Fig and Wasp

Announcing Project TEDx!

2011-12-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about returning to this blog for a long while now, and I think I've finally found the perfect excuse. I have been noticing what has felt like a big lack in the arena of intellectual stimulation, and it had not worked out all that well for me to try to set goals to read lots of dry informational texts. After all, I have that sort of relationship with reading all day long at work, so I end up being worn out on it by the time I am outside of an academic setting.

So one day last week, it occurred to me that TEDx talks could present a perfect outlet that requires minimal investment for me to find and select the material that I engage with. Furthermore, I want to create more opportunities for writing in my day-to-day life. So the natural conclusion from these two things seemed to be that I should watch TEDx talks and write about them. I'll be experimenting with how best to do this for a while.

Here we go.

Magic Lantern from Poopscape Projects: Me Gustaaaaaa.

2011-11-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

I want to do this project on some sort of plastic or glass lampshade.

To Begin Again?

2011-10-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

I am toying with the idea of starting back up with this blog. But I am afraid. That is all.

It's Not That I'm Mad at Christianity. Really.

2011-02-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, I feel like it never hurt me. I usually think of it, completely without malice, as this funny little inoffensive thing that people believe in, like Santa Claus. I remembered just now, though, that what seems like a silly fantasy that helps people sleep at night can actually affect laws and people's notions of civil rights. Seen in this light, Santa Claus grows a pair of bloody fangs and starts mouth-breathing and looks a lot scarier and weirder.

Y'all Evangelical Christians can be so batshit crazy, so publicly, and somehow get away with it. It's amazing to watch it happen in the media. I mean, your leaders can get on national television and say things that make about as much sense as "ALL HAIL SANTA'S SECRET FLAMINGOES!" and people will actually listen, light their torches, and get super motivated to go do something about this serious lack of secret flamingoes in Santaland RIGHT NOW!

Which brings me to what inspired this little monologue: I just watched Jesus Camp, and I shuddered to think of the ways in which the scenes are familiar. I was so young and impressionable then. *sigh* Yes, it's true. Most folks don't know this about me-I sortof block out the memory, for the most part-but I have to come forward as a former Evangelical. Given, I was a preteen who was looking for something to fill a void in my boring rural life with excitement, intensity, and a feeling of spiritual connectedness, and I got just that. But I can't deny that for a couple of years, a young, intellectually feeble version of me--but me, nonetheless!--chose to be a part of a church just like the one in that kooky documentary. Here is the trailer:

(Pause: I don't mean to offend any of y'all Rocky Mount churchy sorts who have for some reason facebook friended me. You know I peaced out of that place with a brazen heretical swagger, so I'm sure you could expect this.)

But seriously. Church on the Rise and that other Pentecostal Holiness place we went before that were Ab. So. Lute. Ly. BONKERS. Evangelism, like LSD, can interfere with one's sanity after prolonged exposure. I was lucky to put it down before it took up residence in my prefrontal cortex. I hope you all escaped before it turned your rational faculties to jelly too.

Does the sweet gay guy in denial still play keyboard, I wonder? I hope he's out of the closet by now. Poor guy. Hey, but who knows...if that guy can think he's straight because God wants him to be, then maybe I can make myself into a flamingo by believing I am one! Flamingoes are awesome! And PINK!

And maybe they live on a secret magical island with Santa...and maybe we should base political decisions on this story! Yeah! Grab your torches, children of Claus! We'll smash their microscopes and telescopes and weather vanes so they won't be distracted from the TRUTH of the Lord Claus! We are in a war for validation!

Jesus would laugh at you. Or maybe spank you with cruel relish. If he weren't dead, that is.

Blind Boy Chocolate & the Milk Sheiks

2010-11-22T10:20:00.001-08:00

IMGP3587bw, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

At Mike's in Asheville, NC, September 2010. Yay for old timey jug music.

Underscore Orkestra

2010-11-22T09:58:00.001-08:00

IMGP3671, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

Underscore Orkestra

2010-11-22T09:57:00.001-08:00

IMGP3728, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

I think this one is rather disturbingly sexy.

Underscore Orkestra

2010-11-22T09:51:00.001-08:00

IMGP3704, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

Underscore Orkestra

2010-11-22T09:49:00.001-08:00

IMGP3658, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

Taken at the LAB in Asheville, NC, September 2010.

Is There a Ghost in My House?

2010-11-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

I was just thinking of that Band of Horses song. But seriously, a few days ago I had a very creepy dream that I was house sitting and there was a sort of poltergeist, except that its way of haunting was to overtake people's brains and make them hallucinate that horrible things were happening. It was kinda like that movie The Craft. Things crawling on me, my limbs turning into granite, and so forth. I'm not sure what to make of that, but the dream was surprisingly willing to let go of my emotions when I woke.

In fact, my inner emotional landscape has changed dramatically since I quit smoking. All kinds of things that would normally penetrate my psyche all the way to through are only thumping against the surface. I can barely hear the noise. It's not at all like despair, although it results in waves of a sort of anguish and guilt about how truly cold to and distant from the rest of humanity I feel (or, you know, don't feel). I was just telling my dear roommate about how relatively easy it would be to watch things die right now. Let me know if you need help slaughtering a bunch of Thanksgiving turkeys; I'm your man. Got some baby bunnies that need drowning? Call me up.

...I jest. Nevertheless, it's super weird to feel like all the empathy has evaporated out of me. Also, nothing really excites me at all. It's like my average operating mood is leveling out at slightly below neutral, and the only way I can go is down a bit more. I wonder how long I can take it. Personal effectiveness at the cost of joy is not a fair trade.

The nicotine monster has such elaborate schemes for worming its way into a person's head. What a bastard. It can actually make me think that I may never be a person I would like to hang out with again.

On a completely different note, I just finished reading a lovely book by Naeem Murr called The Perfect Man. When I tried to describe it to someone recently, the best I could come up with was that it is sort of like To Kill a Mockingbird written for an adult audience by an acolyte of William Faulkner. I imagined the main character as a more grown-up version of this beautiful, charming, and wildly talented Indian child who practices at the dojang with me.

That's it for today. I'm headed off to first wedding anniversary dinner #1. Mmmm Thai noodles.

Bringing Creepy Back

2010-11-12T15:26:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Sexy Dance

2010-11-12T15:25:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Joan's bringing it back.

Mulberry Vine 2

2010-11-12T15:24:00.001-08:00

IMGP2617_bwcrop
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Mulberry Vine

2010-11-12T15:23:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Got Yr Foot, Dude

2010-11-12T15:21:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Seriously. It's mine now.

Max

2010-11-12T15:20:00.001-08:00

IMGP2667_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Mi Madre y el Perro

2010-11-12T15:18:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

My hero.

Willow and the Accordion

2010-11-12T15:17:00.001-08:00

IMGP2700_sepia
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

This is from our wedding reception. Willow and Aaron played a lot of Eastern-Europeanish folk music for us.

Maybe Jessi Gets a Pass, Too.

2010-11-12T15:15:00.001-08:00

IMGP2716_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Until she starts crying because people aren't paying attention.

Cousin Helen is an Exception

2010-11-12T15:12:00.001-08:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

...to the general rule of not liking kids.

...Aaaaand again.

2010-11-12T15:10:00.001-08:00

IMGP2895
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

For a person who doesn't like kids much, I certainly seem to take a lot of photos of them.

Barely Legal Part 2

2010-11-12T15:07:00.001-08:00

IMGP2904
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Kids are lucky they have this going for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't live long.

This Cuteness is Barely Legal

2010-11-12T15:04:00.001-08:00

IMGP2924_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

My friends' kid. I mean woah cute, huh?

Raspberry Fingers

2010-11-12T14:55:00.001-08:00

IMGP2948
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

It's Lady Aitch.

Denise

2010-11-12T14:52:00.001-08:00

IMGP2960_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

My hot mama goat-farmin' friend.

The Big Quit

2010-11-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

I am writing on the fourth full day of my quit. Yep, that's right, I've quit smoking. I think that I knew that it would happen this way; thus, I've never bothered to really try to quit before the precise moment when it happened.

Most smokers have had the occasional experience of looking down at the stinking little death-stick in our fingers and felt a sense of bizarre alienation from the act, wondering how the hell it came to be that these stupid little things run our lives and boss us around all day as they slowly kill us. It has happened to me many, many times, but I've always managed to eventually shrug and decide that now is not the time to deal with it. Just take another drag and be done with that little flight of fancy, I said to myself, because you can't quit.

And then Monday night, with no warning, I suddenly knew with objective and detached certainty that the cigarette in my hand as I drove home from work was the last one. I only enjoyed it as much as any other cigarette. I looked at it a bit. Rolled it around in my fingers, slowing down time, giving myself the opportunity to withdraw the motion. But it never passed. I waited a few more hours, and at the end I was still certain. So I calmly handed my cigarettes over to David and told him to do something with them because I am done.

I'm done. For today. And the next day. And the next day...

