Author: Nada Gordon

Overheard on leaving the theater (deep in Brooklyn) where G. and I had just seen Fahrenheit 9/11:

(One middle-aged woman talking to another in a somehow Southern accent): I DON’T CARE IF WE HAVE TO WRITE IN MICKEY MOUSE — THAT BOY’S GOT TO GO!

That the Washington post’s web site entitled “John Edwards on the issues” should begin with his stand on abortion, that abortion is seriously allowed to be an issue of such magnitude in this supposedly “advanced” civilization, and that there are those who continue to view the termination of a pregnancy in the most simplistic of terms Manichean, says to me that we have not come all that much further than those cultures that keep women in chador or stone them as adulterers.

Government and everyone else out of my body unless I grant permission to enter! That goes for doctors, lovers, foods, and foetuses! There is, apparently, not a lot I can do about allergens or environmental toxins.

Viewed:

The 5 Obstructions

Control Room

Imelda

Very interested in 1) her upcoming BABY and 2) this list of things Johanna wants to write about — in particular, why she hates Vogue magazine. I hate Vogue magazine, too. I got one of those cheap teachers’ union subscriptions to it, and I hate it. I also hate JANE magazine, although it’s posing as the anti-Vogue. I used to like the British Marie-Claire, but only for its sensationalized articles about the tribulations of less fortunate sisters in faroff places. And even then I only read it at the salon. Another magazine that I subscribe to that I hate is Time Out New York, which is edited by a gauche and vulgar imbecile and marketed to brainless hedonists (wild glazed smiles on their plastic faces). The listings are good but who has time?

A little love note

This post is just a little love note to Stephanie, for whose presence & enthusiastic support, not to mention frequent delirious insights, I am grateful.

e.g.: The real pain of being unable to enjoy the pleasures of a formerly loved behavior or object.

Some facts about Chaka Khan:

In her teens she read Baraka avidly and “had a jones for the Last Poets.”

She co-wrote “Tell Me Something Good” with Stevie Wonder and didn’t get credit for it. She claims, though, that she isn’t angry about that.

Guilty of lusting after… authenticity… whatever that means.

Thinking perhaps that it doesn’t exist.

The allure of “the immigrant”

is not just about xenophilia

& their heroicism

although these things are very important.

It’s also of course, about the vestiges of “authenticity” they carry.

The perceived vestiges.

I know that actually “authenticity” is not even an authentic category.

Nothing is in fact more authentic than anything else, in a cosmic sense.

But I suppose, “fancy makes it so.”

“Authenticity” (the lust for) is definitely a kind of romanticism.

A la Rousseau (Jean-Jacques), I daresay (tho he’s been mostly discredited, perhaps rightly).

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And then there’s the xenophilia. What *about* that?

Contempt for this ikky baby culture — whose residual freedoms I nonetheless enjoy.

Xenophilia itself is privilege. Or is it?

Is the lust of a citizen in a developing country for “things American” not also a kind of xenophilia? How arrogant of me to only see it from this direction.

Purchased: (and half read)

CHAKA! :Through the Fire

I really LOVE Chaka Khan.

Some of my summer reading:

Monica Ali, Brick Lane

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

Sarah MacDonald, Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure

Donald Ritchie, The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Warren Lehrer & Judith Sloan, Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America

Or maybe… maybe… it’s Jorie Graham?