Thank you

So condemning in its honesty.  


http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html

Hard

...first measly attempts at haiku.  And finding something worthwhile.  I feel horrible with myself and am so critical of everything I do, working so hard to be so much better, so much different, so much less me.  Getting nowhere and can't get out of bed in the mornings, which quickly become afternoons - painful for such horrible reasons. 

10.20.2011

searing eyes critique

valleys pockets folds of mine

the stark nudity

sitting lazy now

another day gone again

why do I do this

soft lonely girl sits

books and flashbacks twirl her mind

healing is too hard

time is a privilege

I have so much of it that

inner demons haunt

Heard.

There is a genre of music called cowpunk.  How wonderful is that?!  A punk-country fusion with one of the most compelling labels I've ever heard.  

(Image from http://www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/June-2010/Cowpunk/)

Choice.

Do you want to make money and impress people with your corner office, $50,000 Mercedes, 4500-square-foot-house, tailored suits, swimming pool, Sun Valley-acquired tan...?  If these are your goals, tuck your kids into daycare, drink your milk of magnesia, and stop simpering about 60-hour work weeks.  You've made your choice.

(Andy Dappen)

System.

New Humanitarian had standard subjects, like history and math, and Danya had many hours of homework a week. But Bogin added courses like antimanipulation, which was intended to give children tools to decipher commercial or political messages. He taught a required class called myshleniye, which means “thinking,” as in critical thinking. It was based in part on the work of a dissident Soviet educational philosopher named Georgy Shchedrovitsky, who argued that there were three ways of thinking: abstract, verbal and representational. To comprehend the meaning of something, you had to use all three.

When I asked Bogin to explain Shchedrovitsky, he asked a question. “Does 2 + 2 = 4? No! Because two cats plus two sausages is what? Two cats. Two drops of water plus two drops of water? One drop of water.”

From there, the theories became more complex. In practice, though, the philosophy meant that Bogin delighted in barraging children with word problems and puzzles to force them to think broadly. It was the opposite of the rote memorization of the Soviet system.

(Clifford J. Levy

exerpt from "My Family's Experiment in Extreme Schooling"

NYTimes.com)

President.

I really believe that if every American spent about ten minutes on this website, What the Fuck Has Obama Done So Far, we would be less prone to irate outbursts of hatred and following others' condemning opinions like docile little sheep.  I mean, come on!  The man is a legislative powerhouse. 

Taken as single accomplishments, I can easily understand why his political efficacy can be challenged.  I mean, who cares about reversing the "global gag rule" to allow U.S. aid to organizations regardless of whether they provide abortions?  I don't have a job, I need money, and the economy is pretty far from ideal at the moment.  The global gag rule is not really of primary concern in my life at the moment.

Taken not even as a whole (that would be too overwhelming for me), but in many bite-sized tidbits provided by What the Fuck Has Obama Done So Far, it is clear to me that our President prioritizes a lot of values that I myself hold dear.  And he has tirelessly worked to put those values, goals, and ideals into action through legislative change. 

Some of the feats are almost unimaginable - like giving the FDA the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of tobacco for the first time (Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act), or improving average fuel economy standards (35.5 mpg starting in 2016).

I worked on the campaign in 2008, but I am not a die hard supporter of Obama.  In my opinion, he needs to prove himself over and over - the presidency certainly isn't a position that allows for inaction.  By frequently investigating the man and his work, however, I remain assured that he is acting with the best interests of ALL Americans in mind.  And I really, really like his grassroots funding and insistence on transparency.  

Also check out Recovery.gov and Serve.gov for two thought-provoking websites (brought to you by our President).

renewables

"There is only one effective, sustainable way to produce “green jobs,” and that is with a fixed, durable, long-term price signal that raises the price of dirty fuels and thereby creates sustained consumer demand for, and sustained private sector investment in, renewables."

(Thomas L. Friedman

"Is It Weird Enough Yet?"

 NYTimes.com Op-Ed column

September 13th, 2011)

World.

Listening to "Pet Sounds" and thinking about how brilliant people are.