The AA approach--"I will always be an addict"--is actually proving to be helpful. The whole one day at a time method is also working. There are a few other tricks I'm developing to help ease the process too, such as vividly imagining the nicotine monster as this nasty little asshole that whispers horrible things in my ear, since I then have the option of ignoring it after telling it to fuck the fuck off.

Nighttime is terrible. Everything has turned upside down; I used to hate mornings and look forward to the hours after dark, and now I loathe the dark. It surrounds me with restless boredom, fills me with nervous irritation, and explodes in angry, frothing shrieks of self-loathing that almost reach my throat. I hope that I don't decide to start blogging on a particularly horrible evening, but if something really snaky and cruel appears for a day, please know that it's the little monster talking. Maybe I'll leave it up so I can remember what a little bitch it is.

More to come later.

What's Up With Figwasp These Days?

2010-10-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hi. How are ya? It's been a while. I've been busy with all sorts of living and learning and growing to arrive back here to try to summarize. I plan on trying to post more here in the future, especially since there's a bit more excitement going on in my life lately, and a lot more creative endeavors. Here's a short list of what comes to mind to relate about the past months:

I'm coming up on my first wedding anniversary. This year in love has zipped right on by.

Over the summer, we moved back to Asheville. I was withering over there in Greensboro. Everything makes a lot more sense again now. Life is no longer on hold.

I am now teaching at the local community college, which is very satisfying and fulfilling for me. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I had a shoe in for that job, making me a very lucky girl in this economic climate. At least, lucky in one way.

Unfortunately, it's looking like one of the facts of my life is to be in a large amount of debt from the scholarship I went to college on. They don't care what the reason is for me not teaching in a K-12 public school, and they're coming to collect. Nevertheless, I have thought about this a lot and realized that I will just have to accept it for what it is: the result of a choice that I can't regret. I was so unhappy being away from Asheville, but now I love my life, we have an adorable little house that allows D and I both to do everything we want to do--i.e. he's setting up a recording studio downstairs, and I am setting up a martial arts training space--and I am near most of the people I care about. We are quickly building a life here, and it turns out that I really prefer teaching at the post-secondary level. There's no going back, so there's no use thinking too much anymore about what life without debt would be like. ...So, that's a rather personal situational detail. I'll spare you any more.

One other very, very important thing that has happened is that I have become passionately involved in the study of Tae Kwon Do. I suppose it has been in the works for quite some time for me to find some activity that can completely absorb me, and that combines physical, spiritual, and psychological benefits. Well, I've found it. Boy have I. It's almost frightening how much of my mental space it occupies each day. Since I found it, I've been treating it rather like my life raft, my link to fulfillment. I know, I know: danger, Will Robinson. I know. It may have a touch of pathology in it, but what doesn't? Especially when it comes to things that constitute our personal means of self-expression, the compulsive urge to obsessively learn learn learn practice practice practice create create create rarely comes from a completely quiet and sane mind. Thus, I am somewhat insanely involved in martial arts right now.

On a related topic, I'm currently writing a grant (on a volunteer basis) to create scholarships for underprivileged and at-risk kids to come to our Tae Kwon Do school. I know nothing about grant writing, but I'm determined to make it happen. Our school, Asheville Sun Soo, is truly an exceptionally good one, with a strong, intelligent leader whose integrity I wholly believe in. A scholarship program is long overdue for such an amazing program.

Another little project I'm working on is the the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project. This is such a neat idea, and it's given me an excuse to start making art again. I hardly remembered what it was like to have an inspired idea for a composition and then carry it out on paper. It's a shame that it took this long because for my entire childhood and adolescence, making art was a daily part of life and a very familiar friend. I should just be glad that art and I are again on speaking terms, I suppose. It feels great.

Life is not all rainbows and puppies, but it's certainly a hell of a lot better than it was a few months ago, and always getting better. I hope to be posting a lot more of the fruits of my labor here. That is, if I can stand to be distracted from doing it for long enough to report about it. Ciao!

Xtranormal #3: Dear Andrew

2010-10-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

A very serious letter to my dear, dear friend.

Xtranormal #2: An Epistle of Great Import

2010-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

I made this after I got annoyed with a lady at my Tae Kwon Do school.

My First Xtranormal Movie

2010-10-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

I am admittedly obsessed with this website right now.

Rachel

2010-06-06T19:51:00.001-07:00

IMGP1311_rhb
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Rachel Weeks, President of School House Apparel, based in Durham, NC

Rachel

2010-06-06T19:50:00.001-07:00

Rachel
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Killas

2010-06-06T19:49:00.001-07:00

Revolver2HSB
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Awww

2010-06-06T19:48:00.003-07:00

IMGP1604
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Photo Shoot with Revolvers

2010-06-06T19:48:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Partners in crime.

True Love

2010-06-06T19:46:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

The Marvel Men fight over a bunny's right to live

Carolina Music Band

2010-06-06T19:43:00.001-07:00

IMGP1785
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Performing at Craggy Brewing in Asheville

Aaron

2010-06-06T19:41:00.001-07:00

IMGP1811
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

An older photo of my dear friend playing with Carolina Music Band, based in Asheville, NC

Casey

2010-06-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

IMGP1841
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

From The Brand New Life, based in Greensboro, NC.

Elora

2010-06-06T19:37:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Beautiful Hale baby. Such a ham, too. She makes my job easy.

Daphne

2010-06-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Joanie's pretty Aussie

T-mater

2010-06-06T19:35:00.001-07:00

IMGP1958_cr
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Everyone's favorite tripod

Maggie

2010-06-06T19:34:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by figandwasp

One of Max's girlfriends

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands - Recording Session

2010-06-06T19:33:00.001-07:00

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands - Recording Session
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Diego

Recording...

2010-06-06T19:32:00.001-07:00

IMGP2139_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Diego and David at a recording session for Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands

Strawberry Pickin'

2010-06-06T19:31:00.001-07:00

IMGP2149_hsb
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Our soon-to-be temporary roommate, Joanie. Don't mess with this woman.

Pretty in Colors that Start with 'P'

2010-06-06T19:28:00.001-07:00

IMGP2343_hsb
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

It's Anna!

The Nondenoms

2010-06-06T19:26:00.001-07:00

The Nondenoms
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Kelly from the Greensboro pop-punk trio, The Nondenoms.

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands

2010-06-06T19:25:00.001-07:00

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Another shot of the lovely Ms. Crystal playing the saw.

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands

2010-06-06T19:23:00.001-07:00

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

Performing at WE Fest 2010 in Wilmington, NC. David has been recording their first demo, and several of them will be performing at our reception next weekend. Who's psyched? Yeah, me.

Been a Long Time Gone

2010-06-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

Since D and I got hitched, we've been rather busy with all sorts of projects. We've gotten a new dog, a new camera, and a new five-year plan. In fact, after our belated wedding reception this weekend, we're headed back to Asheville for good! Yippee! Anyhow, here I am again, and at first I plan to try to post lots more of my backlogged photography, and then who knows what.

<3 Figwasp

Megan becoming a sad clown

2010-06-06T19:08:00.001-07:00

IMGP2516_bw
Originally uploaded by figandwasp

...while we were at WE Fest in Wilmington.

2010-02-01T18:07:00.001-08:00

IMGP0673_exprs, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

Knighting King Canine in a German Expressionist film?

Shadow Play #1

2010-02-01T17:55:00.001-08:00

IMGP0670_1, originally uploaded by figandwasp.

From early Photoshop experiments after David took a bunch of shots of us in the snow.

A New Blog for a New Legal Status

2009-11-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted here in a really long time, I know. Things got a little too lively for much blogging after the engagement and all. We're already going to be legally married by next weekend!

Anyhow, if you're a friend or family member, or just a voyeuristic stranger, check out the new blog that I started in order to try to keep in touch with people about our upcoming events:

http://davidandallisoninfo.blogspot.com/

I will return when there is time. Ciao!

--Soon to be Mrs. Wasp

This Just In

2009-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Figwasp is getting married.

Declaration of Chaos Control Initiative.

2009-10-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is another post that proves what I mean about this blog being truly miscellaneous in nature. Personal ruminations on my life and goals right now...

I am in the midst of a crisis of self-efficacy. By which I mean that lately I lack strategies for conquering a pervasive sense of helplessness that has negatively shaped and colored my emotional, material, and real-waking-time life. (My dreams haven't been very disturbing, which is one sign to me that it isn't too late to avoid a meltdown.) I aim to get to the bottom of this and fix it before it's out of control in the kind of ways that friends, students, employers, and potential compatriots note and remark upon.

I try to avoid the language of 'destiny' and other such tricky and anti-pragmatical hocus-pocus. However, without origins and gods and cosmological speculation, I know, nevertheless, that I have important shit to do on this earth. Period. Examples: starting a free school, traveling the world, keeping my heart free from all the captivating but worthless, mediocre shit that surrounds me, and even just sticking to the lonely path of living up to my own ideals within a capitalist-military industrialist-falling empire type of society. I know that these goals and all the others require a calm and lucid subject of their enactment--i.e., little old me.

