student occupations, june/july 2008 santiago

riots in greece/ occupation of New School, NY

http://integralpsychosis.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/greek-uprising-spreads-to-nycs-new-school-students-occupy-school-in-revolt/

http://newschoolinexileblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-school-in-exile.html

i thought i WAS going personal on you for the last bunch of them! i was ranting/rambling/raving about capitalism, as per usual.

i haven't read the articles on class yet, mostly because i am trying to write a final paper, and if i read anything at all other than the words in the facebook game, "geo challenge," it should be housing theory--my assignment is to pretend i am a city planner and write up a plan for housing for the entire city. geo challenge, by the way, is just as addictive as snood or text twist, and perhaps equally mind-numbing, but, as i tell myself and as all of my similarly addicted friends have been telling themselves and each other-- at least we're learning something (skills involved: flag recognition, country recognition by shape, and locating cities by name on a map of the world, proximity counts).

yesterday i went to the personal thesis of a person named intisar abioto. it wasn't a performance, she said. she is about to leave wesleyan, and it was a personal thesis-- not for faculty, or a grade, or, as far as i can tell, anything except the emotional/spiritual/otherwise fulfillment that it brought her and those of us there with her. she choreographed a senior thesis dance, but she didn't dance in it, and as she said-- she's a dancer, too. this is her website. this is the blog that inspired this blog, which she keeps with her four sisters.
it wasn't just a performance, she said, because it was about all of us there, too. we could at any time say or do anything we felt like.
she sang, and danced, and talked about being, about voices. about love, leaving and goodbyes, and memory and movement and change and sorrow and feeling.
what struck me most was when she said to us,
when you sing, when you write, when you talk, when you dance, when you create, when you do anything it is really just all one thing.
... which i found a comforting thought, right now when it all seems so fragmented.
it all= college, timing, values, decisions, bodies, weather patterns, relationships, words.

tidbits about class, our blog, and day old scones

articles that made me think more about class...the first is especially fascinating. though the second might not contain anything new to you.

http://www.classmatters.org/2004_04/becoming_vs_belonging.php

http://www.classmatters.org/2006_07/its-not-them.php

shira & i talked today about various visions of this blogspace- whether we'd like it to be personal or political. obv. the two are inseparable. but i'd love to hear more about what happens in your lives/ how you feel/what you're thinking. more pumpkin scones and bike rides? though i guess ive been posting mainly articles lately myself. probably because its easier to come across something moving or enlightening or well written than it is to write it.

(ooh speaking of scones! ima and i went on a spontaneous its-friday-night-and-we-have-nothing-to-do-lets-go-read-at-borders! quest, on the way up to chesnut hill i spot eight trash bags on the sidewalk outside of the bakery, i knock on the door and ask if i can take some bread, and the guy mopping the floor winks and says "i didn't see anything...." i guess some nights the bags are picked up by shelters, sometimes not so i scored some delicious loaves of heady grainy nutty bread (turned out later to be pistachio apricot, mmm) a couple of baguettes, and a ton of pastries. i froze most of it and you'd be surprised but a once-frozen danish revivified by the toaster can become once again a delicious danish. so there will actually be food at imas when we come back here)

incidentally...http://sweetawesomeresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/dropping-out-of-capitalism-1939-style.html

im really and truly psyched to see you guys soon. lets actually hang out more than last time??!

i've been thinking about this place a lot lately, wishing i could get there easily (and not for $1000).

balance

(WITCHHAZEL)

as i'm sure you've both noticed, ima has started uploading photos to facebook. i took this last winter, and she put it in an album titled, 'flowers in winter'. i love that she loves living in phila, and i love that she brags about in her facebook status, along the lines of, "robyn loves zone seven because TWO of my camelias bloomed halfway through january last year."

from the best dad in the world

Hi gals. I tried to post this to your blog but failed with the password thing. So instead I’m emailing it to, so I maintain the immediacy. Love, Dad
PS—hope I don’t sound like a wimpy apologist for myself.

Hey, I found this cool blog while cruising around on this other cool blog this girl told me about....

Anyway, I want to say that the excerpt posted by Z from Derrick Jensen is profound and gets directly to the heart of the matter. I've been wrestling with these same questions for 30+ years now and I'm immensely proud that my children are, too.

By way of quick response, I'd say that everyone who cares as deeply as you/we do has to explore and find a variety of ways to be alive, as you gals put it. To resist what we know is destructive of life--to fight against the system we abhor--to make something better. Understanding the truth of what DJ says, that because this is a culture we're talking about, the result of hundreds of years of human evolution and more specifically a couple centuries of American will-to-power, violent action to take it down isn't necessarily more effective than other actions. I don't think it's possible to know what is or can be effective, other than the certitude of love and life, except by trying and seeing and acting.

I've chosen a path and I know it involves compromises with my ideal and most profound understandings of the problem. It involves living in a place I love, in a loving family, among a web of other like-minded, like-working, like-living people who are also trying to grapple with the same understandings, doing things that feed my life and finding kinds of work to do beyond myself that feed those other human and nonhuman beings who must be protected as the system continues to collapse in on itself, as DJ states it so well. You know what those are--loving people, loving myself, moving wood, hunting mushrooms, cooking and eating nourishing food, experiencing/creating art and music, finding grace and beauty in life every day, striving to life according to the principles I hold most important along the way to the regeneration I know is necessary.