 

Sometimes I try to prevent myself from rediscovering TinyMixtapes.com, but then I accidentally find it again and spend precious seconds minutes hours lifetimes wanting to live, eat, and breathe these people and playlists.  Some favorites....

"My decadence is bigger than yours"

 Hard to go wrong with some Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Nine Inch Nails, and the Rolling Stones.

"You Say Potato, I Say Get the Fuck on the Dance Floor"

I'm in love.

Ellie Goulding, Brazilian Girls, Biggie, then some Justice, N.E.R.D., The Whip, Justin Timberlake.

"Strippers like good songs, too"

1.  Tom Waits, 2. Norah Jones, 3. Leonard Cohen, 4. Portishead...and we haven't even gotten to Kings of Leon, the White Stripes, or Emiliana Torrini.

"Stop being passive-aggressive and fucking hit me"

The Misfits, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, and lots of goodness.

"Music to Write Home About"

Yes yes yes yes YES.  I agree - expect a letter, 'cause I'm writing it.

Sufjan Stevens.  Deertick.  The Clash.  Granddady.  Bright Eyes.  Pavement.  Bob Dylan.

"I wanna fuck my roommate: the story of in-house sexual frustration"

These groups could easily compose a soundtrack to my life.

The Kinks.  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Feist.  Roy Orbison.  Yo La Tengo.  Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz.  Radiohead.  Mos Def.   

Other notable playlists:

"All I want to do is smoke a blunt, listen to dubstep, and have sex with you"

"I want to strap some headphones on my belly and blare some tunes to get my fetus excited to enter this world"

"Harsh noise guy meets indie pop princess; needs to prove accessible music sensibility"

"I'm a closet christian dying to come out"

"Hipsters, stop acting like you're in hell."

I think if I submitted a playlist request at this moment in time, it might be something like "I want too many things. Like to save the world."

Anyway.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

(Mother Teresa)

mine

my mind is havoc, teasing this scapegoat body that most label as mine

Repeat.

March 12th, 2007

I couldn’t sleep last night. That’s the worst, isn’t it? Lying there, wide awake, with nothing to do except think about how you REALLY should be sleeping right now and how tired you’re going to be in the morning. I know it happens to everyone.
I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about Adam; missing him and the idea of him. Missing having someone to care about like that, to wonder about his days and to leave little insignificant surprises on his desk. I was thinking about how absolutely pathetically desperate I am for that connection. However awful it seems, it almost doesn’t matter who the boy is. That’s terrible, but true. Recently I’ve been falling fast and hard for just about anyone who will reciprocate it, no matter how serious they are about starting something.
Anyways, I wrote three little poems/scribbles/whatevers. Scribbled them in my food journal, which has been woefully neglected recently save for lovesick poems and bold “fuck you”s.

I
I came to you for your long hugs and willingness,
Your twisted sheets and floppy Hair.
I came to you, let you so far in.
We saw what’s real, together.
But now I’ve forgotten
What is real?
This ripping, aching sob?
This jealousy, regret, sadness?
Nothing is real anymore,
not even the floppy hair.

II
We shared.
We shared our favorites, our dreams, our hopes.
We whispered randoms until we fell asleep,
Lips still forming.
We were real, silly and quite weird.

We stopped all that;
It meant nothing to one.
We stopped all that.

III
The cold walk, the sweatpants the anticipation.
The warm room, always music.
The warm boy, the warm voice, the warm guitar.
Touchy soft floppy swishy tangled legs and muffled.
Accepted.
“What do you need?”
ridiculous line drawings, funny only to two.
Two on the inside, two on the inside
Come back! I think we have the same mind…
Calling each other by our first names, our line drawings.
By whispers and gasps
And letting go, sinking into each other, falling,
calm loose soft sleep.
Morning glasses, music, smiles, classes, you made me so late again.
Repeat.

Lucky.

I've started to question- not just raise my hand in class when I don't understand what the professor is lecturing at me, but to really question who I am, what I am a part of, what I know, and how I want to live my life.  I've started to gain a bit more awareness of how my decisions weave into a complicated network of actions and choices and people and lives and futures and truths.  I've begun to see many things differently.  My values, words, activities, and thoughts are very different from what they have been in the past, and will probably continue to shift as I learn and question more in my life.