I also know that certain psychological reflexes that I exhibit in stressful situations are counterproductive to these aims. Therefore, my immediate crisis requires some immediate attention, so that I do not become so distracted by self-involved, melancholy, and anxious introspection that I lose touch with what is important about my place in the human and material world that I desire to inhabit.

My perceived source of stress and feelings of helplessness is definitely my work--as in, the work I get paid to do, teaching developmental English courses at a community college. I am very, very new at this on several levels, despite having some previous experience teaching high school English.

First of all, since Asheville, Burnsville, and rural Nash County are all full of white people, I am experiencing what I couldn't call culture shock, but rather cultural...um...adjustment? This is one aspect of the stress that I believe is quite positive. My range of intercultural exchange has expanded dramatically in the past few months I have spent in Greensboro; in addition to my born-on-American-soil students, whose skin colors and cultures vary widely, this semester I have also taught or tutored immigrants (and refugees) from Vietnam, Korea, China, Laos, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Mexico, Cuba, Sierra Leone, Togo, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Ghana. Last week, I taught a Laotian man how to use a word processor. I help new English speakers to master subject-verb agreement. I help one really old countryfied lady to develop strategies for reading and comprehending college-level texts. I help many single mothers to conquer the systems that cannot help but to stand in opposition to their dreams of giving their children a better future. The fruit of my efforts gives people confidence in new surroundings, new opportunities...

Despite the positive and even transformative experiences on that front, I feel like I am stumbling through my classes and my preparation for them every day, just trying to hang onto all the little strings that want to unravel. Unfamiliar curricula aside, my main problem is the despair and anxiety that I feel every time a new grading project comes my way, which is an almost daily event. I manage my time poorly, at least partly because of the drudgery and complication I associate with grading piles of tests or essays. My spirit revolts against the idea that this paper in front of me can tell me anything about what a student has learned! Although I am always fair and consistent about grades, I cringe every time I am required to put a big ugly number on someone's paper, especially given all the context surrounding...ugh, all of it!

I could rail all day about why I hate grading, about how it feels like trying to read vital signs from a dead rabbit, but the point is that the anxiety that this produces creates a mental block on everything else that is important to me, like planning lessons, reading books, playing music...and all I can do is fret with furrowed brow about what I "should" be doing but cannot seem to begin. This leads to lags and snags of all sorts.

With the help of my brilliant partner--my hero of the week, or lifetime, by the way--I developed a short list of guidelines for myself which do not, and cannot, address the larger issues at work here, but may be able to help me avoid falling to bits and failing in a big way.

GENERAL GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES FOR DISCIPLINE AND STRESS REDUCTION:

- Leave the laptop at home. Access crackbook and blogs in the early a.m. or later in the evening, when there is no work to do because I have already done it. Use the crappy school PC's for work-related stuff.

- Plan for Monday by Friday. Anxiety-free weekends are essential.

- Habit is good. It will feel unnatural until I reap the rewards, whereupon I will sing its virtues because for example, on my way to see Melt Banana in Chapel Hill, I will have no nagging worries.

- Take care of testing center business promptly, for otherwise, it is promptly forgotten.

- Remember that the purpose is also to create more time for important things like: Going to shows; lovin' on my sweet dyspeptic creatron; playing music; following through on craft projects; cooking; passing the Praxis for ESL; reading books; WRITING; planning interesting lessons for my classes and my language exchange partner; and generally creating a better world.

- Wake the fuck up and have a healthy breakfast, drink tea, and establish bearings early so I can think clearly. Make any "official" phone calls, since it makes me seem like the kind of responsible person who wakes up early to handle shit. Write unambitious but detailed to-do lists in the morning before leaving, so that the unstructured work day doesn't turn into a mess of confused half-efforts.

- Read more Kozol, radical teaching journals, etc. to stay inspired.

- Keep good, healthy, convenient food around to avoid time- and money-consuming eating habits. Soups, crackers, cheese, avocado, granola, yogurt, Larabars (yum), Thai noodle packs, pre-cut veggies, popcorn, English muffins, and nuts all come to mind.

This is what I have been able to come up with so far. Intriguing, I know. But really, it's the simple stuff that ends up mattering! I don't want to embody Benjamin Franklin's rigidly scheduled automaton fetish...but one must admit that the man was successful.

I would like to know about how all you other aspiring laziness-and-despair conquerors are doing it. ¡Digame!

The Mother Lode of Awesome New-To-Me Art and Design

2009-10-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

I hit a jackpot today in my design blog nerding routine, so what follows is just a totally self-indulgent list of links which, incidentally, you may enjoy. Some are rights-managed, but the ones that appear here are not. Be sure to check out the others, though.

Very pretty things here, including free downloads of super high-quality images like the one below.

Next, you'll want to check out Texture Lovers, found via How About Orange. Par exemplo:

Next up that I somehow found is this guy Tycho's photostream. Go see it! I love all the vintage designs and typography fetish stuff. I can't put up examples because he doesn't give permissions, but you can look. *Wink.*

Holy crap, Fiodor Sumkin. I want this stuff all over the walls of my life.

Ansel Olsen. Yum.

And last but not least, a new line of free hand-drawn fonts here, and then (whew) still more free fonts here at Font Squirrel, at least a few of which are gorgeous. These lovely decorative dingbats caught my eye.

This is Bound to be Personal in a Tacky, Not-So-Interesting Way.

2009-10-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Feel free to ignore this one. It may not stay up for long.

What a strange few weeks. Not that it's over or anything. We still don't know what we're doing this weekend--Athens, Georgia, or a farm outside Roanoke, Virginia? Blacksburg? Franklin, NC perhaps?

It seems like almost everyone I know is in transition and rather unavailable. I myself am moving into my new house and somewhat away from our little womb of love. Only five blocks away, sure, but it will certainly mean a change, even if I mostly sleep in the same bed where I've slept for the past four months or so. The new house is shaping up to become a radical public school teachers' affinity house.

When we went up to Asheville to try to retrieve my things the first time, we couldn't get the truck because we had both somehow forgotten (duh) to renew our expired licenses. The guys at Penske in Weaverville were really nice about letting us reschedule, which I know they didn't have to do. I felt sure that if we had been in Asheville or Greensboro, we would have gotten a self-satisfied, not-sorry-at-all "Sorry. That's Penske policy."

Foiled master plans aside, we had an interesting weekend.

My list of mini-trip highlights:

- Despite multiple potentially volatile run-ins, the only word creepy ex said to me was "No," and this was solicited by a question: "May I come in?" Furthermore, I have received no psychotic text messages since then. This is a first.
- David being perfectly supportive and making everything better.
- Being magically given a place to stay by Ms. Magical Erin, and then cuddling with her magical cat.
- When asked why he had responded to my question about a Haruki Murakami novel instead of telling me where to turn, Aaron saying, "You asked me two questions at once. I answered the more important one." Also, Aaron saying, "It's my life, isn't it?" when I tried to convince him to stay somewhere he didn't want to stay. I was flushed with affection for him right then, especially after the "Do you think I treat every woman like my girlfriend?" thing. What a rad guy.
- Hanging out at Gaining Ground Farm, where there was a booty dance party in the house (complete with several children under three) and an old-time and gypsy jazz pickin' session by the fire. Nice people.
- Seeing Ken and Ziggy at Broadway's.

Lowlights:

- Realizing how utterly terrified I still get when confronted with the possibility of meeting creepy ex face-to-face. I still feel spine prickles of imminent danger when he is near, or even when he might be near.
- Creepy ex not letting me into a 70's African music DJ party I really wanted to attend (hey, but at least...see above), since apparently he is somehow the bouncer? Boo. But I tried.
- Having horrible dreams about creepy ex doing terrible things to me.
- Not sleeping at all and freezing my arse off when we crawled into our tent at the aforementioned farm, and then having to spend the rest of Sunday sleeping instead of getting things done, and then being ill-prepared for class today.
- Not seeing some people, and spending too little time with others.

Just weird:

- Watching the conflict in people's faces as they try to decide whether to talk to me, seeing the embarrassment in their eyes as they fumble to make a choice: Recognize this person's humanity, with which I am very familiar, or be cowed by the inevitable wrath and "betrayal" rhetoric of someone who never gives up a grudge, and who is watching very, very closely?

People can be disappointing. I'm not sure what the difference is between a friend and an acquaintance anymore. I have been unsure for a while now who my friends are. I am inclined to think, from evidence I can gather so far, that Greensboro may be a better place to make them.

Off to sleeping and voting and renewing licenses and teaching. Hum drum dee-dum.

When You Visit CulturalRevolutionaries.org...

2009-09-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

...You find this:

This is an open experiment.
A putting in words of what is already in the air.
The more this declaration is being read, thought or spoken out, the more its energy will manifest in our world and in our society.
If what is written here resonates with you, make it your statement.
Find ways to read it, share it and put it into action.