That's all for now. Alan

world without presidents

change from below: why celebrating obama should be important to anti-authoritarians. "if we aspire one day to live in a world without borders and prisons, without states or capitalism—or presidents for that matter—we must stand in solidarity on January 20 with those most impacted by hierarchy and institutional oppression" the essays on the blog are worth reading as well. aviva, will you be in philly end of jan, and do you want to go?

the leap of faith we take

response to carrot's blog on the privileged/intentionally poor

there is a lot i like about that person carrot's blog...namely her apparent love for being.
but something irked me about this passage:
You are a conduit of the universe, and privilege flows through you. You’ve switched the spigot on the rusted pipe of your being, reversing the flow of privilege from the bottom of the pyramid to the top- it is now going down, in a steady, endless stream- down, back to the people it was taken from in the first place. You can do this, and the brilliant part is, it won’t actually make things any harder for you. You just have so much of it, is why.

1. if it 'won't actually make things any harder for you,' then this privilege-redirection process referred to is a superficial one, not one which truly challenges and ultimately threatens the validity of the system(s)- because by definition the privileged are vested in a maintenance of the status quo (perhaps we are most vested economically-speaking, and maybe her point is that spiritually/otherwise said privileged vessel will be better off, and so 'things wont be any harder'?). so here i disagree, because privilege-inspection and privilege-harnessing isn't as painless/smooth process as she makes it out to be, even IF we will indeed ultimately be rewarded/liberated.

2. is it not somewhat paternalistic? where is the agency of 'the people it was taken from in the first place' in this spigot metaphor? the oppressors do not liberate the oppressed, they (both parties) liberate themselves. power isn't given, power is taken.

am i really a 'conduit of the universe' ?

z!
i wish i had answers.
let me start with this. you put in bold D.j's questions:
Does anyone really believe a pattern of exploitation old as our civilization can be halted legislatively, judicially or through any means other than an absolute rejection of the mindset that engineers the exploitation, followed by actions based on that rejection? Does anybody really think those who are destroying the world will stop because we ask nicely or because we lock arms peacefully in front of their offices?
i don't think it's about us asking nicely and locking arms peacefully in front of offices. but i DO think that there must be a way to revolt that is neither peaceful nor violent. fine, tell me i'm naive, too much of an idealist, downright out of my mind because lord knows what i just said makes NO sense. but here's the thing. power is concentrated in certain sectors of the world...an intensely small fraction of the world's population has social, but more importantly economic power. BUT this means that the relative powerLESS population is FAR bigger. (granted, this changes if you count all of us who act out capitalism every day to be a part of the powerful, which i do...but i'll get to that.)
my hope is that there is a kind of power in numbers: that the sheer fact that there are more people who are victims of our (or the powerful dominant) worldview and world system ( i know there are multiple world systems but i'm talking about the global or quasi-global ECONOMIC system, neoliberal bullshit) than those who benefit from it (yeah, i'll get to that problematic math) AND, even more powerful perhaps, the definite UNSUSTAINABILITY of such a system (for example, we eventually run out of resources/ peoples to exploit) means that we will either kill ourselves off as a species or by necessity rework our relationship with one another, as the human species, AND to the natural world. (on another note- why the fuck do we spend so much money exploring space?)
so about the math: i'm counting people like myself and you as those on the side against capitalism, even though we currently participate. in terms of who is hurt by, instead of benefits from capitalism as a world global order, we ALL ARE WORSE OFF. (lots of people have said this better. will look for a link. but basically:dehumanizing others ( or trying to through social/economic/otherwise exploitation) is ultimately dehumanizing for the dehumanizers. this is definitely related to what you were mentioning z, the dead industrial society, etc. we are less alive because of this global order and because of our position as participants in capitalism and thus powerbrokers, though minor)). so then it comes down to who (on the privileged side of teh equation) wants to be more alive MORE than they want to continue normative participation as capitalist subjects. when enough people join those ranks, maybe we will have enough number in powers to have options somewhere in between arms and peaceful arm-crossing.
as for how that conscientiousness-transforming will happen...
that probably makes SO little sense that when i re-read it i will be embarassed and remove the post.
this shit's scary, but i'm not ready for arms. maybe that just means i'm not scared enough

still the salmon die

"capitalism is a shitty and divisive force which defines being human/the IDEAL in terms that prioritize the individual over the collective."

well said, viv. this made me think about when shira asked me under her breath "z, would you take up arms for the revolution?" and even though i heard her i said, "what?" and she said nevermind. as if she was embarassed about asking. or maybe assumed there wasn't a chance in hell i'd say anything but no!... but i had heard her and i thought/said yes! in part because reading derrick jensen's book endgame: the problems of civilization made me think twice about blind pacifism. then shira you called me the other day to ask again whose book it was that made me consider the possibility of violent resistance. i found an article of his to share. the fact that it appears at first very "environment" centered might make you instinctively think the argument is too white or too middle class because it starts off being about saving salmon, but don't let that turn you off, keep reading because its really about people:

"Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right. I've written books and done activism, but it is neither a lack of words nor activism that is killing salmon here in the Northwest. It's the dams.

Anyone who knows anything about salmon knows the dams must go. (they need flowing water) Anyone who knows anything about politics knows the dams will stay. Scientists study, politicians and business people lie and delay, bureaucrats hold sham public meetings, activists write letters and press releases, and still the salmon die.

Sadly enough, I'm not alone in my inability or unwillingness to take action. Members of the German resistance to Hitler from 1933 to 1945, for example, exhibited a striking blindness all too familiar: Despite knowing that Hitler had to be removed for a "decent" government to be installed, they spent more time creating paper versions of this theoretical government than attempting to remove him from power. It wasn't a lack of courage that caused this blindness but rather a misguided sense of morals. Karl Goerdeler, for instance, though tireless in attempting to create this new government, staunchly opposed assassinating Hitler, believing that if only the two of them could sit face to face, Hitler might relent.

