News from the besieged land of Najwa Karam and Tyrian purple:
Month: July 2006
Who doesn’t love this bit from one of RFK’s most famous speeches?
“It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
I see it every time I ride down DeKalb Ave. on the B38 bus on the way home from Pratt.
The inverse of what Bobby was talking about could also be true, even if it seems too simple a chain of causality: even a tiny ripple of negativity might build a current which could sweep down the most laboriously forged human creations and bonds.
Some certain person needs to stop sending out those (at this point sizeable) ripples right now — and to recant what he has been saying and ask for forgiveness from those he has wronged. There’s no point in his continuing to foist his childhood traumas on innocent others over and over and over again. Particularly if he is in fact as self-aware as I suspect this person is, despite his bouts with nutty behavior.
I know I should follow the advice of others and not pay any attention to that behavior for fear of reinforcing it — and besides, I’m not the victim, so why should I care? Honestly, this isn’t intended as a reinforcement, and I hope it doesn’t function as such. It’s just… I’m a teacher… I can’t bear to see someone needlessly perpetuating this adrenaline cycle on himself. I can’t bear the painful but all-too-common paradox of seeing someone who wants to be loved turning himself into a pariah. Obviously, it’s his choice, and his behavior for which he needs to be responsible. And it’s none of my business. But this is a plea…and my last word on the subject.
Except that blogging (writing) is not a contact sport. That’s only one fucked-up paradigm out of billions possible.
Interior Squirrel
Went with Marianne yesterday to the Into me / Out of me exhibit at PS1, to hearCarolee Schneemann give a lecture on her oeuvre, and on the relationship of bodies to pleasure and to war. She showed parts of Viet/Flakes, as relevant today as it was in 1965, and Vulva’s Morphia, and talked at length on Interior Scroll.
One very funny anecdote involved a Danish interviewer who asked her, “how could you stand the pain?” of the Interior Scroll. Carolee responded that she had all sorts of unguent fluids available (avocado oil is the one I remember) to facilitate its ease of use. The interviewer said, “but the pain, the pain! Those claws!”
Carolee said, “claws?”
“Yes,” said the interviewer,”the claws of the interior SQUIRREL!”
Ah… the joy of translation.
Carolee referred wryly to the fact that only two of her works had ever been sold — all the rest are “in the shed.” She acknowledged that she has received critical acclaim, but also that, over the years, she has been called “pornographer,” “too diaristic,” “too heterosexual,” and any number of other unfair characterizations.
It’s an outrage that her work has been marginalized to the extent it has, given the centrality of the issues it raises. I thank her for her articulations.
Nemo
I’ve been watching TV programs to prepare for my consumerism class. After
viewing the first few episodes of “The Simple Life,” I thought, what
if we invited Paris and Nicole to stay with us in our Brooklyn apt.?
And call it “The Complex Life.” We could take them to the BPC — can
you imagine, like, introducing them to Ange Mlinko? How funny that
would be! And the camera operators would have a ball filming their
reactions to the cockroach colony that lives around our kitchen sink:
“ewww~!”
I really loved the scene in The Simple Life where Nicole had to check
a cow for pregnancy, so she puts on this long plastic glove and…
essentially… fists the cow. Then, when she pulls her arm out, she
chases Paris around the dairy farm threatening to smear her with
bovine vagina juice! O My God!
Also when the “girls” (as everyone calls them in the show, though they
are in their twenties) put these words up on the fast-food franchise
marquee: “1/2 price anal salty weiner bugers” — we should maybe
invite them to be on the flarf list.
TV sure has changed since I was a young lass.
I’m anemic. Again. Don’t want to do anything. So… tired….
Otohime 