DECLARATION OF CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARIES 2009

Cultural revolutionaries in 2009…

_live, act, work with and not against nature
_know that life is too complex to understand it intellectually
_build and support local, self-governed economies
_value and safe-guard diversity of all kind
_value interdependence, since they know that nothing is separate
_regard themselves as equal to all life forms
_protect and support life
_love and support children unconditionally
_work on themselves towards greater awareness
_know about ecological principles and integrate them into their lives
_see music and dance as an integral part of their expression and communication
_live on an animate earth and regard it as sacred
_know how to grow their own food
_appreciate their sensory awareness
_celebrate life
_cooperate
_make the shift from thinking ‘either, or’ to thinking ‘as well, as’
_share their knowledge
_understand and integrate process as a way of being
_are not identified with their body, thoughts or emotions
_see the mind as a tool
_realize that there is no right or wrong
_are not identified with any social tag, their past or their future
_are aware that the very essence of who they are is life itself
_take responsibility for their emotions
_are aware of and value their relationships to their living and seemingly non-living surroundings
_value and integrate the wisdom of women
_value and integrate the wisdom of indigenous cultures
_value generalist knowledge
_are aware of change as one of the core principles of evolution
_work towards diversification and decentralization
_engage in and create bonds to the place where they live
_turn from dependent consumers to responsible producers
_are looking for ways so that their interests and talents may unfold
_have the courage to resist and disobey laws that render self-rule, self-provisioning, and self-sustenance illegal
_are informed about the current money system and identify it as a contemporary form of enslavement
_identify and boycott biological, cultural, social and philosophical monocultures
_boycott monopolies of any kind
_question everyone who promotes one solution
_value environmental and human ethics over profit maximization
_boycott corporations and banks operating for profit maximization
_reclaim land and forests as common good
_reclaim water as common good
_reclaim biodiversity and knowledge as common good
_are aware that they participate in the process of co-creation at all times
_allow life to unfold through them

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

(I edited a few typos.)

On a Likert Scales test of my opinion of the viability of each and every one of these for all times and circumstances, there is plenty of variation, i.e. "Sometimes" to "Always." The main reason for any of the "Sometimes" responses has to do with my acute sense of counterculture tendencies towards the exclusion of regular folks. Especially since I have witnessed and admired how many 'regular' folks have an incredibly robust way of living up to several (even many) of these principles, without the presence of any class irony or inflated idealism (as there is with most of 'us' middle-class white anarchists).

Nevertheless, some of the ideas this manifesto expresses may be rather lost on people whose priorities in life skew towards survival within their native contexts. Cultural creativity, for people locked in cultures of poverty and struggle, may have dramatically different meanings from what can be summarized in a few slogans.

There are a few that just seem weird to me. For example, cultural revolutionaries "are not identified with their bodies, thoughts, or emotions?" And they "regard themselves as equal to all life forms?" The authors seem to be drawn to that scary spiritualist territory that I try to avoid (especially in terms of my political convictions), as well as being willing to negate material reality. Then they turn around and mention the value of sensory experience and of being able to grow food. And what about the urban cultural revolutionary? Does she need to own a jackhammer with which to destroy the streets and start gardens to feed the armies of poor people who will of course be willing to dedicate their time to her project? Yeah, right.

I am not cynical, just skeptical.

Nevertheless, much of this manifesto seems very useful. Maybe I'll go on a postering campaign with an edited version that contains the ones I have no trouble buying wholesale, i.e., many of the items that relate to local economies, interdependence, and decentralization of authority. There are a few that don't fit those categories that I instinctually lean towards agreement with, but they all have easily fathomable exceptions. Most things do.

I think this Chinese propaganda poster (via theeastisred.com) rather captures the psycho-social object of my skepticism.

Thoughts?

What Nearly Made Me Choke on My Granola While I Was Reading This Morning.

2009-09-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

The passive, tranquil and protected lives white people lead depend on strongly armed police, well-demarcated ghettos. While children starve and others walk the city streets in fear on Monday afternoon, the privileged young people in the Free Schools of Vermont shuttle their handlooms back and forth and speak of love and "organic processes." They do "their thing." Their thing is sun and good food and fresh water and good doctors and delightful, old and battered eighteenth-century houses, and a box of baby turtles; somebody else's thing may be starvation, broken glass, unheated rooms and rats inside the bed with newborn children. The beautiful children do not wish cold rooms or broken glass, starvation, rats or fear for anybody; nor will they stake their lives, or put their bodies on the line, or interrupt one hour of the sunlit morning, or sacrifice one moment of the golden afternoon, to take a hand in altering the unjust terms of a society in which these things are possible.

[...]

Least conscionable is when the people who are laboring and living in these schools describe themselves as revolutionaries. If this is revolution, then the men who elected Richard Nixon do not have a lot to fear. They would do well in fact to subsidize these schools and to covertly channel resources to their benefactors and supporters, for they are an ideal drain on activism and the perfect way to sidetrack ethical men from dangerous behavior.

--Jonathan Kozol
from Free Schools

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

Only two chapters in and this book is rocking my world. It was published in 1972--I feel sure Kozol would have known better than to use the proverbial but exclusionary term "men" even a couple of years later, even in the midst of such proverbial speech--but I see a very appealing present-day revolutionary potential in these ideas.

Just now there is a little voice emerging in my head, telling me, "Put 'Starting a Free School' on the ten-year plan! Scrap international travel, scrap ever making a comfortable living, scrap this bourgie bullshit about 'leisure time,' there's work to do! Call Kymber and Katie! We'll all quit our jobs and learn how to run a non-profit and everything will be amazing and we'll teach Glenwood kids, outside the system and for the righteous purpose of human-fucking-liberation, for free!" But hold on, Cooper. Not so fast.

Portrait by Robert Shetterly, www.americanswhotellthetruth.org

One of the things I love about this book so far is that it seems to employ a very elegant balance of the general and the particular to motivate and inspire, but also to instruct, in the most practical sense of the word. Most of Free Schools literally reads like an incredibly approachable instruction manual that skips over the tedious technical and legal aspects of running a nonprofit, saving those things for later discovery by the reader. Kozol occasionally wanders into helpful but essentially theoretical commentary. He makes no attempt to disguise his personal positions, and he is careful to discuss with real consideration other ways of thinking about an issue at the same time as he distances himself from them.

In the chapter titled "Power: Participation: Sanction: Legal Matters," for example, Kozol discusses the balance between radical democratic ideals and the real needs and considerations that must go into creating an effective governing body for the Free School:

Many people who go into Free Schools are so nervous about power, and so uneasy in regard to anyone who holds it, that they do not like to face the painful fact that somebody in this school, or at least some group of bodies, is going to have to make some kinds of difficult decisions. [...] The composition of the Trustee Board, and the power that it will or will not have, is therefore elemental to the entire character and oftentimes to the survival of the Free School.

He goes on to discuss the pitfalls of electing "prestigious" Trustee Boards in order to ensure popular support, as well as the problems inherent to starting out with a Board comprised of well-intentioned but weak-willed anti-authoritarian idealists who can quickly be replaced through "democracy" by power-hungry manipulators.

Clearly, these are words from the trenches. Every time I read one of his books, I get the sense of a guy who has sat down to write because he knows he is gifted with the ability and therefore the responsibility to raise awareness, capture imaginations, and change minds, but all the while, he has one eye trained on his real work, out there in real schools with real kids.

Although he has tamed his image somewhat in the past couple of decades--i.e. the appearances on national television where he firmly but politely rails against injustice--he has never really changed his mind or his message. I expect that Jonathan Kozol is one of those people who has the stamina to fight on the front lines until the very last. Furthermore, he is the kind of figure whose integrity puts to shame all of those cozy, rich University bastards like Noam Chomsky who, despite the usefulness and truth of many of their ideas, are undeniably and quite literally in the business of radical politics.

So, fuck Chomsky. I'll just keep reading my little teacher books, written by a guy who is much better at living inside his ideals.

Oh. My. Paper.

2009-09-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

Oh oh oh I could just explode my little head with excitement over this website I just found via All Things Lovely. I foresee spending way, way, way too much money at Paper Mojo. I mean, I click on my pet color range under "browse by color" and I get more pages than I can scan through in a day, full of things like this:

Somebody stop me.

One of the Coolest Things Ever. By Blu.

2009-09-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Peter Lorenz's Photostream is Why I Don't Grade Papers Anymore.

2009-09-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is one of those times when I have to write without being embarrassed what the subjects of whom I speak may think about it. Hero worship of one's friends can be an uncomfortable thing to expose, but I'm going to go ahead and put that discomfort in brackets: [discomfort].

I have a huge crush on Peter's talent. His commercial venture is Blend Photography, which is all about beautifully candid keepsake photographs from weddings. They are gorgeous and I am so happy that he can make money that way, but his range as a photographer is very broad. His sensitivity and cleverness, not to mention sheer technical skill with that machine, keeps my jaw dropping every time he posts something new on facebook. He always makes our awesome friends look as beautiful as they are, too.

Here are a few gems I cherry-picked from his enormous photostream:

This one is from a photo shoot he did in Gary, Indiana. Mmmm.

And here is his gorgeous partner Alona, one of his constant favorite subjects. There must be hundreds of her, and they are some of my favorites. There's love all over that lens.