We, too, suffer from this blindness and must learn to differentiate between real and false hopes. We must eliminate false hopes, which blind us to real possibilities and unlivable situations. Does anyone really believe our protests will cause Weyerhaeuser or other timber transnationals to stop destroying forests ? Does anyone really believe the same corporate administrators who say they "wish salmon would go extinct so we could just get on with living" (Randy Hardy of BPA) wiill act other than to fulfill their desires? Does anyone really believe a pattern of exploitation old as our civilization can be halted legislatively, judicially or through any means other than an absolute rejection of the mindset that engineers the exploitation, followed by actions based on that rejection? Does anybody really think those who are destroying the world will stop because we ask nicely or because we lock arms peacefully in front of their offices?

Additionally, there can be few who still believe the purpose of government is to protect citizens from those who would destroy them. The opposite is true: Political economist Adam Smith was correct in noting that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens. To expect institutions created by our culture to do other than poison waters, denude hillsides, eliminate alternative ways of living and commit genocide is to engage in naive thinking.

Many German conspirators hesitated to remove Hitler from office because they'd sworn loyalty to him and his government. Their scruples caused more hesitation than their fear did. How many of us have yet to root out misguided remnants of a belief in the legitimacy of this government to which, as children, we pledged allegiance? How many of us fail to cross the line into violent resistance because we still believe that, somehow, the system can be reformed? And if we don't believe that, what are we waiting for? As Shakespeare so accurately put it, "Conscience doth make cowards of us all."

It could be argued that by comparing our government to Hitler's I'm overstating my case. I'm not sure salmon would agree, nor lynx, nor the people of Peru, Irian Jaya, Indonesia, or any other place where people pay with their lives for the activities of our culture.

If we're to survive, we must recognize that we kill by inaction as surely as by action. We must recognize that, as Hermann Hesse wrote, "We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them."

The central - and in many ways only - question of our time is this: What are sane, appropriate and effective responses to outrageously destructive behavior? So often, those working to slow the destruction can plainly describe the problems. Who couldn't? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging. Yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue writing letters to the editor of the local corporate newspaper pointing out mistruths and am continually surprised at the next absurdity.

I'm not suggesting that a well-targeted program of assassinations would solve all of our problems. If it were that simple, I wouldn't be writing this essay. To assassinate Slade Gorton and Larry Craig, for example, two senators from the Northwest whose work may be charitably described as unremittingly ecocidal, would probably slow the destruction not much more than to write them a letter. Neither unique nor alone, Gorton and Craig are merely tools for enacting ecocide, as surely as are dams, corporations, chainsaws, napalm and nuclear weapons. If someone were to kill them, others would take their places. The genocidal and ecocidal programs originating specifically from the damaged psyches of Gorton and Craig would die with them, but the shared nature of the impulses within the culture would continue full-force, making the replacement as easy as buying a new hoe.

Hitler, too, was elected as legally and "democratically" as Craig and Gorton. Hitler, too, manifested his culture's death urge brilliantly enough to capture the hearts of those who voted him into power and to hold the loyalty of the millions who actively carried out his plans. Hitler, like Craig and Gorton, like George Weyerhaeuser and other CEOs, didn't act alone. Why, then, do I discern a difference between them?

The current system has already begun to collapse under the weight of its ecological excesses, and here's where we can help. Having transferred our loyalty away from our culture's illegitimate economic and governmental entities and given it to the land, our goal must be to protect, through whatever means possible, the human and nonhuman residents of our homelands. Our goal, like that of a demolition crew on a downtown building, must be to help our culture collapse in place, so that in its fall it takes out as little life as possible.

Discussion presupposes distance, and the fact that we're talking about whether violence is appropriate tells me we don't yet care enough. There's a kind of action that doesn't emerge from discussion, from theory, but instead from our bodies and from the land. This action is the honeybee stinging to defend her hive; it's the mother grizzly charging a train to defend her cubs; it's Zapatista spokesperson Cecelia Rodriguez saying, "I have a question of those men who raped me. Why did you not kill me? It was a mistake to spare my life. I will not shut up. ... This has not traumatized me to the point of paralysis." It's Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, murdered by the Nigerian government at the urging of Shell, whose last words were, "Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues!" It's those who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It's Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Geronimo. It's salmon battering themselves against concrete, using the only thing they have, their flesh, to try to break down that which keeps them from their homes.

I don't believe the question of whether to use violence is the right one. Instead, the question should be: Do you sufficiently feel the loss? So long as we discuss this in the abstract, we still have much to lose. If we begin to feel in our bodies the immensity and emptiness of what we lose daily - intact natural communities, hours sold for wages, childhoods lost to violence, women's capacity to walk unafraid - we'll know precisely what to do."

but i feel it and i don't know what to do. we're all starting to feel it and don't know what to do? going back to what aviva said about capitalism prioritizing the individual over the collective, it also prioritizes human culture/ civilization over nature/the land/ (the source of our existence.) and going back to "coming alive" i think the quote was already in the unspoken context of , if you wanted to save the world, instead of thinking about what it needs, think about what makes you come alive,,, as in what makes you disconnect from the death drive that is this culture, coming alive as in feeling liberation from the deadness of industrial society. with the assumption that it wouldn't be oppressive/violent because it would be in opposition to the oppressive/violent system... butmaybe d. j. would say that coming alive isn't enough, living in the woods with people that you love isn't enough, because its not actively fighting to destroy the system. im getting all tangled. help?

i want to think about this more, but for right now:
definitely: more alive people= a better-looking world.
but what keeps us from being alive? (see below for my easy-out and over simplified answer)
whose definition of 'alive'

does every one have a right to their own definition of being 'alive'
yes, would be the only reasonable answer... but
what if someone feels alive via something that creates oppression and violence?


what makes us have such different ideas of what/how we want to do/be?