I'm learning what the phrase ESSE QUAM VIDERI really means (the Latin phrase I first encountered as a member of the Archons at Kenyon College).  It's become very different for me to just wear the phrase on an American Apparel shirt as opposed to actually living it.

I've started to really think about what I value and why I value it and how I incorporate (or fail to incorporate) my values into my day-to-day life.  Maybe I'm up in my head too much, or developing a debilitating guilt complex, or isolating myself, or acting like a crazy liberal college kid out of touch with the “real world,” or beginning to live in a way that doesn't mesh well with other lifestyles and choices.  Maybe I'm doing all of those things, but additionally taking steps to figure out who I am.

I made a list yesterday in the back of my Spanish class notebook titled “Things I Can Do.”  I wrote it mostly to identify things I can do that I am proud of as opposed to things I can do that I either don’t care about or am not proud of.  I made it very quickly.

Things I Can Do

-          boil an egg

-          identify sassafras

-          smile

-          use a spade

-          calm a crying baby

-          do laundry using washing and drying machines

-          sing all the words to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”

-          question

-          manipulate SPSS

-          fix a small issue with a toilet

-          buy a Mountain Dew from a vending machine

-          clean a bathroom

-          navigate the internet

-          break a sweat while sweeping

-          use a Phillips screwdriver

-          read newspapers, street signs, academic journal articles, books…

-          write papers for classes

-          recognize that I am very, very lucky

delighting.

A much more interesting, kind, adven-

turous, and joyful approach to life is to

begin to develop our curiosity, not caring

whether the object of our inquisitiveness is

bitter or sweet.  To lead a life that goes be-

yond pettiness and prejudice and always

wanting to make sure that everything turns

out on our terms, to lead a more pas-

sionate, full, and delightful life than that,

we must realize that we can endure a lot

of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding

out who we are and what this world is,

how we tick and how our world ticks, how

the whole thing just is.  If we're committed 

to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come

up against the least edge of pain, we're

going to run; we'll never know what's be-

yond that particular barrier or wall or fear-

ful thing.

--------------------------------------------------

                          Our wisdom is all mixed

up with what we call our neurosis.  Our

brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is

all mixed up with our craziness and our

confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any

good to try to get rid of our so-called neg-

ative aspects, because in that process we

also get rid of our basic wonderfulness.  We 

can lead our life so as to become more

awake to who we are and what we're doing.

The key is to wake up, to become more

alert, more inquisitive and curious about

ourselves.

--------------------------------------------------

      The point is that our true nature is not

some ideal that we have to live up to.  It's

who we are right now, and that's what we

can make friends with and celebrate.

--------------------------------------------------

In the same way, if we see our sp-called

limitations with clarity, precision, gentle-

ness, goodheartedness, and kindness and,

having seen them fully, then let go, open 

further, we begin to find that our world is

more vast and more refreshing and fasci-

nating than we had realized before.  In

other words, the key to feeling more whole

and less shut off and shut down is to be

able to see clearly who we are and what

we're doing.

           The innocent mistake that keeps us

caught in our own particular style of igno-

rance, unkindness, and shut-downness is

that we are never encouraged to see clearly

what is, with gentleness.  Instead, there's

a kind of basic misunderstanding that we

should try to be better than we already are,

that we should try to improve ourselves,

that we should try to get away from painful

things, and that if we could just learn how

to get away from the painful things, then

we would be happy.  That is the innocent,

naive misunderstanding that we all share, 

which keeps us unhappy.

--------------------------------------------------

Joy has to do with seeing how big, how

completely unobstructed, and how pre-

cious things are.  Resenting what happens

to you and complaining about your life are

like refusing to smell the wild roses when

you go for a morning walk, or like being

so blind that you don't see a huge black

raven when it lands in the tree that you're 

sitting under.  We can get so caught up in

our own personal pain or worries that we

don't notice that the wind has come up

or that somebody has put flowers on the

diningroom table or that when we walked

out in the morning, the flags weren't up,

and that when we came back, they were

flying.  Resentment, bitterness, and holding

a grudge prevents us from seeing and hear-

ing and tasting and delighting.

(Pema Chodron)