week), but whatever the cause, when I got back home, I plunged myself into the project of deep-cleaning the apartment. Dust, sweep, wipe down, scrub, shake out, mini-vac, and organize. Not only that, but I also had enough energy left over to do several loads of laundry and take a trip to Target, Radio Shack, and Southland Hardware to pick up random domestic objects: new trashcan, floor lamp, hamper, radio, and some scrap wood and brackets to make a shelf for the wall in the sun room. Last night, as we watched Robert Bresson's _PickPocket_ (1959), a structuralist French film that seems to be less about theft than it is about doorways and the well-composed insides of apartments, I kept stealing glances around our place, liking its well-placed objects.
The visits of my life-long friend Stephen has an interesting effect on my sense of time and memory. While in his company, time gets re-routed to the deep past in sometimes totally surprising and often difficult ways, a never-ending maze of memories that do not emerge unless this friend is there to trigger them. What amazes me is how much is there, and I wonder how much we do not remember, if we could ever remember it all.
I found a photograph from highschool of Stephen standing in front of a class we took as seniors called A.P. Comparative Government and Politics. In the photograph, Stephen is giving an oral report on the cultural significance of teaching abroad and, as an intentional bad joke, he has written on the black board (which is actually green) "Teaching A Broad." He hunches over a little lectern, his right elbow resting on its top edge and bent so that he can press his hand to his downward-looking forehead. It is a self-conscious gesture of anxiety, as if he is being given a hard time for his sophomoric humor. He is dressed in the Catholic school uniform all the boys were made to wear (black polyester pants, black pleather shoes, your choice dress-shirt and tie), along with a pair of Buddy Holly-looking glasses. The only part missing is the burgundy blazor which we could take off if the teacher was cool enough to allow it. Stephen is not wearing his. The room itself is starkly institutional; we both forgot how sparse the rooms of the school were. In the upper-right hand corner, the black letters "EXIT 2" are stencilled in spray paint high on the cinder block wall. Neither Stephen nor I could remember what "EXIT 2" meant -- if it was some sort of fire emergency exit route, or a way of numbering and classifying the different doors and hallways in the building, and yet we lived under those exit signs for four years.
Interestingly, Stephen, at first, did not remember anything about giving this oral report, but I have long remembered it (the misfiring of the joke, the way we all laughed), and I wonder how much of it has to do with my possession of the photograph. Once he saw the photo, he remembered that he had chosen that topic because one of his favorite aunts had recently taught abroad, and he found her stories about it very interesting. (I am only now, as I write this, remembering that I don't think I gave an oral report for this class like Stephen did; or, if I did, I don't recall what it was about. I remember, instead, that I collaborated with a cool smart girl named Jen Laverty to argue for a radical position in a debate about the tactics of the IRA.) In addition, neither Stephen nor I, at first, could identify the other student caught in the frame of the photograph, a skinny-looking tannish guy with braces, who has twisted in his seat to the back of the classroom, cracking up. Within a few seconds I got it: that's Tom Rinkavage, someone neither of us ever knew very well, but how interesting that I could remember his name, possibly only because I was sitting next to Stephen at the time.
Does it matter to the clarity of these memories that I still consider this class to be one of the best I took in high school? That I remember how attractive the teacher's leftist politics were to me? That the teacher had long, brown hair that he wore in a ponytail and, when he took it out, it was actually an unflattering mullet? Does it make a difference that the man who taught us this class was, in March 1994, found strangled to death in a crawl space in his apartment several years later, and that the man who was arrested soon afterwards confessed, during the trial, to choking him to death during a sexual encounter they arranged for pay after they met at a pornographic bookstore? (See http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:erb2RfySruQJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html%3Fres%3D9D02E4D9143CF932A15750C0A962958260+%22james+semptimphelter%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 for the NYT report.) Does it matter that the case was all over the media, including the GLBT magazine The Advocate, which ran an article titled "Dial SM for Murder," and that friends of this teacher and members of the queer community in South Jersey wrote letters to the editor expressing their outrage at the sensationalization of the tragedy?
This morning, I'm lounging in a quilt in the sun room, drinking coffee and absorbing the sun coming in from the three huge windows. The room is bright, cozy with its red furniture standing out sharply against the quiet white walls and floor. In the weird corner of the room that sticks out for no reason at all, we have our six-foot-tall, skinny, green pencil cactus. This year, Hank purchased some red, glass Christmas ornaments and we hung a dozen of them from its branches. The result is a lovely holiday tree, simply trimmed. It is remarkable in the corner window, especially lit at night by a low-wattage lamp. Michael, our anthropologist friend, gave us the tree before he left town to do fieldwork in Chile. Thank you, Michael! The plant is healthy and looks great! (See Michael's blog here: http://frazer.rice.edu/~kriz/blog/)
The visits of my life-long friend Stephen has an interesting effect on my sense of time and memory. While in his company, time gets re-routed to the deep past in sometimes totally surprising and often difficult ways, a never-ending maze of memories that do not emerge unless this friend is there to trigger them. What amazes me is how much is there, and I wonder how much we do not remember, if we could ever remember it all.
I found a photograph from highschool of Stephen standing in front of a class we took as seniors called A.P. Comparative Government and Politics. In the photograph, Stephen is giving an oral report on the cultural significance of teaching abroad and, as an intentional bad joke, he has written on the black board (which is actually green) "Teaching A Broad." He hunches over a little lectern, his right elbow resting on its top edge and bent so that he can press his hand to his downward-looking forehead. It is a self-conscious gesture of anxiety, as if he is being given a hard time for his sophomoric humor. He is dressed in the Catholic school uniform all the boys were made to wear (black polyester pants, black pleather shoes, your choice dress-shirt and tie), along with a pair of Buddy Holly-looking glasses. The only part missing is the burgundy blazor which we could take off if the teacher was cool enough to allow it. Stephen is not wearing his. The room itself is starkly institutional; we both forgot how sparse the rooms of the school were. In the upper-right hand corner, the black letters "EXIT 2" are stencilled in spray paint high on the cinder block wall. Neither Stephen nor I could remember what "EXIT 2" meant -- if it was some sort of fire emergency exit route, or a way of numbering and classifying the different doors and hallways in the building, and yet we lived under those exit signs for four years.