capitalism is a shitty and divisive force which defines being human/the IDEAL in terms that prioritize the individual over the collective.

coming alive

ive been thinking about this a lot today, i don't remember where i read it:
(paraphrased)
don't think about what the world needs, think about what makes you come alive, and do it, because the world needs people who come alive.
what do you think of this?
what makes you come alive?
is it enough to just do what makes you come alive or not?



ive been trying to find a farming apprenticeship in north carolina. this place looks rad:
http://www.wildroots.org/

polyblogamy and privilege

AVIVA how dare you have another blog with another girl???

i'm hurt. i'd be okay with polyblogamy, (maybe even an advocate of it) as long as it involved direct open and honest communication. which you neglected to do. thus hurting me deeply.

anyways that said i'll say what i really wanted to say: i found this girl named carrot's blog and its pretty wonderful and i wanted to share this part that i found particularly wondeful (esp. the part about the beans). i found her blog because i was looking for a ride to philly on craigslist and she posted a listing called "ride freight trains. sleep in a shack in the woods." or something. (http://carrotquinn.blogspot.com)

this was in response to a letter a musician wrote her...

"You have privilege. You’re a young, white, English speaking, able-bodied (I’m assuming all these things) man, living in the most powerful nation on earth. That makes you officially the most privileged person on the entire planet. Which means that no matter what you choose to do, you will have an easier time at it, and access to more resources, than anyone else in, most likely, the entire universe. Which means that if you decide to quit your job and be poor, you’ll have an easier time being poor (and finding another job- the universe will practically force money, comfort and convenience down your throat) than almost every other human being on the face of the planet. If you decide to say ‘fuck it all’ and just travel around, writing songs and performing, the skies, most likely, will split open and life will finally fall down all around you like you’re at god’s birthday party and you’ve just busted the piñata with a wooden baseball bat.But Tyler, you already know that you’re privileged- people like your music- the validation of your fans, in fact, makes you even more privileged- and inside you still feel like the biggest loser in the world- you would rather be the homeless person on the corner than a successful musician with a record label, even though sometimes having a record label seems like the only way to make a living off of doing what you love. Which basically boils down to- you’re ashamed of your privilege and you’re afraid of selling out.

If your whole village was starving, Tyler, and someone gave you a fifty pound bag of dried kidney beans just because you’re white, would you redistribute those kidney beans to the starving masses, or bury them in the ground because you were embarrassed? The fact of the matter is, you have a shit-ton of privilege. That’s reality. So much privilege, it weighs on you like a burlap sack of dried legumes. Privilege, although it gives you access to resources, does not guarantee you access to happiness, precisely because of the self-hatred that comes along with it, mixed in the bag like bits of gravel. But let’s face it- you’ve got that giant sack of kidney beans, it’s not going anywhere, and you’d be a fool to bury it in the ground. What to do? And that brings me to my next point-

You can use your powers for good.

Stop feeling guilty about having the beans in the first place, and give those kidney beans away. Those are magic beans- as soon as you start giving them away, the bag refills- only now it’s not so heavy. Give a hearty “FUCK YOU!” to those who would have you sell your beans, to those who would buy your beans from you and sell them at a markup- fucking give the goddam beans away. Give away the whole goddam pile, sack and all- and know that you’ll find another one, because you’re just infinitely privileged like that. You are a conduit of the universe, and privilege flows through you. You’ve switched the spigot on the rusted pipe of your being, reversing the flow of privilege from the bottom of the pyramid to the top- it is now going down, in a steady, endless stream- down, back to the people it was taken from in the first place. You can do this, and the brilliant part is, it won’t actually make things any harder for you. You just have so much of it, is why. You really, really do.

Using your powers for good can look like a lot of things- and I can’t tell you what your thing will look like- but as soon as you acknowledge your privilege, which is there anyway, because it’s reality- the next fork in the road will be a little clearer, and when it seems to dead-end you won’t have a hard time finding the little footpath, and then you’ll be able to throw down your machete all together and stop hacking the bushes apart in frustration, and so on.

And as far as selling out goes- maybe you don’t like capitalism? That’s tough, because we live in a capitalism. You walk down the sidewalk of capitalism, you buy the coffee of capitalism, you stir in a spoonful of capitalism’s creamer, made from the milk of capitalism’s tortured cows. Again, reality. This capitalism made you, and a little seed of it resides within you, along with the seed for endless sunlit meadows and clean air that never gave anyone asthma. Capitalism is you- don’t hate yourself. At this moment in history we ride on an ocean of flowing money, and to survive in reality, you’ll need some money.

Do what feels right. And if that thing ends up making you some money, fucking use it. Having a little money will give you even more power, and even more potential for doing good. Buy some fucking land, and raise a garden, for godsakes! Buy a building in a neighborhood where people have shit for resources, and start a community center!

And if your problem goes the other direction- if you feel like you need more money to live the way you want, but can’t get that money in any way but a way that makes you feel like shit- take an honest look at the way you live. Do you need a lot of money for rent? Live someplace cheaper. Do you spend a lot of money at the bar? FUCKING STOP. Do you have college loans to pay off? That sucks, maybe you never should have gone to college in the first place. I still think you can figure it out. And if you just want to drop out and follow your dreams, I think you should do it. So what if it ruins your credit? Who the fuck needs credit? You won’t care so much about your credit, will you, WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.

thanks carrot for the food for thought.

johnny clegg

i'm listening to johnny clegg. z were you there when we went with dad and asa to see him and his band at the hop? anyway, i only have a few songs on my computer, and they're untitled, so i always forget that i have them and that i like them and that they're good to listen to.
and i decided to look up some of the lyrics because they were goofy (I'm a beer that just won't brew). and i want to share because i think this song is sweeeeeeet. hope you enjoy it as much as i just did (mostly the last verse):

"Illusion"- Johnny Clegg

Once again my wings on fire
flapping round your deadly flames.
Walking on the old high wire
trying to keep myself away.
You come walking down your marble stairs, throwing back your yellow hair.
And I want you, and I need you,
But every time you let me near
you leave me feeling such sweet despair.

