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Grappling

Nada Gordon3 Comments

This thought: the aim of a revolution should be not simply a redistribution of power and resources but also a practical application of caritas-love. Grappling with the disappointment of eros-love, the eros-love that was supposed to “solve everything,” to be the magic balm on the open wounds of the past, makes me suspicious of the ability of human beings to structure the best possible world for the greatest possible advantage to all. Is this just a terrible flaw in my thinking. Is it not even really thinking at all.

Depression really is just an awful bugbear of a thing.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

quinoa thingies

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I made some quinoa thingies.  They are pretty good.

I guess I used about a cup and a half of quinoa flour.  I added about a cup of chopped moroccan oil-cured olives, a little salt and pepper, and sort of a lot of olive oil.  I’m sorry my measurements aren’t more precise.  Then maybe three tablespoons or so of water?  Not much, because the water makes them chewy, whereas the oil makes them flaky.  A sprinkle of fines herbes. I made flattish shapes in my palm, patting them flatter.  Those went on oiled baking sheets for ten minutes at 375 degrees, then flipped them and let them bake for another five minutes.

They are good. Careful of the salt: not too much, since the olives are salty.  The thingies (“crackers”?) have the texture of pie crust.  If you are a real baker you might want to consider rolling them out or something.  Anyway I like them, they are addictive: the bitterness of the quinoa flour against the nutty bitterness of the olives.

They are good with just salt, too.  Fleurs de sel if you got it. Yum.

very small pink clump

Nada Gordon1 Comment

few things are sadder than the sight
of a thin gold anklet trapped beneath
a suntan-colored nylon. the people
in the morning clutch their warm cups.
they have water bottles and sensible
shoes, earbuds, catalogs, and weary
faces.  the world pulses with violence.
maws are gateways to realms as mysterious
as they are frightening. a garbage car
slithers into it, the particularly
frightening vagina embroidered
on soiled vintage linen. how are they
not beset constantly with anxiety?
the activists take to the streets, maws
gaping. a man’s calf nearly as big as my
waist, which also makes me worry.
a garbage car slithers into it.
the absorption rate for the Soul
Eater’s melée attacks is increased
by 5%.  I wanted to put the lobster
into a comic, because he’s been
distressingly absent… on soiled
vintage linen.  gaping maw. many
of these links to my poetry are broken.
why are women so angry?
I also clutch a paper cup. the world
pulses with violence. illness waits
as ninja. Nearly half a century old,
I pop a pill. I’ve been a busy little
bandit lately.  young gulls.  you are
here: foul grin. yes, it swam up his
penis and into his bladder. it is human
nature to have fears and phobias:
mutant wooly worm alpaca.
why are women so angry?
they always throw things like
an angry gorilla when they get mad.
whazzat? critique zombie sex
feels good duh.  why are women
so angry?  life is harder for chicks,
their all pissed off cause they feel
feelings.  how to use slither in a
sentence.  example sentences
with the word slither.  I wanted
to put the lobster in a comic. why
are women so angry? anyone already
say “sand in Va-J-J?”     they cannot
even cook a decent meal anymore so
why bother. venomous email young gulls
foul grin.  I tried to hold it and take it out
but the eel was too slippery to be held
and it disappeared up my penis. Sar
Chasm is a massive socially progressive
nation.  do they feel nothing? with their
tote bags and lack of parity. is he going to
“marry” her, too? will his mother “welcome
her into the bosom of the family”? you’d
be angry too if you bled 1 week a month besides
you should never trust anything that bleeds
that much and doesn’t die. young gulls. trashy
sisters. horrible shiny dresses. abandoned
me. the main goals of feminism were destruction
of the nuclear family unit and emaciation
of the males. paper-cup clutchers: “mama.”
my students’ fresh faces. women rely on
emotion and not so much analytical
rationalization, in short they don’t think
as much. a very small pink clump.  catalogs.
you just want some female to feel sorry
for you and take care of you and wash
your stinky underwear and your dirty
dishes and cook for you. hello!  I am
the virgin mary magdalene! I am carrying
miraculous triplets similar to the virgin
mary. all things astronomy. you are here:
foul grin.  why are women so angry? you
want to sit on your lazy asses all day,
and watch tv, and drinkin beer and smoke
dope. I tried to hold it and take it out. sex
feels good duh. sometimes it amazes me.
the sensible work shoes. gateways.
a particularly frightening-looking vagina. 
the throat, gullet, or jaws especially of
a voracious animal. many of these links
to my poetry are broken. he’s been
distressingly absent: the insatiable lobster
at the end of the course. The insatiable clown
prepared to go shopping, but realized
that he actually forgot his wallet. he actually
forgot his gullet.  he actually forgot his
particulaly frightening vagina-Cicada;
Clouded Leopard; Clown Anemonefish;
Coelacanth; Common Earthworm;
Common Loon. unicorns for
socialism. the insatiable clown
at the end of the course, many
of these links to my poetry
are broken