Interestingly, Stephen, at first, did not remember anything about giving this oral report, but I have long remembered it (the misfiring of the joke, the way we all laughed), and I wonder how much of it has to do with my possession of the photograph. Once he saw the photo, he remembered that he had chosen that topic because one of his favorite aunts had recently taught abroad, and he found her stories about it very interesting. (I am only now, as I write this, remembering that I don't think I gave an oral report for this class like Stephen did; or, if I did, I don't recall what it was about. I remember, instead, that I collaborated with a cool smart girl named Jen Laverty to argue for a radical position in a debate about the tactics of the IRA.) In addition, neither Stephen nor I, at first, could identify the other student caught in the frame of the photograph, a skinny-looking tannish guy with braces, who has twisted in his seat to the back of the classroom, cracking up. Within a few seconds I got it: that's Tom Rinkavage, someone neither of us ever knew very well, but how interesting that I could remember his name, possibly only because I was sitting next to Stephen at the time.
Does it matter to the clarity of these memories that I still consider this class to be one of the best I took in high school? That I remember how attractive the teacher's leftist politics were to me? That the teacher had long, brown hair that he wore in a ponytail and, when he took it out, it was actually an unflattering mullet? Does it make a difference that the man who taught us this class was, in March 1994, found strangled to death in a crawl space in his apartment several years later, and that the man who was arrested soon afterwards confessed, during the trial, to choking him to death during a sexual encounter they arranged for pay after they met at a pornographic bookstore? (See http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:erb2RfySruQJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html%3Fres%3D9D02E4D9143CF932A15750C0A962958260+%22james+semptimphelter%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 for the NYT report.) Does it matter that the case was all over the media, including the GLBT magazine The Advocate, which ran an article titled "Dial SM for Murder," and that friends of this teacher and members of the queer community in South Jersey wrote letters to the editor expressing their outrage at the sensationalization of the tragedy?
This morning, I'm lounging in a quilt in the sun room, drinking coffee and absorbing the sun coming in from the three huge windows. The room is bright, cozy with its red furniture standing out sharply against the quiet white walls and floor. In the weird corner of the room that sticks out for no reason at all, we have our six-foot-tall, skinny, green pencil cactus. This year, Hank purchased some red, glass Christmas ornaments and we hung a dozen of them from its branches. The result is a lovely holiday tree, simply trimmed. It is remarkable in the corner window, especially lit at night by a low-wattage lamp. Michael, our anthropologist friend, gave us the tree before he left town to do fieldwork in Chile. Thank you, Michael! The plant is healthy and looks great! (See Michael's blog here: http://frazer.rice.edu/~kriz/blog/)
Thursday, December 28, 2006
keywords (notes for the future)
torture as inverted mirror
de-bodiment
culture's viscera
intensive capital
the legal person
the future of endless war
persons who do not count as persons
Common Article 3
confiscation of humanity
body warehouse
necropolitics
"jail face"
homoerotic violence
bare life
the decline of the rehabilitative ideal
an excess of law
black sites
Son of Sam laws
the cultural barrier of clothes
grave violations
the captor's desire
architecture of reflection
the exponential freedom to isolate
undead life
military commisions act
the language of permissible treatment
new global gulag
imperial history of incarceration
temporal punishment and war without end
Arizona -- Iraq -- Haiti
secrecy as essence of prisons
de-citizenization
new war prisons
probable felons and the expectation of criminality
WHISC/SOA
life-long detention
the negation of negation
cultural phenomenology and affective engagement
de-bodiment
culture's viscera
intensive capital
the legal person
the future of endless war
persons who do not count as persons
Common Article 3
confiscation of humanity
body warehouse
necropolitics
"jail face"
homoerotic violence
bare life
the decline of the rehabilitative ideal
an excess of law
black sites
Son of Sam laws
the cultural barrier of clothes
grave violations
the captor's desire
architecture of reflection
the exponential freedom to isolate
undead life
military commisions act
the language of permissible treatment
new global gulag
imperial history of incarceration
temporal punishment and war without end
Arizona -- Iraq -- Haiti
secrecy as essence of prisons
de-citizenization
new war prisons
probable felons and the expectation of criminality
WHISC/SOA
life-long detention
the negation of negation
cultural phenomenology and affective engagement
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
flavor molecules
I just got back from the Reading Terminal Market in Philly, where I was ecstatic to find a fresh juice bar that had a carrot, celery, and beet-combo, as well as some good, cheap hummous, tabouli, and baba ghanoush.
I'm currently in town for the Big Academic Conference that many, many scholars dread because it means 1) being on the job market and having to block out the thousands of neurotic grad students all whipsering to themselves in the corners of hotel lobbies who are rehearsing their interview scripts while, simultaneously, doing it yourself; or, 2) being the person on the other end, watching the endless stream of stressed out job-seekers try to ease their way through what we all know is a very difficult and highly charged 30-minute interview; or, 3 [and the best reason to be here]) to participate in or attend one of the many, many organized panels on cutting-edge work in literary and cultural studies, and to catch up with old friends. That's why I'm here (although I have been made aware of rumors circulating that contradict this truth).
I rode in a car with my folks up from Delran up to my older sister's child-filled house in the big woods in northern NJ for Christmas day, and then took off to NYC where my younger sister lives with her husband in a tiny, little apt. in the West village. It was a busy, two-day period of family overload and couch-surfing, and when Kathy put me on a bus to Philly late this morning, I was grateful to be alone, with my thoughts.
I've arrived ahead of my friend, Gretchen, who will also here for the third reason listed above. She's not in, yet, so I made the executive decision to purchase the $10/day wireless connection in the hotel room.
Where we are staying is, uncannily, *right next door* to the Big Pharma building where my mother worked in a variety of non-pharma-related positions for her entire adult life. During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I scored a paid internship with a trade publisher at 401 North Broad St., and shared a ride with her. The internship, though, was so tedious that I had to invent ways to keep myself awake and entertained, including the time I called the Clearly Canadian beverage company on the 1-800 number that is listed on the side of the bottle -- the one that the bottles ask you to call if you have Questions? Comments? -- and asked them to account for how a pear-flavored soda in a glass bottle was in any way "all-natural." The answer, and I will never forget this, was that the company "extracted the flavor molecules" from the fruit, and that was why it was natural. O, right -- the flavor molecules . . . On the last day after two summers of paid work, during my exit-interview, the editor-in-charge told me that she was happy to hear I was going to graduate school since I clearly did not belong in the 9-to-5 world.