Going to keep away, keep away.

It's an illusion to think I can keep away from you.
It's an illusion like eskimoes in Mogadishu.
It's an illusion this state of independence I'm in.
It's an illusion like polar bears in Berlin.

When I feel happy, you feel deep,
you always go out when I want to sleep.
Fire, water, sun and rain,
war and peace and night and day.
Who can understand
love's magic incompatibilities?

Going to keep away, keep away.

It's an illusion, it's just a cheap masquerade.
It's an illusion, hiding this love I can't evade.
It's an illusion, can't you see through the camouflage?
It's an illusion, without you life is a mirage.

I'm a foot without a shoe, I'm the fuzz without a clue,
I'm a ship without a crew, I'm lost without you.
One and one that can't make two, carrots looking for some stew,
a lawyer with no one to sue, I'm lost without you.
I'm the sky that's lost its blue, I'm the beer that just won't brew,
I'm a stamp that has no glue, I'm lost without you.
A hound with no fox to pursue, I'm a cat that's lost its mew,
a star without an interview, I'm lost without you

feeling so lonely so deeply and looking forward to all being in one place for a few short days. let's go for a hike, bake an apple pie, make some art.

sending love from middletown, ct to hyde park, chicago and upper valley, vermont. it's nice to know for once in awhile exactly wehre you both are, because it makes the directing easier.
hope it gets to you while it's still sunny.

so we don't always have answers. we need to at least start asking better questions.

more from trouillot:
"the more we acknowledge the contradictions that mark our times, the better we can pierce through its fragmented globality and the more likely we are to find imaginative solutions to the dilemmas that differentiate us from previous eras."

definitions of humanity re: neoliberalism

from michel-rolph trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World--"A Fragmented Globality."

"But if we look closely at the assumptions behind neoliberal extremism, we quickly discover that what we are being sold is not just an economic program. We are being asked to endorse growth as a moral value. We are asked to take as a religious--that is, unquestionable--tenet the proposition that productivity in any domain, anywhere, anyhow is good for humankind as a whole. We are being asked to forget that productivity without a consensus on its distribution is another name for sheer profit and that whenever profit is sheer only a few can collect it. We are being asked to renounce worldviews that suggest the ethical solidarity of humankind. In short, we are being asked to accept a prepackaged formula about what it means to be a good and proper human being in all times and places, to endorse one vision of humanity, and an odd one at that." (56)

not good enough: california voters' decisions on the propositions on their november 4 ballot. i am most interested in 5, 6, 8, and 9. wishing that 8 and 9 had failed, and that 5 had passed.

get ready for some rambling...

first things first:: I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!

yay, i’m really glad you set up this blog.

i don’t know where to begin…. im feeling rather disoriented. 

(((get ready for some very unedited, extremely disorganized and  shamelessly unpunctuated rambling. you've been warned. )))

just a few days a go i was in oregon. my traveling companions were zachariah and happydog. Z & Z one free entity. i might have even been in love with zach. he was so different than anbody i’ve ever met, i wont be able to describe him. raised by “rainbow family” his mom never put him through school, he was “caught” by the state and went through various few foster homes, his father died recently and he was emancipated- the courts decided he could raise himself on his own? he only ever went to one year of schooling- 6th grade- but barely even that, he left everyday, they would find him and bring him back, he would leave again. he can hardly read or write. at first when he was on his own he was working at coffee shops and sushi shops and paying rent and all of that regular stuff, until he realized he could live for esentially for free day to day traveling and scavenging… 

when i saw him i felt like we were supposed to be together (not necessarily together together, but together for a little while) we decided one day after only having talked a couple of times, when we were both getting sick of willits (small weed-centric town in northern ca) to hitchhike outta there so we met up at the far end of town and stuck our thumbs out together. we spent two weeks hitchhiking up the 101, seeing the crazy pacific coast huge waves- slept above a beach, underestimated the tide and had to wait four hours in the morning to get out- drove through immensely magical huge old growth redwood forest- decided to go on an ambiguous quest for “hot springs” which we found in oregon- five pools of hot water coming right out of the earth in a lush forest of douglas firs all covered in moss- met a billion strangers turned friends who fed us, told us stories, gave us a lift for 5 miles or 50- slept wherever we could out of sight, in a park under a bridge in the post office on the beach in an apartment that had a “for rent” sign behind a bank in a friend of a friends house….every day felt like we’d lived a lifetime, traveling through so many different realms. we’d be in one place, then we’d decide we didn’t want to be there anymore, so we’d stick our thumbs out and switch realities just like that. then we’d find ourselves in a car watching the scenery fly by, talking with a plumber named will who offered to take us to the laundromat or those two older dudes who kept rolling joints, or the mama with her two baby boys in the back seat who insisted on buying us sandwiches and cheezits, or the chatty waitress with the high school aged daughter who didn’t say much, even though they seemed ‘mainstream” i could tell they actually did liked the quirky hippie jewelry zach gave them. or get this the youngest person to every pick us up- an 18 year old kid who had cut class that day, had never picked up hitchhikers before, gave zach some of his cassette tapes, and didn’t even freak out when happydog threw up in the back seat.