Here is one of my favorites from his shoot at Bele Chere this past summer. These fuckers are always around at big downtown events, hilariously outnumbered.

I love how beautiful and interesting he makes Asheville life look. It makes me a little nostalgic.

Here's one from the LAAF Festival that happens every summer in Asheville, from the infamous Bicycle Jousting event.

Anyhow, just pop some popcorn and watch his photostream sometime. I plan on spending a couple more hours doing just that later today.

Holy Crap, Chris Natrop!

2009-09-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have been pretty enthusiastic about enormous paper cutout work, wall decals, etc. lately, and this shit blows me away. I might have to get some enormous pieces of black paper, an overhead projector, and an incredibly erasable pencil and give it a go myself. Check out this guy's website here.

Now accepting design submissions for objects that will hold together when negative space is cut out. Anyone?

By the way, I found it via Aesthetic Outburst, a great little design blog by Abbey Hendrickson, a baby-makin', sewin', design-lovin' upstate New Yorker.

La Coiffure, le Cheval, et la Maison

2009-09-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

The latest from BibliOdyssyey is a brilliant overview of satirical drawings and etchings from the 18th century, all about the enormous and elaborate high-class hairstyles that English ladies were attempting to copy from equally ridiculous French ladies on the other side of the pond.

Apparently, though, the ship-buried-in-hair was no joke. Women really did this. The accompanying article at BibliOdyssey is rather fascinating, if you want to know more.

Here's a very bizarre one from a collection of old prints on the theme of horse anatomy. You can see the entire 2006 post it comes from here.

Which reminds me...I am really looking forward to moving into a new place and starting to decorate. I have had a major itch to nest for a long time now, ever since everything in my life got yanked up by the roots when I left Asheville. Actually, it was probably happening before that, since I never fully moved in to the house in the woods--as soon as I had started settling in there, I was uncomfortable. Then I fell in love with someone who lived three hours away. Anyhow, it has been a long time since I have lived anywhere where I felt present, like it was in any way intelligent or even psychologically possible to get attached. But when I start making things for my walls, I want a big miscellaneous frame cluster stretching across a corner with things like this in the frames.

This light, spritzy rain is lovely.

Show Tonight at CFBG

2009-09-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

Flier for a show tonight at CFBG. I'll be there. Come say hello.

Re-Photography: Pomo Orgasmo

2009-09-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have a crush on this blog, Re-Photography. Their little manifesto reads, "Appreciation of the photographic moving image that is from elsewhere, a grab, a microexpression that we make a still of, revealing the scratch, the scan line, the layering, the double, the blur, the skew."

The concept, of course, is to post images that are reconstituted from originals. There are photos of photos, or photos of television frames. Despite the differences in content, the longer I stare at reams of these images, the more the whole collection starts to seem like random snatches from a great sea of undifferentiated static. Each one seems somehow forlorn, or perhaps foreboding, but all together, they seem to me like a horde of sad ghosts, profoundly arbitrary and vacuous. Alright, now that I've maxed out my touchy-feely bullshit allowance for the day, you should just go see it.

Let's Build a World Out of Wire.

2009-09-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is mostly famous for his mobiles, which are impressive, precariously-balanced structures made from spindly bits of wire attached to brightly-colored, flat shapes and shards of...stuff. Anyway, very nice things. It turns out that Calder actually invented the mobile, according to Wikipedia. Another article raised a question about that particular fact, but I wasn't alive in 1931, and I'm willing to wager that you weren't, either. Besides, I don't want to talk about mobiles. I want to talk about his somewhat lesser-known wire works.

...or maybe just not talk about it at all.

These make me happy.

(It made a poopy!)

...I would like to live in this guy's world, inhabit his imagination, just for a day or two. Nevertheless, he is no longer living, and I would need a lot of heavy drugs to trick myself into thinking it was happening. Does anyone want to help me fill up rooms and rooms full of wire sculptures? We'll skip the acid and just drink lots of coffee, maybe.

Holy Togo, it's Zambiance!

2009-09-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

I want to take a moment to pass along this amazing blog called Awesome Tapes from Africa. The maker of this blog has no information about himself (except that he is a he and lives in Brooklyn) up to credit, and I haven't had time to look in-depth at his other blog, The Hiplife Complex, but I can't wait to spend some rainy day reading all about hiplife artists in Ghana.

Here is a scanned image from the tape cover of the latest posted recordings.

Meanwhile, you need to check out this staggering compendium of digitally-recorded-from-analog African music, all available in QuickTime streams linked off the blog. There isn't enough time in a month to listen to it all!

Musing on 'Noise,' Plus Saturday Night at My Favorite Things

2009-09-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of days. Things have been busy, with working, cooking, going to shows and promoting the one that I'm...well, obviously, promoting. I met up with my soon-to-be new roommate Sunday, and we squealed like little girls over all the interior design projects we want to work on. I have spent the last hour looking at digital cameras on eBay, and I'm about ready to sell my soul for one at this point.

So, our show on Friday night was just as I predicted--good, fine, fun, with about 8 people there, maybe four of whom did not play at some point. Sometimes I guess you just have to have group band practice. It's like watching porn. Sortof. Andy did figure out that the best place to mic a bicycle is on the rear quick-release handle, which is some kind of progress. Rocket Science sounded ten times better than they did at their first show, and we met a really nice guy named Marvin who seems to be fairly enthusiastic about making noise.

Speaking of which, check out the two pieces from Ex.Tempo that David has finished mixing here.

David cringes every time I call his music 'noise,' but it's just not an insult, see. Certainly not all that he does by himself or with Andy falls into the category, but anything I've heard him do in collaboration with others has mostly fit that description. Much of it is cacophonous noise (music) made by non-musicians, which is at least partly the point. I think I've decided I need to use the term 'noise' more often after realizing that many, many people expect particular things when they hear 'free improv music,' like rhythms and melodies. They often think of 'jam' music or jazz or something else they've already heard. In the interest of accurately describing what other people are likely to hear--people who, undeniably, will probably hate it in the first place and who would probably rather know so they can show up late, and who we'd probably also rather do just that--it seems to me that putting a crudely descriptive name on what only a few consider to be 'music' per se is an acceptable concession.

But holy crap, Saturday night at My Favorite Things! That show was on par with some of the best combo local + touring band shows shows I ever saw in Asheville, which is saying something.

First up was Pinche Gringo, which you can find on Myspace here. I had never seen them before, and I was really impressed with Josh's charisma as a songwriter and vocalist. I mean, the guy plays drums with his feet, plays guitar, and sings his guts out at the same time. I have had a crush on the older guy who played guitar with him since I saw him play with his other band, which I can'tfuckingremember the name of...something 'Charmers?' Anyhow, he's a badass with old school rock and roll chops. I hear a wide streak of Stooges reminiscent punk in Pinche Gringo. Love it, love it, love it.

Next (who knows why so early) was The Lovely Eggs from Lancaster, England. Their Myspace is here. I can't get these super-catchy, occasionally punk-as-fuck candy pop songs or the frontwoman's (Holly Ross) adorable face out of my head. "Have you ever heard a digital accordion?...Have you ever read Richard Brautigan?...Have you ever fought a deadly scorpion?" They are the only band I've seen in a long time that could get away with long sessions of banter between songs--everything that came out of this woman's mouth was hilarious, like her description of her bandmate/partner David's compulsive collecting.

Athens, Georgia-based indie shock-pop freaks Cars Can Be Blue (Myspace here) were touring along with the Eggs. They started off with a song whose chorus spelled out D-E-E-P-D-I-C-K-I-N-G. Hilarious shit. Others were "Hey Hippie" and the dangerously catchy "Dirty Song": "We've been holding hands now for quite long enough...You can sodomize me, get behind and ride me, stuff your cock inside me, proceed to fuck me blindly," etc. ...and this girl (Becky Brooks) looks like a nerdy librarian. Ha! Brilliant.

(Photo of Cars Can Be Blue by Richard Hamm. See his website here.)

The last band to play was Greensboro's Rough Hands (Myspace here), who are somewhat similar and perfectly complementary to Pinche Gringo, but a bit more polished and, of course, more like a band than a guy who can do three things at once. Although they rule, by the time they started playing, we felt rather glutted on good music and were tired. So, after two songs or so, it was off to bed with us.

Anyhow, you should check out all of these bands. For your listening pleasure, I have added songs by some of them (along with a track by Ahleuchatistas, yee haw) posted up in the widget on the top right. They will live there for the next few days/weeks.

The Poster for Sept. 26th Show

2009-09-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

Poster for the Sept. 26th show, with art by Courtney Chappell.

More on this Ahleuchatistas Show, Plus One

2009-09-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the 'plus one': tonight (September 12) at My Favorite Things, our fantastic little Glenwood record shop, 9pm. The lineup is: The Lovely Eggs, Pinche Gringo, Rough Hands, and Cars Can Be Blue. The only one among them I have heard is Rough Hands, and they are way fun, but I am bad at describing the differences between the many rock and rolls. Dave.edu, my lover who is much smarter, says he would describe them as neo-mod, but that makes them sound sortof damp and floppy to me. Which they are not. So go to this show and let me know what descriptions you think would be appropriate.