I'm getting side-tracked, though. I'll see what emerges during the conference and figure out a way to post it in an anonymous way.
I'm currently in town for the Big Academic Conference that many, many scholars dread because it means 1) being on the job market and having to block out the thousands of neurotic grad students all whipsering to themselves in the corners of hotel lobbies who are rehearsing their interview scripts while, simultaneously, doing it yourself; or, 2) being the person on the other end, watching the endless stream of stressed out job-seekers try to ease their way through what we all know is a very difficult and highly charged 30-minute interview; or, 3 [and the best reason to be here]) to participate in or attend one of the many, many organized panels on cutting-edge work in literary and cultural studies, and to catch up with old friends. That's why I'm here (although I have been made aware of rumors circulating that contradict this truth).
I rode in a car with my folks up from Delran up to my older sister's child-filled house in the big woods in northern NJ for Christmas day, and then took off to NYC where my younger sister lives with her husband in a tiny, little apt. in the West village. It was a busy, two-day period of family overload and couch-surfing, and when Kathy put me on a bus to Philly late this morning, I was grateful to be alone, with my thoughts.
I've arrived ahead of my friend, Gretchen, who will also here for the third reason listed above. She's not in, yet, so I made the executive decision to purchase the $10/day wireless connection in the hotel room.
Where we are staying is, uncannily, *right next door* to the Big Pharma building where my mother worked in a variety of non-pharma-related positions for her entire adult life. During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I scored a paid internship with a trade publisher at 401 North Broad St., and shared a ride with her. The internship, though, was so tedious that I had to invent ways to keep myself awake and entertained, including the time I called the Clearly Canadian beverage company on the 1-800 number that is listed on the side of the bottle -- the one that the bottles ask you to call if you have Questions? Comments? -- and asked them to account for how a pear-flavored soda in a glass bottle was in any way "all-natural." The answer, and I will never forget this, was that the company "extracted the flavor molecules" from the fruit, and that was why it was natural. O, right -- the flavor molecules . . . On the last day after two summers of paid work, during my exit-interview, the editor-in-charge told me that she was happy to hear I was going to graduate school since I clearly did not belong in the 9-to-5 world.
I'm getting side-tracked, though. I'll see what emerges during the conference and figure out a way to post it in an anonymous way.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
statue (climb the tree)
Quickly -- as if no one from my family will be able to see, just by looking at recent history, that I have a blog and write about, well, all sorts of things -- I want to write that I am in Delran and, soon, will meet a couple of my oldest friends. Stephen and Michael (and, I hope, maybe, Tommy) will be up at the Whistler's Inn in Cinnaminson, a local bar on the Rte 130 South, not too far from here. There are rumors that Renee will be there, but I have a feeling she might not be coming.
I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.
I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.
Can't wait to seem them both.
I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.
I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.
Can't wait to seem them both.
Monday, December 18, 2006
smile (caught in the machinations of the state)
Last spring, April to be exact, I headed out to the TxDPS on South Gessner to get a new driver's license. My license had expired and, for complex reasons, I could not renew my license on-line, like most people do. I knew that the line at South Gessner would be very, very long, so I packed a stack of student essays and a thermos of coffee, and drove out bright and early, just as the building was opening. I waited in the line to get to the front desk, filled out paper work, sat and graded until my number was called, waited in another line to get my thumbprints and photo taken, was issued my temporary license, and was told my new license would be arriving within four to six weeks. In all, it took about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. But I left relieved, thinking that I would never have to return to the building again.
But I was wrong. Four to six weeks passed, and my license never came. Then my temporary license expired. I was suddenly a driver with no state-issued license to account for my identity. Naturally, I got in my car, and drove, without a license, back to South Gessner. I stood in line for about two hours with everyone else and, when I got up to the counter, I told the woman working that I never received my license. She looked up my case, raised her eyebrows, and disappeared. When she came back, we had this little exchange:
"Did the electricity go out the day you were here?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"No. I mean, it didn't go out while I was in the building . . ."
"Okay -- the day you were here, the electricity went out and our computers went down. That means that your license was never processed. Here -- let me give you another temporary license and you'll get your license in four to six weeks."
"O, well, okay . . ."
I took the temporary license and went home. Four to six weeks passed and I received nothing in the mail. I drove back to the DPS again, this time a little angry.
I stood in line and imagined the speech I was to deliver to the new woman working there: "Look," I would say, "this is my third time here. I have waited, been patient, and waited again. If I don't receive my license today," I would say, thumping on the counter for emphasis, "there are going to be hundreds of activists clamoring for a better-run, full-service, clean TxDPS outside in no time, and the media will be all over it!" This, in my imagination, would guarantee that I would leave that day with my license in hand. When I got to the counter, though, my ferocity dissolved. I felt alone and grew nervous, instead. I simply told the worker that I still hadn't received my license and, um, could she maybe help me get it?
She looked up my file and, without saying a word to me, went over and spoke to a police officer while pointing over at me. The cop nodded and came over and sat down where the worker had been, which made me very anxious. The cop looked at the computer screen (which I couldn't see) and asked me if I had recently moved. I said no. She then told me that Austin had tried to deliver my license and that it was returned by the post office. I said, "None of my other mail has been returned," which is actually a lie, because Hank and I have had several problems with the postal system since we've moved in, but that's a totally different story.
So now I'm lying to the cop, and I also realize that she thinks I am only *pretending* to not have had my license delivered, that I must be involved in a racket in which I get multiple licenses sent to my address and -- I don't know, what? sell them to underaged drinkers? The cop looks at me in the eye and, coldly, tells me I need to go have a conversation with my post office about why they are returning my mail. She starts to get up to leave.
Defeated, I almost turned around and left but, in a moment of desperation, I asked, "So, there's *nothing* I can do, here, now, after waiting all this time, to get a new license?" And she replies, "If you have ten dollars, you can apply for a re-issue for a lost license."
Why didn't she say this to begin with?
"Okay," I said, "great -- here's ten bucks," and I shoved a crumpled ten dollar bill that smelled like the floor of Lola's at her and she gave me paperwork to fill out to get a new license. I then waited, further, for my number to be called to get my photo taken.