we had all the time in the world to fill with whatever. the challenge was filling it, but it wasn’t really a challenge, because abundance and kindness were everywhere. it was one day at a time. zach would play the painted wooden flute he traded for his hammock. i would try to play my banjo. we would sip our coffee slowly and talk to anybody and everybody. zach showed me how to make hemp necklaces. mine were crappy but he was actually really skilled. mostly he ended up giving away the jewelry he made to wonderful people instead of selling it. someone asked us “so where are your funds coming from?” our response “well… we found five bucks on the side of the highway this morning” everything was a rush, beautiful, madness, exploration, synchronicity, everything i had wanted california to be. we had grand plans to head down south (after all it was getting damn cold and rainy in oregon, time to migrate to warmer climate) to Arizona and do work for stay on farms.

we were outside of eugene, oregon when my body started to freak out and everything slowly started to go downhill as the pain got worse i realized i couldn’t avoid it, i had to deal with it, i was too weak to take care of myself in too deep over my head, far away and alone and after about a week i couldn’t handle it and i knew I had to go home. i’m being pretty vague, I know i’m not being specific but i’m trying to be considerate by sparing the gross details…now I am here, somehow I got here, my fevered head and snail paced walking somehow got me through three different airports and three flights and now ive come home to this resting space where dad and nance are taking care of me and i’m starting to feel human again, i spent the last few days in bed just sleeping and trying not to move but today i actually went into town for a little while. i’m not afraid to drink water anymore, my appetite has come back. … anyways…. it is what it is. it is what it is. it is what it is, it happened for a reason and i’ll rest and fight it til it goes away.

right now theres a lot of time to think about life & existence… im trying to figure out what i want to do over the winter. its so hard to figure out what you want, especially if you believe that anything is possible…. this is all i think i know: i want to be someplace warm. it gets dark so early here!! i want to learn tangible skills. how to build/make/grow things. i want to work in exchange for a place to stay. i want to be doing something helpful for the world/community.

im still really disoriented- one minute i was on the west coast- now i find myself here..

what it really comes down to right now though, the single strongest and most present thought  in my mind, is how grateful i am to have a warm, loving, accepting, caring family to come back home to. what a blessing.

still waiting on whether or not north carolina went blue.
numerous field organizers have told us that we made a significant difference, that the influx of 30 students helped (if it indeed turned, and if not-- helped it get so close!) turn these two counties (cumberland, wake), if not the whole state, blue.
but that makes me think about some questions to post on later: why do we need to congratulate ourselves for being important in this victory? what about the people who have been working on the campaign for 11 months? alisha (i was incorrectly spelling her name, 'alicia') personally registered almost A THOUSAND PEOPLE. over nine hundred! herself! If I encouraged 5 people who wouldn't ahve otherwise to go to the polls, which i'd call an optimistic estimate, times 30 of us, that's still only 150 votes...
obviously that kind of counting isn't useful, but that's kind of my point. this self-congratulatory nature of our victory-talk is making me uncomfortable...
is it about us as individuals, or us as a whole?*
*obama hinted at differences between imagining outselve as individuals versus as a community, or a whole. i am interested to re-read his speech tomorrow...
another thought: all of the obama gear looks different now than it did earlier today. is it different to wear pins of a president than of a hopeful candidate?

more to remember for later:
-the man who tried to intimidate me today from leaving door hangers with poll information
- talking to the workers outside of one of the brand-new communities, who 'wouldn't vote for either' even if they could
-etc

Obámanos:

my new favorite Obama slogan to date, first seen on a bumper sticker here in North Carolina...as my friend Rochelle from Emory/Georgia says, "SIIII!! I love it!! Obamanos, Aviva!! so we don't republicananos de nuevo!!"