 

contusion

Nada Gordon1 Comment

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I have a “contusion” on my right ring toe, which means that for two weeks I cannot dance or do yoga, according to the toe doctor at the clinic I went to yesterday.
In the lobby I was almost beaten up by a Latina twice my size in pink flipflops because I and the other patients in that hellish ghetto waiting room were trying to watch Erin Brockovich on the TV monitor there and she started playing Lady Gaga really loudly on her iPod and I said to her, “it’s a little loud.”
She was hateful, but I tried to stay compassionate by reminding myself that she probably had to be tough to survive, probably had been raped by a series of stepdads, probably had no job or a shit one, etc.  I hate this country.  I was trying to explain to two of my Chinese students why this country is so hateful.  They haven’t been here for very long and they think NYC is paradise.  I told them the story of the obnoxious woman in the waiting room and said no one in China would act like that, no one in Japan would act like that.
Anyway after the encounter the staff moved me into another part of the clinic, a hallway in the inner sanctum that was even more like hell.  Everyone looked so ill and desperate.  One older sort of drugged-out looking black guy was talking to someone on his cellphone, saying, “Almost done with all this medical crap.  They keep putting white people in line ahead of me. You know I don’t like that and they want to get me out of here as soon as they can. I just need to get my medication.”
Some parents wheeled out their emaciated teenage son in a chair.  He looked as if he had some kind of mental disorder as well.  The doctor was a very beautiful dark-skinned woman with long hair in an only slightly frizzy ponytail.  I admired her.
Anyway after being forbidden by the doctor to dance or do yoga for two weeks I was in a foul mood…and was sulking all the way home, but then a woman walked past me with her arm in a sling and her ankle bandaged up and I reminded myself how very much worse it could be.
I have a lot on my mind, I have too many responsibilities, it’s hard to make poetry right now. For one thing I’m teaching in the mornings and so I can’t just sit down at work and spill out poetry as I can when I teach in the afternoons.   After teaching I sometimes get a little zombified. I don’t know, I feel confused, I’m in a bit of a limbo space right now.  I thought I had some idea, some picture, of how my “future” would unfold, hazy though it was, when I was married.  Then suddenly the big seismic thing and now… what? I know this is an opportunity for all sorts of things to happen, it’s just hard to be clearheaded still, I’m still, a year in, trying to put pieces back together. I’m told it really takes two years for the feelings to settle, and for the imagination and memory to stop going to such horrible and alarming places.
I loved this poem I got on one of Buck Downs’ poem/postcards (The linebreaks are a little different in the original.):

         thanks in reverse
               internal stakeholders
               rage’s tart strain
           fantasizes the experience
my secret currency
lifeless as a pound
of mercury dimes
my condition is a pleasure
good way to get run over

What a good poem this is! 
And I still have conversations with them, those people, the infidels, in my head.  Sometimes I try to tell them how they misunderstood me, sometimes I wish them ill, although I know I shouldn’t. 
My mother in law just read this blog, I noticed in my stats.  She was so unjust to me.  Her narrative was so totally wrong, completely skewed, wrong wrong wrong.  I was thinking I wanted to make a list of all the terribly wrong unfair tactless horrible things people said to me in the wake of the mess.  But then, you know, they would be there even more reified and objectionable, just staring me in the face.
Lately I’ve been thinking, you know?, people should just be sterilized at birth.
Now I have to go get the laundry.

speaking of women in the 17th century

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Today, a poem by Margaret Cavendish, with nods to AB

[I Language want, to dresse my Fancies in,]
I Language want, to dresse my Fancies in, 
The Haire’s uncurl’d, the Garments loose, and thin; 
Had they but Silver Lace to make them gay, 
Would be more courted then in poore array. 
Or had they Art, might make a better show; 
But they are plaine, yet cleanly doe they goe. 
The world in Bravery doth take delight, 
And glistering Shews doe more attract the sight; 
And every one doth honour a rich Hood, 
As if the outside made the inside good. 
And every one doth bow, and give the place, 
Not for the Mans sake, but the Silver Lace. 
Let me intreat in my poore Booke’s behalfe, 
That all may not adore the Golden Calf. 
Consider, pray, Gold hath no life therein, 
And Life in Nature is the richest thing. 
So Fancy is the Soul in Poetrie, 
And if not good, a Poem ill must be. 
Be just, let Fancy have the upper place, 
And then my Verses may perchance finde grace. 
If flattering Language all the Passions rule, 
Then Sense, I feare, will be a meere dull Foole.

myopic hindsight

Nada Gordon1 Comment

I’m reading Lawrence Lessig’s  Free Culture on my iPhone (I enjoy reading on my iPhone, do you?). He makes the interesting comparison of the pre-WayBack-machine internet to the newspapers in Orwell’s 1984, which are constantly edited to conform with the government-sanctioned version of the present.

I love this early sci-fi image: “Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was no way ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the story that was printed on the date published on the paper.” I imagine the workers all as women dressed in the same drab grey uniforms and grey headscarves and no facial expressions.

There are ways around the WayBack machine, actually, which any savvy girl can figure out without too much trouble. Suppression of history is still totally possible.

But with older technologies, like, say, paper, there are other, more primitive ways of altering the public record.

A couple of years ago I went to visit my mother-in-law, who seemed very happy to show me a number of family albums.  There was something strange about them. In many photos a person had been cut out. She had excised all of the pictures of my husband’s first wife, and when I asked her why, she said that she hadn’t wanted to offend me or hurt my feelings.

I found this quite bizarre.  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known that my husband had been married once before he married me. I don’t understand the sort of family culture of denial/secrecy that would drive anyone to bowdlerize a photo album.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a Jewess? I like my history all up front, unretouched, and in plain view.  Else: condemned to repeat, and repeat, and repeat….