And this is where it gets weird. When I got up to the counter to get the photo taken, the woman working (note: no men work at this DPS, that I can tell) pulled up my file, and her face turned a dark shade of red. She started wringing her hands and hissing, "God!! This isn't a re-issue! God! I hate it when people don't do their freakin' job!! Jee-zuss!!" and she disappeared. When she came back, she had more paperwork, and explained to me that this was called a "Dropped Case," and that, rather than re-issue the license, Austin had to process the license by hand, and that it was sitting in a file somewhere, along with a bunch of others that needed tending to. Um, okay . . . I signed a form and asked, "How can I be guaranteed that this will be processed? I've been coming here since April, and no one seems to know what's going on." She told me that she would personally call Austin that day and have the license produced and, in a couple of weeks, I should call her directly and ask if the work went through. She wrote down her name and number. I thanked her and left, a bit mad, but relieved that this was going to finally happen.
But, of course, it doesn't. I think this is what Marxists like to call getting caught in the machinations of the state.
Early September, I dutifully call the DPS and ask for this woman. The reply was very curt: "She don't work here no more." When I tried to explain why I was calling, I was interrupted and asked for my license number. I gave it to the woman, and she looked up my file. "There's no record of your license being sent. You have to come in and have it re-issued." As soon as I started to say, "O no, hold on, you see, I've been coming in since April? and I've been getting the run-around? and I've already been 'in' and it doesn't seem to do any good," I realized it was already too late and there was pretty much nothing at all I could do except, once more, to drive down to South Gessner and wait in line.
So, now it is the fourth time I drive down there, on to 59, South Gessner exit, past the little strip malls, the low-income housing, the school, and into the parking lot. Once again, it is an early Friday morning and I have my coffee and a copy of everything dating back to April. Once again, I stand in line for two hours, like everybody else, waiting just to get to the Information Desk. I get up to the front and explain everything all over again. Once more I am told it is a dropped case. When I ask what happened to the woman who "helped" me last time (who had given me her name and number), I was told she freaked out and quit the week I was there and left all her work undone. I was issued another temporary license and go home, fuming.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I get an envelope in the mail from Austin.
It is from DPS! O, happy day!
Unfortunately, it was just a letter on baby blue paper, telling me that there was a computer error and that the processing of my license malfunctioned and, as a result, I needed to bring the letter with me back to my nearest DPS to get another one re-issued.
Great!
I chose the South Gessner office because, honestly, I was beginning to feel right at home with the grey walls, the dirty floors, the stains on the ceilings, the smell of the bathrooms that comes out into the waiting area, the screaming of children as they run past. I enjoyed the socio-economic puzzle that I pieced together about why everyone else in line was, always, a person of color and I was, each time, the only white person, and why, when white people did come in and see the line, they always, always, always, exclaimed, loudly enough for the entire line to hear: "WHAT?! O, please -- I don't have time for this," and left. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, listen, I've been coming since April, the line is *always* this big, the waiting room is always that crowded, and there is no "good" time to come to the DPS building. Jerks!" I felt like an expert. Well-seasoned.
So, this time, the fifth time, I get up to the counter in about an hour and a half, and show my Austin-issued letter. The woman pulls up the case. She frowns and says, "You've been waiting for this since April?" I say yes. She has me fill out the familiar re-issue forms. I sign in all the right places. I say, "You know, since this isn't really an error that *I* have made, maybe it would be okay if I don't have to wait in the waiting room?" And she is nice. And she says, "Of course," and writes "Walk Up" on the top of my form and tells me to go ahead on into the line to get the picture taken. This takes a blessedly short five minutes. But, the woman who is supposed to take my photograph is terrible. She raises her voice at me and tells me if I do not have the appropriate receipt I will have to go home and come back again. Feeling infantilized, and slightly criminalized, and trying not to cry, I pull out all of my papers that I brought with me and simply give her the stack. She fills out a form that says I do not have to pay and shoves overthing back at me. She turns to her computer and flatly commands, "Smile."
And, apparantly, I did. The license came in the mail today -- finally.
The smile is not a very happy one. I look sort of scared. In fact, it looks like I am flinching with my lips. It is an uneven smile, pulled up on my right side, just a bit. But my skin is clear, which is nice, and my hair has been freshly cut, but that smile . . . it looks like it has been waiting around since April, at least.
But I was wrong. Four to six weeks passed, and my license never came. Then my temporary license expired. I was suddenly a driver with no state-issued license to account for my identity. Naturally, I got in my car, and drove, without a license, back to South Gessner. I stood in line for about two hours with everyone else and, when I got up to the counter, I told the woman working that I never received my license. She looked up my case, raised her eyebrows, and disappeared. When she came back, we had this little exchange:
"Did the electricity go out the day you were here?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"No. I mean, it didn't go out while I was in the building . . ."
"Okay -- the day you were here, the electricity went out and our computers went down. That means that your license was never processed. Here -- let me give you another temporary license and you'll get your license in four to six weeks."
"O, well, okay . . ."
I took the temporary license and went home. Four to six weeks passed and I received nothing in the mail. I drove back to the DPS again, this time a little angry.
I stood in line and imagined the speech I was to deliver to the new woman working there: "Look," I would say, "this is my third time here. I have waited, been patient, and waited again. If I don't receive my license today," I would say, thumping on the counter for emphasis, "there are going to be hundreds of activists clamoring for a better-run, full-service, clean TxDPS outside in no time, and the media will be all over it!" This, in my imagination, would guarantee that I would leave that day with my license in hand. When I got to the counter, though, my ferocity dissolved. I felt alone and grew nervous, instead. I simply told the worker that I still hadn't received my license and, um, could she maybe help me get it?
She looked up my file and, without saying a word to me, went over and spoke to a police officer while pointing over at me. The cop nodded and came over and sat down where the worker had been, which made me very anxious. The cop looked at the computer screen (which I couldn't see) and asked me if I had recently moved. I said no. She then told me that Austin had tried to deliver my license and that it was returned by the post office. I said, "None of my other mail has been returned," which is actually a lie, because Hank and I have had several problems with the postal system since we've moved in, but that's a totally different story.