I am currently in Knightdale, outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.
I flew down here after Andy Zack called me on Wednesday night and asked if I was free Friday-Wednesday, because someone was organizing students to go to swing states and paying for their plane tickets through frequent flier miles. We sent our names, phone numbers, and email addresses to a stranger, and she emailed us back almost instantaneously with the email to pay $111 through Paypal to cover taxes and booking fees--and then the flight confirmation info! Coincidentally--or perhaps terrifically and magically and perfectly--I had been planning on coming to the Raleigh/Durham area last weekend during Fall break to see christine (beautiful person I met in Chile), and had cancelled on her ( and myself) the day before because I was getting nervous about unhappy train schedules and ticket prices.
There are 29 students in this group. Andy had been called by a friend, who happens to be best friend with another friend of Andy's, who Andy knows from elsewhere...anyway, Mary Dain, who is from Chapel Hill, seems to be a key organizer of the group. Almost all of the students go to UC Berkeley, and then a few are from Santa Cruz, and Andy and I are obviously east-coasters. TWENTY-SEVEN OF THEM FLEW HERE FROM CALIFORNIA.
this story just keeps getting better ( AND DEPENDING ON HOW TOMORROW GOES, THAT TREND COULD CONTINUE). we have been driving around 5 cars, all borrowed from people known by Mary and Amos, another Berkeley kid from this area (gas money is coming from campaign headquarters). We are ALL staying in Kevin's house. None of us knew Kevin previously.
Kevin is a young air-force veteran who lives with his family here in Knightdale. He and his family have been incredible to us: we are sprawled, with all of our stuff and our sleeping bags, across their beautiful house. The 5 of them have been sleeping on the floor in one bedroom to make room for us, giving us their own rooms for 4 nights (we stayed at Amos' in Chapel Hill on Night 1--his family wasn't home, but was also very generous to let us into their space.)
I don't know if it'the common cause or just that there are so many awesome people on this planet, but people have been so unbelievably generous to us. At every field office, there are boxes of snacks, (so much halloween candy), endless water bottles, drinks in coolers, bagels, donuts, fruit, and home-made meals like chicken soup, shrimp spring rolls with peanut sauce, and jerk chicken. Some of these field offices are out of peoples' garages! And all of the volunteers are in and out of the garages, and their houses, too--people are making space (and food) for strangers right and left.
Alicia, for example, has been working on the campaign for 11 months. Her 19-year old daughter is also some kind of director rightnow, working out of another "office." Alicia lent us her car within fifteen minutes of meeting us. She gives out her number to everyone, and then answers the phone, "Hi baby"--and is actually THAT sweet. AND, as someone who has been working on this campaign instead of her normal jobs for almost a year, she kept hugging us and thanking us. HER thanking US! As if we were doing so much more than coming out here on mostly-paid-for flights for 5 quick nights. everyone seems to have such appreciation for each other, volunteering time, space, energy, cars, ENTIRE HOUSES (not to say this is more important than the rest, but it IS societally understood as less share-able of a commodity, in my experience), love--and it's heartwarming.
A few days ago I heard someone call this campaign "micro-managed." I don't know which aspect they were referring to, but even with all of it's seeming chaos, I am SO inspired by the grassroots feel of all of this organizing. We all have numbers of different Field Organizers and/or other volunteers, and we all know different bits of information. Sometimes the communication lines get temporarily clogged, or we have misinformation, or bad ideas ( like when we went to the Sarah Palin rally? We were almost in when we got Mary's call, after she got a call from STATE headquarters that they didn't want us there pretending to be Mccain supporters. Fair enough... but Yelena, who I was with in line, was pulling off the Southern drawl So well! and we were making friends with the Palin supporters... and they were telling us such satisfying news without even knowing it--like, "every day I open the paper and there's a new Obama office. Where are all of the new Mccain offices? There aren't any!") Late last night, we got a call from the Regional manager of the Southeast ( of the country!!) telling us to go to Fayetteville, NC_-the same town in which some Obama-supporting tires had been slashed months ago. It was too late at night to call our Field Organizers, but this morning we all called the organizers we'd been working with yesterday, and told them that although we'd promised to show up at their offices this morning, we had been called elsewhere. They were bummed, and we were bummed, because we all feel like we're really making connections with people.
The people at the Fayetteville office were great, too. As was the space itself-- the owner of Concierge Travel has lent his office to campaign people, and it makes for quite a mix. The travel office looks like it's straight out of-- I don't even know which year. It has lots of postcards, manyof which have half-naked women. There were some really old travel posters, clearly fading and definitely no longer politically correct (mostly regarding travel to Jamaica, as far as I could tell). There was also a cage with parrots.
I'm losing energy right now--and I'm even being lazy (or smart/responsible, since I've been getting sick since the day I got here, and we were out in the rain all day today). Most of the group is out in different areas doing silent canvassing. Gabe, for example, another Berkeley kid, plans to be out from 11 until 5 AM, hanging door signs on door knobs which say, "VOTE TODAY," and include specific information about polling locations based on the precinct of that specific doorknob. Those who aren't going out on the late shift tonight are going out at 5 tomorrow morning.
Next i'll post about the crazy-cool method that organizers are using tomorrow to GET OUT THE VOTE-- finding people who haven't voted yet...by the HOUR! I'll also tell about some of the different neighborhoods we've been canvassing in, people I've talked to while doin' it, conversations about whiteness and obama, fairness, etc and... the polls tomorrow. and the results??!?!?
We've heard that Wake county, where we are in NC, could make or break the state. Let's make that the former, and turn it blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (a concept I explained to some young women today who were too young to vote, completely pro-Obama, and really excited to help us go around knocking on doors, telling people to vote tomorrow, and leaving door hangers.)
OBámanos!!!

Somebody besides me needs to post!

Two weeks ago, I went apple-picking with my roommates and Matt in Indiana. We picked tons of apples. I also bought a pumpkin. On Friday afternoon I was too tired for carving, and didn't do anything with it. Saturday, I cooked it. I sliced it into chunks and put them in the oven for an hour or two. Then I pureed the whole thing in many blender shifts. Meanwhile, I had also boiled, salted, and then roasted the seeds, which were disappointingly sparse. I made a batch of scones which required only 1/2 a cup of pumpkin puree, barely a dent in one bowl. We finished them. I left the pumpkin, which filled two large cooking bowls, over night covered with plates.
Today, I went out and bought flour and powdered ginger and a few other supplied. I then proceeded to make two pumpkin pies, including crusts from scratch, pumpkin soup with carrots, leeks, and onions, pumpkin bread with cranberries and walnuts, and 6 more batches of scones. I had a wonderful day and listened to several albums I love all the way through. I guess I should start my homework now—getting work done was, after all, the reason I stayed home this weekend instead of going canvassing.

Remember Lauren?

We became facebook friends a couple weeks or months ago, and said our original hellos. Recently she sent me a message saying she was impressed by the piece in the Nation, and that I should let her know the next time I'm in NY and if she can be of help with magazine and book worlds. 

I said thanks, and I hoped the politics of the article weren't too weird, and that I would probably take her up on the career assistance offer because in six months I'll find myself needing one.

She said the politics were no surprise, I'd already seen you in all those photos with keffiyehs! and then she said this:

"Also, the last line of your email: '...when I realize I'm graduating college and dont have a career'—when i was in that situation, I called a literary agent I'd worked for one summer and told her she had to help me find a job for when i graduated and she said, 'absolutely not. take the summer off--it's the last time you can do that. do something you'll never get to do again, then come back to NY and I'll help you.'

So off I went to Woods Hole for the summer. And, behold, the marvelous Tevah sisters! one of the best decisions I've made."

So now we're the age that she was when she used to bake challahs with us and pick wildflowers and press them onto notecards and sell our our wares and maple syrup at the Saturday morning market.