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

Moving on...

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th, 8:00 pm, at CFBG's

Headlining:
AHLEUCHATISTAS

I have mentioned in earlier posts how much I love this effing band and really anything its members get involved in. I am very excited about this show. They are difficult to describe in one breath because of the variety of influences that are present in their music, but let's give it a shot: Asheville-based instrumental, experimental/avant garde and improvised rock compositions influenced by jazz and math rock. Or something. Their latest record was released on Tzadik (John Zorn's label!) this month. Visit their website or their Myspace.

With:

ESZETT
Instrumental dynamic progressive rock. Or something like that.

PILOTS
Three-piece instrumental progressive, um, harder rock.

WE ROCK COLLECTIVE
Experimental free improvisation insanity that does not rock at all. Example compositions for the group (by David) pictured below.

Bohemians at Hotel Know It All, Be Advised

2009-09-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

You've just got to blow this one up really large to appreciate it. This one comes from another great blog called Strange Maps that I wish the author (Frank Jacobs, I think?) would update more regularly.

The next part of this story is that after I read the post attached to this map, I then tracked down the link to moonbuggy, where it came from...and I nearly peed myself when I pressed 'random image' and came up with this:

HAAAAA! ...and it just kept getting better after that. Go there. See it.

Oh, Julian!

2009-09-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to checking up on Mr. Montague's latest work every day has become a regular part of life lately. I get very excited about it. I highly recommend The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification for those of you who understand the joy of bizarre information systems and taxonomies. Maybe sometime I will figure out how to articulate the other thing I love so much about it: what it is that is so eloquent about these images of broken, abandoned, de-purposed commercial waste. But don't hold your breath. You can get it here on Amazon, or see a photostream, or check out the main page and an explanation of the project here.

Otherwise, I eagerly keep up with The Montague Projects Blog, where his most recent cataloging enterprise involves scanning and posting graphics from his impressive book collection. If I'm not mistaken, his original goal was to do this every day from February '08 to February '09. Below is one of my favorites from his recent posts.

Wikimedia Object of Interest: Search "Physiognomy"

2009-09-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

...and you get a monkeyman diptych,

...a cowman,

...and these guys.

Upcoming Shows in Greensboro

2009-09-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

You know, I am really bitter about how nobody seems to be able to get it the fuck together to start a comprehensive calendar list of shows and other happenings here. It's depressing, really. I have heard people talk about doing it, and I've talked about doing it, but I'm just not sure how to get started making the connections. I always hear about things after they happen, because I happen to be a little too much of a homebody to stay up-to-date on all the fliers that pass over the windows of College Hill...and wherever else people put them. I just like to go to shows and want to know when and where they're happening. I would be happy to do it myself. Tips, anyone?

HEAR YE, HEAR YE.

Tomorrow night, September 11th (Um, never forget? Woo hoo Firefighters? Freedom? Patriot Act?) at CFBGs... I will be playing bicycle with We Rock Collective, the wacky improvisers. I am listening to them practice--not sure if that's the right word--their other pieces right now, and it sounds...well, crazy. Come on out.

Also playing is Rocket Science, made up of Adam Sunshine and David's little, tiny, baby brother Andy. That's Andy down below. I wish I could tell whether Adam is as brilliant a songwriter as I suspect he may be, but I can't hear what the hell that mushmouth is saying. Adam, if you're reading this, WRITE IT DOWN! (Please.) I'll also be hearing Andy's songs for the first time.

Hooray for Max and for his venue. Do check out the website too because apparently, the proprietor of CFBGs is also running for city council. Hm. Anyhow, we like the space there. Brownbagging is allowed, which means, among other things, that punks can get drunk.

All told, it may be a very short show with very few people there. Such is the nature of innovation in a town with very little space for that sort of thing. Well, I guess there is plenty of space. Wide open, empty space. Crickets, chirping birds, cicadas, and all that.

Be there around 9.

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

HEAR YE AGAIN.

Saturday, September 26th, 8:30 pm at CFBGs:

Ahleuchatistas
Ezsett
Pilots
and We Rock Collective

...Holy crap.

Fanfare for BibliOdyssey

2009-09-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

Check out this beautiful 17th Century Ottoman Empirical monogram I found here. There are so many gorgeous book clippings like this at my favorite new-to-me blog, BibliOdyssey. I could spend days sifting through it all.

Here's another detail of a tiny corner of a print from their most recent collection, Les Fleurs Animées. It's an gallant little bird drinking wine while adoring the lady of the grape vine.

Restaurants I'm Diggin'...But Don't Tell the Anarcho Police

2009-09-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot that I said I would post about this. Birthday dinner was lovely. 1618 West Seafood Grille was a very satisfying fine dining experience, despite the pretensions inherent to that biz, i.e. repulsive attempts to de-anglicize words by adding an 'e'. 'Fine dining' in general isn't my style, because it's so damn expensive (average entree here = $24) and because I can generally do as well or better with my own ingenuity in the kitchen, but I didn't have to pay for this one. They have an impressive wine list, and the loosely Latin-themed flounder entrée was delicious. It came with a dirty rice-stuffed poblano pepper that was...well, hot damn. Also, I have never had better calamari in my life. You can check them out here. The menu has changed who-knows-how-many times since their last website update, but I generally take that as a good sign.

While I am confessing my bourgeois sins for the week, I may as well also admit to really enjoying brunch at Lucky 32 on Sunday. I'm not sure how we ended up deciding to go somewhere so fancy, because it's really uncharacteristic of us, but there we went and boy was it good. Good enough to make it relatively easy to ignore the racket and stench of monied white Greensboroans and simply enjoy the food. The service was fantastic--our waitress was a real person who simultaneously brought her self and her best manners to the table. Particularly noteworthy items were the Sweet Onion Basil Quiche, the fried grit cake with gravy, and the absolutely sexy fruit salad. Figs, as you might guess, always get points with me.

I wonder what they've got in their dumpsters at the end of the night. Let me know if you want to go on an adventure to find out.

View from the Kitchen in San Andrés

2009-09-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'll always think about this place and miss the people there.

A Bee Lectures Me in Marxism

2009-09-09T20:43:00.000-07:00

I had a dream about just that. A dust-covered bee in its last gasps of life told me its deepest political convictions, but the only precise beewords I remember are, "For me, [the problem] is less about power and more about alienated labor."

Unsurprising, after the conversation I had with David about work, health care, and other domestic (as in national) gripes until much too late last night/early this morning. We're going to Turkey or Morocco or Algeria within the year, somehow or other. Your imagination is more qualified to fill in the gaps than is my ability to explain how we arrived at the conclusion.

I keep hyperventilating and yawning. That is an issue for the 'quitting' thread. Without having to see a doctor, I can pretty well infer that if this isn't walking pneumonia (somewhat unlikely, given my age), then it's chronic bronchitis, which is usually exacerbated, if not directly caused, by smoking.

The first problem with the obvious answer--'Quit smoking right-fucking-now, dumbass'--is that I am certain that the last time I had a lingering respiratory infection like this in April, the situation was actually complicated by my attempt to quit smoking at the same time that I was trying to purge the illness. It was too much for my cilia to handle without laying me up totally useless for a couple of weeks, even with the whole giving in to taking antibiotics thing.

That's exactly what happened. I became so sick that I could not possibly have done anything productive for several weeks, which made me really depressed and generally got me into a funk that took a long time to get over. This is something that I cannot afford right now. It is not that I don't believe quitting is worth my time and effort, it's just that I would have to plan for the inevitable illness that would ensue, unless, of course, I start the quit project when I am relatively healthy in the first place. I know that this logic sounds counterintuitive or plain silly to a nonsmoker, or maybe even a lightly-addicted smoker, but the people who know what I mean will know what I mean.

...Which brings me to the next thing I have to think about. I want to try Chantix this time. I could spend hours explaining how I got from my general anti-pharmaceutical stance to this particular conclusion, but I've already done the work of thinking really hard about it, and so I won't. Suffice it to say that the resolution stems from observation of facts about my past attempts to quit. The problem with making it happen is a money issue.

I have the prescription already. I got it when I still had insurance from the public school job, and the doctor was happy to give it to me, even when I explained that I was not sure if or when I would want to have it filled. However, in my current insuranceless situation, enough of the drug to get me started would cost at least $100. This is another expense that I will need to plan for, and that cannot happen right now.

Looking at the research I can find about treating whatever chest crap I have going on right now, it appears that I may have enough Cipro left over from the neurotic doctor, (different one from the Chantix lady, who was awesome) who gave me way too much of it before I left for Guatemala, to self-medicate in the event that I get desperate to breathe more easily. I don't think I will need it, because the whole thing seems to be on the outs, but this is still a small comfort. I need to get a little better before I can think about going through the taxing experience of quitting.