So now I'm lying to the cop, and I also realize that she thinks I am only *pretending* to not have had my license delivered, that I must be involved in a racket in which I get multiple licenses sent to my address and -- I don't know, what? sell them to underaged drinkers? The cop looks at me in the eye and, coldly, tells me I need to go have a conversation with my post office about why they are returning my mail. She starts to get up to leave.
Defeated, I almost turned around and left but, in a moment of desperation, I asked, "So, there's *nothing* I can do, here, now, after waiting all this time, to get a new license?" And she replies, "If you have ten dollars, you can apply for a re-issue for a lost license."
Why didn't she say this to begin with?
"Okay," I said, "great -- here's ten bucks," and I shoved a crumpled ten dollar bill that smelled like the floor of Lola's at her and she gave me paperwork to fill out to get a new license. I then waited, further, for my number to be called to get my photo taken.
And this is where it gets weird. When I got up to the counter to get the photo taken, the woman working (note: no men work at this DPS, that I can tell) pulled up my file, and her face turned a dark shade of red. She started wringing her hands and hissing, "God!! This isn't a re-issue! God! I hate it when people don't do their freakin' job!! Jee-zuss!!" and she disappeared. When she came back, she had more paperwork, and explained to me that this was called a "Dropped Case," and that, rather than re-issue the license, Austin had to process the license by hand, and that it was sitting in a file somewhere, along with a bunch of others that needed tending to. Um, okay . . . I signed a form and asked, "How can I be guaranteed that this will be processed? I've been coming here since April, and no one seems to know what's going on." She told me that she would personally call Austin that day and have the license produced and, in a couple of weeks, I should call her directly and ask if the work went through. She wrote down her name and number. I thanked her and left, a bit mad, but relieved that this was going to finally happen.
But, of course, it doesn't. I think this is what Marxists like to call getting caught in the machinations of the state.
Early September, I dutifully call the DPS and ask for this woman. The reply was very curt: "She don't work here no more." When I tried to explain why I was calling, I was interrupted and asked for my license number. I gave it to the woman, and she looked up my file. "There's no record of your license being sent. You have to come in and have it re-issued." As soon as I started to say, "O no, hold on, you see, I've been coming in since April? and I've been getting the run-around? and I've already been 'in' and it doesn't seem to do any good," I realized it was already too late and there was pretty much nothing at all I could do except, once more, to drive down to South Gessner and wait in line.
So, now it is the fourth time I drive down there, on to 59, South Gessner exit, past the little strip malls, the low-income housing, the school, and into the parking lot. Once again, it is an early Friday morning and I have my coffee and a copy of everything dating back to April. Once again, I stand in line for two hours, like everybody else, waiting just to get to the Information Desk. I get up to the front and explain everything all over again. Once more I am told it is a dropped case. When I ask what happened to the woman who "helped" me last time (who had given me her name and number), I was told she freaked out and quit the week I was there and left all her work undone. I was issued another temporary license and go home, fuming.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I get an envelope in the mail from Austin.
It is from DPS! O, happy day!
Unfortunately, it was just a letter on baby blue paper, telling me that there was a computer error and that the processing of my license malfunctioned and, as a result, I needed to bring the letter with me back to my nearest DPS to get another one re-issued.
Great!
I chose the South Gessner office because, honestly, I was beginning to feel right at home with the grey walls, the dirty floors, the stains on the ceilings, the smell of the bathrooms that comes out into the waiting area, the screaming of children as they run past. I enjoyed the socio-economic puzzle that I pieced together about why everyone else in line was, always, a person of color and I was, each time, the only white person, and why, when white people did come in and see the line, they always, always, always, exclaimed, loudly enough for the entire line to hear: "WHAT?! O, please -- I don't have time for this," and left. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, listen, I've been coming since April, the line is *always* this big, the waiting room is always that crowded, and there is no "good" time to come to the DPS building. Jerks!" I felt like an expert. Well-seasoned.
So, this time, the fifth time, I get up to the counter in about an hour and a half, and show my Austin-issued letter. The woman pulls up the case. She frowns and says, "You've been waiting for this since April?" I say yes. She has me fill out the familiar re-issue forms. I sign in all the right places. I say, "You know, since this isn't really an error that *I* have made, maybe it would be okay if I don't have to wait in the waiting room?" And she is nice. And she says, "Of course," and writes "Walk Up" on the top of my form and tells me to go ahead on into the line to get the picture taken. This takes a blessedly short five minutes. But, the woman who is supposed to take my photograph is terrible. She raises her voice at me and tells me if I do not have the appropriate receipt I will have to go home and come back again. Feeling infantilized, and slightly criminalized, and trying not to cry, I pull out all of my papers that I brought with me and simply give her the stack. She fills out a form that says I do not have to pay and shoves overthing back at me. She turns to her computer and flatly commands, "Smile."
And, apparantly, I did. The license came in the mail today -- finally.
The smile is not a very happy one. I look sort of scared. In fact, it looks like I am flinching with my lips. It is an uneven smile, pulled up on my right side, just a bit. But my skin is clear, which is nice, and my hair has been freshly cut, but that smile . . . it looks like it has been waiting around since April, at least.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
reading, or studying?
Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005)
Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2004)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Joseph Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (2003)
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (2003)
Micahel Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750- 1850 (1978)
A friend, excited about books, recently asked me what I have plans to read over the holiday break. I replied, "I don't read books anymore."
Reading? No, not exactly. What I do with books is study them -- and I don't write that to gloat or with sass. I write it with a sense of loss.
I live with someone who reads and reads and reads books. Everything he can get his hands on. (He recently read the biography of Harpo Marx. Ask him about it. He absolutely loved it!) And when he says, "Wow, Chuck, you *really* need to read this book," I think "I would really like to" and then look at the stack of books I've chosen to study and teach for the next couple of months and know that it will not happen any time soon. That's what I mean by "reading," and that's what I mean by "loss." (Which of my classical-realist friends will comment that I *am* reading and the distinction is negligible?)
I know I should "make time" to read for pleasure whenever I can, but I feel obligated to my studies. The works I choose are often difficult, both conceptually and emotionally (see above list). I want to be able to master the material so that when I get into the classroom or sit down to write about it I can feel confident enough to be critical. Delving into prison studies means entering a world of terror, isolation, and helplessness, and I need to be strong enough to do this for the next several months. (And I wonder about the very formulation of these last sentences -- it isn't as if I am inside the prison. What does studying all of this *do* to the reader? I cannot "make time" but I am not "doing time," either. How is a sentence not unlike a "sentence?")