The world can be surprisingly symmetrical. 

two weeks ago

It was a Sunday evening; the sun was about to set. I’d been reading about the politically disempowered and trying to tan the backs of my legs on the front porch; Matt had worked a nine-to-five interpreting shift at the crazy ward where the agency’s been sending him recently. There’s a woman there, he told me, who’s been pregnant for 30 years, and a disheveled Cuban man who yells Putas de Babilonia! at the female social workers and sometimes Hijo de Satanás! at him. We left to catch the sunset on the beach at the southern end of the lake path. We’d been meaning to go to Rainbow Beach all summer, but had only biked North.

            We could see the pink light and we raced a straight stretch of sidewalk, enjoying the feeling in our legs. There were fall leaves everywhere but the air was warm enough not to hurt our lungs. The moon was full or one day short of it. The path narrowed to one lane and cut off on a curb, without even the smooth part for wheels. I had to get off and pull my bike by the handlebars. We were in a cul-de-sac, or maybe it was a road that went through, but its only purpose seemed to be for a bus to turn around. Ahead of us was a fence with a rusty sign that read “This fence runs 79 feet north of the property of the US Steel Company.” Bushes and trees the height of people surrounded the fence. A man emerged from them suddenly as we locked our bikes to a tree. I’m glad I was afraid of him even though he’s white, I said. At least that’s good to know.

            We went a few steps into the leaves when we heard below us the sounds of what could have been meditation or the kind of curses I might even believe in. A man stood on the rocks by the lake with his arms outstretched. He chanted in something that sounded African or gibberish and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or sad or relieved. I felt afraid again, but I also envied his release. It was getting darker and I tried to step quietly. When he paused his chanting I resisted the urge to look back and see if he was following us.

            Soon we found the opening in the chain-link fence. It wasn’t the usual kind of opening in a fence, into which you have to duck or flatten; the metal folded to the side like curtains and we pressed it gently and walked comfortably through. It sprang back behind us more like a sliding door than curtains. We were no longer in Chicago but a meadow somewhere; we could see the stars. There were scattered pieces of steel on the ground and the sound of crickets. Around us was water and a row of lights that looked like a giant gingerbread house—I think it was a bridge to Indiana. We drank juice from glass bottles we’d brought with us: apple and papaya, which tasted surprising.

            You can guess what happened under the stars—the little burrs I’m still removing from mom’s old Radcliff sweatshirt are a steady reminder—and then I picked a bouquet of flowers to bring home to my roommates. They were beautiful and fragrant, though when I brought them home they didn’t look as good under a bulb as they did in the moon, and I realized the same ones grow on my block. They flew home with me in the milk crate on the back of my bicycle, and not one escaped.

            Something lucky has happened: if I forget to be in love all it takes to remember is night air and two rubber tires—maybe it will even be like that always. 

mood

mine is cheerful--unlike yesterday.
last night there was a storm, but none of us realized how forceful the elements were being until the power went out in our appartment building. it was out for a good half-hour, we lit candles and wandered the halls, connecting to one another in a way that maybe doesn't always happen during fall break when most people are away. a few of us ran around outside, enjoying the sideways-slanting rain but shivering. eventually the lights came back on, but i'd like to think we honored the storm by the type of night we then chose: low-key living-room-sitting, few lights on, slow conversation, a game of scrabble, a little cheap red wine.

today is incredibly beautiful. so beautiful that i feel fantastic after a brisk walk around the loop, part of which i jogged at a pathetic half-walk speed, t-shirt and shorts. its good to know that my mood is permeable to welcome invaders like crisp sunlight, fall warmth, brittle leaves, tree shadows across the path, branches strewn around from the storm, dried grass, so much sun. i was starting to feel yesterday like something was seriously wrong: who knows, it could ahve been loneliness, restlessness, lethargy...a combination of the three. guess all we need sometimes is a little rain?

I lost my earring yesterday, the most recent in our long line of shared possessions. It brought me to tears. "So, it was like a memento?" my friend Richard asked when I tried to explain it to him in less petty terms. "Is the person dead?" No, I told him, so he came up with an elaborate scheme of how I could hide its loss from you for years so you wouldn't be mad. It isn't that, either, I told him. You wouldn't be mad. 

I tried to figure out why I was so sad, and wanted to think it was of love but wondered if it wasn't blatant materialism. Attaching sentimentality to physical objects runs in the family (z, even you can't say it doesn't get you too) but I try to suppress it when I can. 

I've decided to wear the earring by itself, and be a hipster. The cross-sections of a shell are cool together, but one is even edgier. And better I have you two than the memento to remind me. 

love and madness and liberation. xxooxooxx (pass it on)

i was looking for something to title this shared sister space
and i thought about what we have in common, other than our crazy wonderful mother
and a moment of togetherness that i remember so clearly is that summer day over a year ago when we got identical tattoos, in that lofty airy upstairs-appartment-turned-tattoo-shop, somewhere in vermont i forget where, and we held hands while each of us got ours, and read aloud from 'off the map:'

'you are dreaming' she said to us & i thought yes, exactly, that is what we do, you know, being witches, being lovers, being poets & adventurers. we are dreaming this very moment, and so are you as a matter of fact. why not enjoy it? look down at your hands, remember you're dreaming & make it look how you want it to look, feel how you want it to feel. after all, the worlds we know are only made by dreamers.

so i found this again, because of course now i carry the little yellow book with me and it was under some other books on my dresser, but i didn't want to call the blog something about dreaming, because its not always about dreaming and we can't always make things as we want them to be...
but then i saw on the first page that z you had written to me:

10-06-07
love & madness & liberation.
xxooxooxx
--z
(...pass it on)

clearly i have not yet passed it on (in its material form). maybe soon i will.
so if that name's alright with you two, it works well for me. love is important, madness is important, liberation is important...and of course, dreaming will be a part of all three.