This has been a brain-dump about bumblebee comrades covered in white dust and microbes covered in smoke. It is not yet time to set a quit date. I'll let you know when I get the memo.

The Tranny Ecuadorian Soul of Bosch Returns, and Happy Birthday Anne

2009-09-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

I'll start by directing you to a good thing. First, I have to say thanks to Grace of Design*Sponge, Peter of Blend Photography, and Rachel of School House for the permissions to use your work in this blog. I'll be posting about Peter and Rachel soon.

Back to the treats. Design*Sponge has released some free desktop wallpapers by Lena Corwin and Deanne Cheuk that are just precious (as my great aunt Sarah Jane would say). You can get them here. Check out this manic thing, which I think looks like a girly 'Busy World of Richard Scarry' type of landscape, or like bizarre, half-comprehending cave drawings made by a Cro-Magnon whiz kid after visiting the future...

The others from August are nice too. Very over-the-top decorative floral print jobbies that rather remind me of what might have happened if Hieronymous Bosch had had a queenish side. I can just see the decorating show potential there.

Speaking of art that can easily be mistaken for the products of heavy drug use, check out Helado Negro. David and I saw them play last night at a free production by WUAG at the amazing space over at Lyndon Street Artworks. It would be hard to catch me describing anything this way normally, but this is some groovy, spacious Latin soul. Of course, David and I were wishing that the improvised parts had been longer.

Off to teach some English. I'll let you know how our dinner date for Anne's birthday went. (That's my mother out-law.) I am going to be in trouble with my second class of the day if I don't manage to grade their essays before they get there, so it's bound to be a busy day with no breaks. Yikes. Off I go.

A Few Bands I Miss Seeing

2009-09-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Living in Asheville was a kind of musical gluttony. It's not that there aren't interesting things going on in Greensboro, but I certainly miss being able to go see these bands play live.

Tony Wain and the Payne. Nobody here seems to be into this kind of crunky tonk. I heart you, Andrew and Aaron. I mean, not just you, but...hey, this is my list.
Anything that Shane, Ryan, and those boys ever touch, like Ahleuchatistas--here's their official site--(coming to play here at CFBG on September 26th, yeeeehaw) Ashes in Order, Lulo, and although I never saw them play together, Pilgrim. I may be missing a project or two. I never got to see Doom Ribbons or Mind vs. Target! but I know I would miss them too if I had. I might be more embarrassed to be so frank about my love for this group of musicians if it weren't for the fact that I have already made it clear--I get clumsy and starstruck around those guys. I nearly had a heart attack when one of them asked me to help him book this show at CFBG...and I think it showed on the interweb EKG. *Sigh* I'll never be cool.
Body of John the Baptist. Nathanael is a doomy little lullaby bird, and Jamie is the master of wall-of-sound analog synth magic.
Firecracker Jazz Band. Holy crap this band is fun to see live, especially at the Town Pump in Black Mountain.
The Sexpatriates. The Tower of Bower is almost as sexy as he thinks he is, and they create utter balls-out (sometimes quite literally) rock and roll mayhem.
The Reigning Sound. Like a fine, well-seasoned Cabernet. Of rock.
Soft Opening. More of Jamie's autistically rigorous taste and geetar chops, and for fuck's sake, bring earplugs.
All the street bands that play all sorts of gypsy punk fusions who are probably too cool to have their music up on the web. Please, Circus Band, correct me if I am mistaken.

There are others, and I may keep adding to this list, but that's what I can think of right now. If you haven't heard of any on this list, I recommend you check it out. I have to go get ready to teach some folks how to write good. (He he)

Extemporaneous Falafel

2009-09-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

Mmmm. Greek yogurt with pecans and honey. Black tea with milk and more honey. Perusing the blog I am wicked addicted to, Design*Sponge. The author's job is on my top ten list of things I might have loved to do with my life--right up there with documentary photography--if it hadn't been for this pesky desire to serve people. I sound bitter, but that's far from the truth. Teaching is where it's at...until it's not anymore, of course.

Soon I'll post links to a blog space that David and I are launching sometime later this month, which will document the first Ex.Tempo Series event. Here is the invitation we made:

Only a few of the people we initially invited made it this time, but I think it will take a few times before people realize that it really is a thing, and that it really is lots of fun. It seems that David has a new admirer, too, who wants to play more regularly.

I made fantastic falafel burgers for everyone. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, but it sure does taste good. I just mash up chick peas, a little flour, tons of garlic, tons of chopped parsley, and salt and pepper, then moosh them into patties and bread them with a mixture of flour and spices. Then I shallow-fry them in about 1/2" of peanut oil. The oil gets very dark and starts smoking, and I have to switch it out halfway through. My tzatziki doesn't follow any particular recipe, either. Nevertheless, them shits is good.

The next day, I made food again for the We Rock Collective guys, at which point I started hearing them call me 'Ms. Cooper.' Aurgh. Anyway, dinner was great: homemade tortillas with raw veggie salad tossed in lime blackberry vinaigrette and yogurt (collaborative effort on the sauce) with parsley and mint. I love food, and I love having people around me to feed, and I love having time to do it. I need to remember how happy it makes me to feed people as I navigate the career world--this could be a serious consideration, part of a healthy depression-avoidance plan. Of course, some day I may have little choice in the matter. If anything happens to dad, I might have to figure out what to do with the restaurant. I have thought about turning it into a happy, hormone-free pig sort of barbecue place, but somehow I think that the clientele would run screaming.

Today's pass-alongs:
- Check out these gorgeous spiders (and gorgeous everything) at the Montague Projects Blog.
- And remember, ladies, that if you're not having enough fun, you can always find some priests and do this... (c/o Chicks and Bikes)

Re-vision Explained/Disclaimer

2009-09-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here in a long time, mostly because I could never figure out a unifying concept for this space, and I got discouraged along the way somewhere. Life has changed in significant ways since I tried blogging the first time, and it is bound to change a lot more. I have had a major move, a trip to Central America, an extended period of poverty, and a career shift since then, not to mention falling in love. But I think it is time to come back and try again. I have deleted a few things and changed the domain name.

This time, I intend to embrace miscellany. For example, the 'quit smoking' thread will appear alongside any other posts, but it is the expression of a separate writing goal. I may often want to use this space the way many do, as a list of stuff I like on the web. Sometimes it may be recipes or songs or relics from different projects (David and I have been very industrious little creatrons lately). I would also be interested in any participation, collaboration, or tag-team blogging that anyone may fancy, so do send me a message if you have ideas.

I also would like to be less shy about writing things I am scared the wrong people may read. Furthermore, people who touch the lives of chronic writers must understand that they may at some point be written about, and I must keep in mind that no one ever likes what anyone has written about them and say to hell with it. Maybe we could all stand to be a bit more honest with each other. Besides, it's not as if I won't give readers plenty of opportunities to judge me, if they choose. I can commit to be at least as harsh with myself as I am with anyone else.

Another issue entirely is the fact that I am a teacher, and anything I say could result in public crucifixion. There is a long cultural history in our country of holding teachers to puritanical standards of conventional morality. It doesn't help matters, I'm sure, that I happen to be an unshaven anarcha-feminist who enjoys her sexuality and thinks that the word 'fuck' is one of the most useful terms in our language. So, if any of my students have ended up here, enjoy it at your own risk, and try to have a bit of perspective. Keep in mind that freedom of speech is a delicate abstraction that we have to actively defend and exercise, and that I am a real person with a home and a life and some not-so-tidy thoughts, just like you.

It's great to be back. Fall should be very interesting this year.

Ciao,
A. C.

Decision Day: A Smoker's Story

2009-09-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

I will try to be as prosy about all this as my English major constitution can handle. I am going to try to quit smoking (again). There, I said it. I have this diary going now, so that I can do things differently this time. The ways I have already tried don't work, and God is made up so he can't help me either.

I don't know anyone who once was as much of an addict as I am and has become a successful quitter--only lots of people who have quit many times, or who don't even think about quitting. Be back soon--gotta cook dinner after I smoke a cigarette. *Groan*

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

Damn, that was some good kale and butternut squash. Too bad you weren't very hungry, David.

So here's the deal. My mother is a cancer survivor. My father is an asthmatic. They both smoke--a lot--and have since I can remember. I know mom did not smoke while she was pregnant with me, but she may as well have, since by the time I was three or four they were smoking in the house. I grew up in rural-as-fuck eastern North Carolina, where the entire local economy is based on tobacco and people sport bumper stickers that say, "Tobacco farmers are survivors, not killers." And you know, on a very important level, that is true.

Anyway, back to the sordid family medical history. I never met my aunt, my dad's sister, because she died of skin cancer before I was born. My dad's father, Grandpa Zeke, died of a heart attack when I was still a toddler. His bereaved wife, my grandmother, is currently incapacitated by a stroke, the function of which (we all know but cannot say) was to make manifest her despair, as our bodies will do. My dear, dear grandfather on my mother's side died five years ago of gut cancer while reading in his favorite white recliner after a full day of work. He was a doctor--and not some specialist either, but a military medic turned goddam bona fide family practitioner. I loved him. Shit, I loved him. Anyhow, his wife, my grandmother, had died of encephalitis when my mom was seven. Suddenly. Bam. Dead. Three young children left behind with a bunch of pretty pictures in sepia of this magical woman who had made paper dolls and written songs for money during the war...