In addition to the theory and history above, I've also been studying Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes (1975), John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers (1984), and the collected works in H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (1998), which includes pieces by some of the most famous U.S. prison writers like George Jackson, Kathy Boudin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Assata Shakur, and Iceberg Slim.
If you are a literary and cultural critic, immersed in your studies, you forget that most people will be surprised by what you actually do for a living. They think of professors as wealthy-looking, tweed-jacket-wearing, large-house-dwelling, married white men who mostly help young people realize the true meaning of life or that we are all different in our own special way. Thank you for that, Hollywood. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom about my work. It was probably the first time I fully and openly explained what she was reluctant to find out -- that I was doing research and writing on the subject of lynching. I was scouring the NAACP archives looking for materials on the lynching of black soldiers, still in uniform, during the Red Summer of 1919. It was exhausting, depressing work. After a moment she said to me, "Are you ever going to, you know, write about something happy?"
I think of the literary critic Elaine Scarry, who wrote the inimitable book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), which takes on the subjects of war and torture in devastating (and eye-opening) ways, and who, later in life, wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just (1999), which, even if many critics thought it was silly, must have been so good for her to work on, for her own sake.
What keeps me going is that I know I am learning -- a lot. And I know I can write about this. The research on lynching led to two, important publications, which is the whole point, after all -- to make public what feels like, right now, is so private: me surrounded by a pile of books and notes, feeling a bit like a lunatic.
Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2004)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Joseph Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (2003)
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (2003)
Micahel Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750- 1850 (1978)
A friend, excited about books, recently asked me what I have plans to read over the holiday break. I replied, "I don't read books anymore."
Reading? No, not exactly. What I do with books is study them -- and I don't write that to gloat or with sass. I write it with a sense of loss.
I live with someone who reads and reads and reads books. Everything he can get his hands on. (He recently read the biography of Harpo Marx. Ask him about it. He absolutely loved it!) And when he says, "Wow, Chuck, you *really* need to read this book," I think "I would really like to" and then look at the stack of books I've chosen to study and teach for the next couple of months and know that it will not happen any time soon. That's what I mean by "reading," and that's what I mean by "loss." (Which of my classical-realist friends will comment that I *am* reading and the distinction is negligible?)
I know I should "make time" to read for pleasure whenever I can, but I feel obligated to my studies. The works I choose are often difficult, both conceptually and emotionally (see above list). I want to be able to master the material so that when I get into the classroom or sit down to write about it I can feel confident enough to be critical. Delving into prison studies means entering a world of terror, isolation, and helplessness, and I need to be strong enough to do this for the next several months. (And I wonder about the very formulation of these last sentences -- it isn't as if I am inside the prison. What does studying all of this *do* to the reader? I cannot "make time" but I am not "doing time," either. How is a sentence not unlike a "sentence?")
In addition to the theory and history above, I've also been studying Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes (1975), John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers (1984), and the collected works in H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (1998), which includes pieces by some of the most famous U.S. prison writers like George Jackson, Kathy Boudin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Assata Shakur, and Iceberg Slim.
If you are a literary and cultural critic, immersed in your studies, you forget that most people will be surprised by what you actually do for a living. They think of professors as wealthy-looking, tweed-jacket-wearing, large-house-dwelling, married white men who mostly help young people realize the true meaning of life or that we are all different in our own special way. Thank you for that, Hollywood. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom about my work. It was probably the first time I fully and openly explained what she was reluctant to find out -- that I was doing research and writing on the subject of lynching. I was scouring the NAACP archives looking for materials on the lynching of black soldiers, still in uniform, during the Red Summer of 1919. It was exhausting, depressing work. After a moment she said to me, "Are you ever going to, you know, write about something happy?"
I think of the literary critic Elaine Scarry, who wrote the inimitable book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), which takes on the subjects of war and torture in devastating (and eye-opening) ways, and who, later in life, wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just (1999), which, even if many critics thought it was silly, must have been so good for her to work on, for her own sake.
What keeps me going is that I know I am learning -- a lot. And I know I can write about this. The research on lynching led to two, important publications, which is the whole point, after all -- to make public what feels like, right now, is so private: me surrounded by a pile of books and notes, feeling a bit like a lunatic.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
sign here
Confronting plagiarists is an act so dreadful that I find myself in a panic, having to take time out to calm myself down through breathing exercises and to rehearse a psychological narration that tells me to take it easy.
Rooted in a not-too-distant history of shocking encounters in which students have flown into an aggressive rage, all directed at me, the confrontation might (if you are me) be likened to early-childhood run-ins with bullies, whose certain postures and words you learn too late to understand as immediate predecesors to the awful swinging of fists.
Childhood traumas aside, the only way to cope, for me, is to calm down -- way down. I must think and perform empathy. I must ease into the whole thing gradually, like this:
"Good morning, _____, how are you? Good to see you. O, before I forget, let's step outside for a minute, there is something I want to run by you. Let's sit. How about on this bench over here? So, _____, you know what plagiarism is, right? MmHm. You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Yeah, I have to have you fill out this paper work . . ."
[Wait for student to deny plagiarism three or four times in a row and ask, helplessly, "How could this be happening?"]
"See here, how I've highlighted the stuff you took from this web site? And now see here where you have the same thing? I know, you must be very, very tired. Listen, go ahead and sign this -- unless you want to arrange a meeting with the Chair and explain this in a different way -- no? Okay, then sign here. Look, since this is an automatic failure, there really is no need to take the final. No need for extra stress, right? Alright, take this copy of the form and go ahead and get yourself some coffee or tea or something. And, promise me you will never, ever do this again? Promise? Good. Take care now, and don't ignore me when you see me in the hallway next semester!"
I had to do this twice today. Both times, it was blessedly easy. No anger, just a little bit of crying and eventual acceptance. In the second case, I was actually thanked.
But it is exhausting. Having always been the kind of student who was in awe of his professors and who would never dream of plagiarizing, much less raising his voice to a professor or verbally attacking any of them, I find it unbelieveable when this happens -- not just to me, but to all of my colleagues as well.
I told myself I would never blog at work, but now look what I've gone ahead and done.
Rooted in a not-too-distant history of shocking encounters in which students have flown into an aggressive rage, all directed at me, the confrontation might (if you are me) be likened to early-childhood run-ins with bullies, whose certain postures and words you learn too late to understand as immediate predecesors to the awful swinging of fists.
Childhood traumas aside, the only way to cope, for me, is to calm down -- way down. I must think and perform empathy. I must ease into the whole thing gradually, like this:
"Good morning, _____, how are you? Good to see you. O, before I forget, let's step outside for a minute, there is something I want to run by you. Let's sit. How about on this bench over here? So, _____, you know what plagiarism is, right? MmHm. You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Yeah, I have to have you fill out this paper work . . ."
[Wait for student to deny plagiarism three or four times in a row and ask, helplessly, "How could this be happening?"]
"See here, how I've highlighted the stuff you took from this web site? And now see here where you have the same thing? I know, you must be very, very tired. Listen, go ahead and sign this -- unless you want to arrange a meeting with the Chair and explain this in a different way -- no? Okay, then sign here. Look, since this is an automatic failure, there really is no need to take the final. No need for extra stress, right? Alright, take this copy of the form and go ahead and get yourself some coffee or tea or something. And, promise me you will never, ever do this again? Promise? Good. Take care now, and don't ignore me when you see me in the hallway next semester!"
I had to do this twice today. Both times, it was blessedly easy. No anger, just a little bit of crying and eventual acceptance. In the second case, I was actually thanked.
But it is exhausting. Having always been the kind of student who was in awe of his professors and who would never dream of plagiarizing, much less raising his voice to a professor or verbally attacking any of them, I find it unbelieveable when this happens -- not just to me, but to all of my colleagues as well.
I told myself I would never blog at work, but now look what I've gone ahead and done.
Monday, December 11, 2006
not at all
This will not be one of those posts you see on people's blogs that make you think, "Why is this blogger even bothering?"
This couldn't possibly be the kind of post that sheepishly apologizes for having been so lax on updating the blog, and then muses, in a predictable fashion, about what might be preventing attentiveness to the blog.
Who, I ask, would be banal enough to actually write a tedious explanation about how busy the blogger has been, especially with work, so much so that, when time makes itself available, the last thing the blogger wants to do is natter on about recent surprises, foibles, failures, confusions, ironies, memories, dreams, or confessions?
You will not feel embarrassed for me as I self-consciously describe how the last post, a poem about depression, makes me feel like I must drum up something wickedly funny or artfully observant to clear the blog air.
Really, there will be no need to post a comment that says, "Glad to have you back!" or "Took you long enough . . ." or "That's okay, Chuck, we all get stuck every once in a while."
You will not have to cringe, think I have run out of ideas, hope that I get out of my rut, wonder if I am actually boring, or think ill of me because I have ended the post with the two-word pseudo-sentence "More later."
No, no -- not this post.
This couldn't possibly be the kind of post that sheepishly apologizes for having been so lax on updating the blog, and then muses, in a predictable fashion, about what might be preventing attentiveness to the blog.
Who, I ask, would be banal enough to actually write a tedious explanation about how busy the blogger has been, especially with work, so much so that, when time makes itself available, the last thing the blogger wants to do is natter on about recent surprises, foibles, failures, confusions, ironies, memories, dreams, or confessions?
You will not feel embarrassed for me as I self-consciously describe how the last post, a poem about depression, makes me feel like I must drum up something wickedly funny or artfully observant to clear the blog air.
Really, there will be no need to post a comment that says, "Glad to have you back!" or "Took you long enough . . ." or "That's okay, Chuck, we all get stuck every once in a while."
You will not have to cringe, think I have run out of ideas, hope that I get out of my rut, wonder if I am actually boring, or think ill of me because I have ended the post with the two-word pseudo-sentence "More later."
No, no -- not this post.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
plummet
this morning's dark yard. tiny yellow leaves
flutter and drift. like snow. a steel sky.
black wool hangs over downtown's silver buildings.
wind whips. from 70 to 40
in less than an hour. now into 30s.
the last day. bourbon soaked egg
nog on desk in plastic bowl. plastic
ladel and paper cups. workplace holiday party. get buzzed. listen
how the children have a lot of reasons and really
who cares? papers stacked
in corner of office must mean someone is
smart. more egg nog. some crackers.
cheese. now
put self into car.
drive to the cure.
a mixed tape from 1987. it's B-sides.
that song: "man inside my mouth." suddenly high school
and your room in the dark. lying on the floor. wanting to
die. so badly. your plans to run away. how long ago that was. how
important.
how the grey
sky now matches your hair. turn right
into it. a nearly-frozen 35
by midnight.
flutter and drift. like snow. a steel sky.
black wool hangs over downtown's silver buildings.
wind whips. from 70 to 40
in less than an hour. now into 30s.
the last day. bourbon soaked egg
nog on desk in plastic bowl. plastic
ladel and paper cups. workplace holiday party. get buzzed. listen
how the children have a lot of reasons and really
who cares? papers stacked
in corner of office must mean someone is
smart. more egg nog. some crackers.
cheese. now
put self into car.
drive to the cure.
a mixed tape from 1987. it's B-sides.
that song: "man inside my mouth." suddenly high school
and your room in the dark. lying on the floor. wanting to
die. so badly. your plans to run away. how long ago that was. how
important.
how the grey
sky now matches your hair. turn right
into it. a nearly-frozen 35
by midnight.
Friday, November 24, 2006
how are you enjoying the demolition?
The noise of the deconstruction crew tearing down the Westheimer Square apartments has been going since 6a.m. I hear this crashing, slamming, splintering, dragging, motor gunning, and "I'm in reverse" beeping every morning but, usually, by the time I am showered and out the door, I forget all about it. To be home on a day off and have it as a constant sound track is nerve-jangling. Believe it.
Yesterday, when the streets of Montrose were eerily and beautifully deserted, I surveyed the damage. Almost half of the complex is gone, and the other half torn open, waiting for a giant claw to smash it to pieces. Rooms ripped in half. A bathroom with the floor torn out, but the toilet, looking a bit embarrassed, still standing. The wood, metal, plastic, and tile remains of what people called their homes have been neatly pushed into giant piles.
A couple of days ago, as I was walking back from the grocery store, I bumped into our next door neighbor (to the west of us). This is the neighbor who lives right next to the fence that divides the old complex from our dead end street. He and his partner live upstairs in a 1920-era brick duplex, and they run some kind of interior design business downstairs. They also have a gross little ratty-looking grey dog that shits all over our front yard (and they never pick it up) and yelps at the demolition noise. Their house is lovely, I think, but I also think all the 1920s-era buildings on this block are lovely, including the white brick one across the street that resembles a sad face with a black eye.
But I'm getting away from the point, which is this: When I saw the neighbor I asked, "How are you enjoying the demolition?", thinking we'd share some common annoyance about the noise, dirt, and loss of local architecture and community. But his reply was, "I cannot begin to tell you how happy that noise makes me. I'll take it any day over the cha cha music!" Cha cha music? O, of course, you racist white homo, the tejano music that residents of the complex played out of their station wagons in the evening. The music I enjoyed listening to because it went well with the sound of the church bells in the evening, and the smell of coffee that wafted over from Deidrich's coffee shop (now closed). That music.
This guy bothers me for many reasons. Last week, when Hank and I were outside thinking about doing something to cover the cement grates that lead to the crawl space under the apartment, he came over and chatted with us about the building. When we said we wished the landlord would do something about the crawl space, he said something like, "It would be even better if he just tore the whole thing down and built something new," and then he laughed and touched his moustache, nodding as if we were we all in agreement about that.
But I was stunned by this ugly comment. It made me feel bad.
It wasn't until later that night that I mustered up the courage to even tell Hank that the neighbor's words hurt me, and Hank agreed that it was a nasty thing to say. Why? Because it means that he doesn't like what he lives next to. And Hank and I do like living here, even though there are many, many problems that come with the place. It's a class thing: He's a property owner who couldn't be happier that they are about to put up what he called "very high end" condos -- four stories that will tower over our duplex, blocking out some sky. I dread this intrusion because it means that more suburbanites will move into the city, thinking it both "cool" and, now that they have four floors separating themselves from the horrible, horrible street, "safe" to live in Montrose. This guy has dollar signs in his eyes because it means, for him, lots of new business.
(I do enjoy the fussy design queens that work for our neighbor. They come in the morning, dressed in khakis and crisply ironed shirts, and smoke cigarettes out back while gossiping about their friends. They are very sweet to me, waving hello and mugging, as if caught doing something wicked, and then laughing, asking me how everything is going. A couple of them hold their hands limp at the wrist as they move about up and down the driveway. I always appreciate a queer who embodies a stereotype.)
In any case, have you realized that it has been a full year since I helped Cosmo come forth from his mother's womb? It's true. Cosmo is one year old, and Hank and I are about to walk up Hazard for the open house birthday party. Watching him spiral out of his mother and into the hands of the midwife was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing I have ever seen.
Yesterday, when the streets of Montrose were eerily and beautifully deserted, I surveyed the damage. Almost half of the complex is gone, and the other half torn open, waiting for a giant claw to smash it to pieces. Rooms ripped in half. A bathroom with the floor torn out, but the toilet, looking a bit embarrassed, still standing. The wood, metal, plastic, and tile remains of what people called their homes have been neatly pushed into giant piles.
A couple of days ago, as I was walking back from the grocery store, I bumped into our next door neighbor (to the west of us). This is the neighbor who lives right next to the fence that divides the old complex from our dead end street. He and his partner live upstairs in a 1920-era brick duplex, and they run some kind of interior design business downstairs. They also have a gross little ratty-looking grey dog that shits all over our front yard (and they never pick it up) and yelps at the demolition noise. Their house is lovely, I think, but I also think all the 1920s-era buildings on this block are lovely, including the white brick one across the street that resembles a sad face with a black eye.
But I'm getting away from the point, which is this: When I saw the neighbor I asked, "How are you enjoying the demolition?", thinking we'd share some common annoyance about the noise, dirt, and loss of local architecture and community. But his reply was, "I cannot begin to tell you how happy that noise makes me. I'll take it any day over the cha cha music!" Cha cha music? O, of course, you racist white homo, the tejano music that residents of the complex played out of their station wagons in the evening. The music I enjoyed listening to because it went well with the sound of the church bells in the evening, and the smell of coffee that wafted over from Deidrich's coffee shop (now closed). That music.
This guy bothers me for many reasons. Last week, when Hank and I were outside thinking about doing something to cover the cement grates that lead to the crawl space under the apartment, he came over and chatted with us about the building. When we said we wished the landlord would do something about the crawl space, he said something like, "It would be even better if he just tore the whole thing down and built something new," and then he laughed and touched his moustache, nodding as if we were we all in agreement about that.
But I was stunned by this ugly comment. It made me feel bad.
It wasn't until later that night that I mustered up the courage to even tell Hank that the neighbor's words hurt me, and Hank agreed that it was a nasty thing to say. Why? Because it means that he doesn't like what he lives next to. And Hank and I do like living here, even though there are many, many problems that come with the place. It's a class thing: He's a property owner who couldn't be happier that they are about to put up what he called "very high end" condos -- four stories that will tower over our duplex, blocking out some sky. I dread this intrusion because it means that more suburbanites will move into the city, thinking it both "cool" and, now that they have four floors separating themselves from the horrible, horrible street, "safe" to live in Montrose. This guy has dollar signs in his eyes because it means, for him, lots of new business.
(I do enjoy the fussy design queens that work for our neighbor. They come in the morning, dressed in khakis and crisply ironed shirts, and smoke cigarettes out back while gossiping about their friends. They are very sweet to me, waving hello and mugging, as if caught doing something wicked, and then laughing, asking me how everything is going. A couple of them hold their hands limp at the wrist as they move about up and down the driveway. I always appreciate a queer who embodies a stereotype.)
In any case, have you realized that it has been a full year since I helped Cosmo come forth from his mother's womb? It's true. Cosmo is one year old, and Hank and I are about to walk up Hazard for the open house birthday party. Watching him spiral out of his mother and into the hands of the midwife was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing I have ever seen.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
justice for janitors (houston)
For those of you not in Houston, you can follow the incredible demonstrations and protests in which activist workers from Houston and around the nation are participating regarding just wages and health care for janitors at http://justiceforjanitors.blogspot.com/. You'll be able to see HPD at its, um, finest.
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