Gus's dad and Gus are both loonies. That's my distant cousin, my former kissin' cousin. But to look at us, I wonder if there isn't some doubling back in the family tree somewhere. Anyhow, those two are totally crazy, and Gus is bound to end up in a place with clean white walls like his dad, if he doesn't off himself first.

Point being, the prognosis is not good for me. The problem with this is that I want to live to be old. Preferably really, really old--as long as I can remember my name and go to the bathroom alone. With all the genetic shit I have to worry about, it's unlikely that smoking is a sustainable part of my eighty-year plan.

I have to set this aside for now, because David and I have an after dinner date to arrange a country punk version of "Hard to Be Human" by The Mekons...

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

Back again. I am on a roll this evening. It feels like bloodletting that needed to happen. Songmaking went well. I had practiced this simple little bass line so many times that I almost had it, so David seemed impressed. He is the soul of patience and other virtues. But I'll get back to him.

My little home village in eastern North Carolina was, shall we say, a tobacco-positive environment. It was expected of youngsters to pick up smoking at some point, and although I rarely hung around immediate neighbors--they tended to end up married and with child within a year of graduating high school, so I rarely found much in common with them--the force of the particular smoker-y aspect of local culture had its effect on me. I have trouble thinking of anyone from that town who isn't a smoker. And there I grew up, climbing magnolia trees, watching ants, riding horses, reading books, and often watching entirely too much television. (Once I moved out of my parents' home, I would not have a TV around me. I still haven't owned one in seven years, and have no plans to revisit that mind-suck.)

Around age thirteen, I started hanging out with older boys. I mean, to be fair, there were girls around too, but all those girls ever talked about was the boys we hung around. My cousin Derek initiated me into this weird world of future high school dropouts where guys sat around in their bedrooms, smoked pot, played video games, and stared at their tie-dyed curtains. And being thirteen, I thought that these practices must be very cool. It took me until college to enjoy smoking pot, but while associating with those boys, I certainly started (socially) smoking the occasional cigarette like I had been born to do it.

I loved the screen it provided between me and the world, me and my boredom, me and the crashing disappointment of The Other. Once I started making friends who were old enough to buy me cigarettes, it was on. I never had to be bored or anxious again! No more waiting, scratching my elbows, trying to figure out what to look at without being noticed by the wrong people in the wrong way. No need to come up with some lame excuse for why I want to go outside and get away from all these people; "I need a cigarette" is such a perfectly acceptable excuse! I never had to feel uncomfortable during those long, awkward waiting periods between the time when we arrived at some punk show (the youngest people there, and invariably, my friend trying to hook up with some boy) and when it actually started, or between sets, or on the drive home when there were way too many people in the car! I would always have something to do with my hands, a little glowing point to stare at, a slightly harsh sensation in my lungs to keep me rooted in the present spatio-temporal matrix. Or something like that.

It may not fit into this tidy narrative I am weaving. I am suspicious of my own story, because I know that nothing is so simple. Perhaps over time I will tell fifty conflicting stories that are all true. And I still haven't gotten past middle school/early high school! So many half-lies to tell to arrive back at the conclusion: it's nearly time to quit. And that's the truth, Routh. Until next time.

Cora Brown's Garbage Can

2009-03-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is a list of some of the items in Cora Brown’s trashcan.

1. A small stack of unopened greeting cards in multicolored envelopes. If you were to open them, they would read much the same: “My condolences” or “In your time of loss” etc. etc., followed by hand-written messages full of hollow assertions such as “She is in a better place now,” etc. etc. Cora knows that they are all the same, all similarly empty—it has taken her this three weeks since it happened to make up her mind. If she had thrown them away two weeks earlier, it might have been a vindictive kind of toss. She might have thought, “Fuck all of you,” and thrown them out with relish. But today, she was able to simply throw them away. She congratulates herself. Congratulations, Cora.

2. Five empty cigarette packs. Her family might be appalled if they knew that she has taken up smoking—at least, she assumes that this is the case. What she doesn’t know is that her youngest daughter Rebekah, the one with the quiet owlish eyes, knows that Cora has been smoking since one week after it happened—this was when Johnny and the children had started back at work and school but Cora remained at home, sitting on the front porch and gazing out over the lawn. Rebekah had found the ashtray out on the porch, and dumped it out in the trash before her father, her brother, or even Cora herself could notice that it was there. She had not told anyone about what she knew, and she had been helping her mother to hide the habit without her knowledge for the last two weeks. Cora will not be smoking for much longer now.

3. Plastic pie packages, instant rice box, plastic forks and knives, frozen casserole pans, and used paper towels. Cora usually does the grocery shopping, and had she been the one to go the last time, she might have bought the same kinds of quick fix-ups that her husband picked, but the difference is that had she done this herself, it would have felt like admitting defeat—it would have seemed too symbolic for her to bear. Johnny knew that she would feel guilty for not cooking her usual elaborate meals, and so he had thought it best to go ahead and buy all those things and take the resulting verbal chastisement like a man, and pretend that he had just gotten confused at the grocery store and bought the wrong things, just like a man. Congratulations, Johnny.

4. Empty cans of cat food. Cora’s friend Ruby gave her a Siamese kitten two days ago. Presently, she is fretting over it, feeding it too much, and laughing too loudly at its antics, as if to make her voice rise up over something that suffocates her. The Browns had fallen in love with the kitten immediately, desperately, and the soft thumps that its little feet make on the floor echo through the big house, punctuating the solemnity of the hours and minutes with moments of weightlessness. In fact, you don’t want to imagine what it would feel like to be in that house without a kitten right now. Good form, Ruby.

5. Wine bottles. Cora has always been a wine drinker, and she usually shows impeccable taste in her selections. Lately, however, she buys the largest bottles at the grocery store. These things happen when a hobby becomes a necessity.

6. Therapeutic hand-exercise ball. When it happened, Cora thought she couldn’t bear to part with anything that Ann Elizabeth had ever touched. For some number of days, this became her routine: she would go into the empty room and lie down on the empty bed, clutching some stuffed toy or article of clothing to her body, and weep torrentially into the pillow that still smelled like baby shampoo and the stale residue of exhaled breath. A few weeks later, though, she realized that it would not be fair to horde so many costly physical therapy accoutrements that less fortunate families needed for their own children. Just yesterday she dropped off most of the larger equipment at the hospital. But the little hand ball was different. It was the only one she could neither keep nor give away, because it had been Ann E.’s favorite object, the one thing that she used to keep in her hand for most of the day and sometimes even while she was asleep. Cora had been sleeping with it too. But this morning, Johnny saw her wake up and look at the ball for a few moments. Then she swung her legs over the side of the bed and padded into the kitchen on her bare feet. He had heard the crunch of papers in the bottom of the trash can, then Cora came back without the ball, slid between the sheets, and backed herself into the cave of her husband’s body.

7. A half-used package of maxi pads. When it happened, Ann E. had just turned sixteen. For the last three years, Cora and Rebekah had been developing a system for dealing with Ann E.’s menstrual cycle. By now, they had it down to a science—they could have written a dissertation on how two small women can lift a third body as big as each of their own to change a maxi pad, where to place the pad in the underpants of a wheelchair-bound girl so that it would not leak, and all the other considerations that no one anticipates before they are asked to come up with solutions for such things. Cora threw the pads away because she has already passed menopause—“Praise the Lord!” is all she has to say about that—and her remaining daughter is too young yet to need them.

8. A wedding invitation. Two days after her daughter’s funeral, Cora’s neice, who lives in the apartment upstairs, announced her engagement to her boyfriend. “…would like to announce the union of Dan Alphonse Carlson and Abigail Marie Brown…” Cora has done an excellent job hiding her disgust at this monumentally ungraceful gesture. Good job, Cora.

9. A set of floral-patterned curtains. Cora Brown decided this morning that some things are going to change. Starting with those hideous curtains in the bathroom.

Not a Robot

2009-03-02T16:02:00.000-08:00

Written December 2008.

A wall of B minor in reverberating synth: inscrutable, oblique, obsessively restrained. Motion suggesting itself first in the tension of the lower back, rolling up the spine and over, around the shoulders, barely a shudder before the sound rolls off the fingers. A tilt of the cheek aligns the cave of his ear with the monitor and he freezes in his sneakers, toes rolled under, white-knuckled and lock-kneed, the only movement a twitch of a taut shoulderblade careening down through arm-gristle to a trembling hand on the keys.

A Tiny Nightmare

2009-03-02T16:01:00.000-08:00

Written December 2008.

Some god of bitter ironies has laid Charlotte over Fort Lauderdale like velcro. Two of my private hells occupy the same dimension. Painted rich bitches with Long Island accents stroll by me forever, chattering about the new condos they’ve just bought in Asheville, where I can never go again.

Frydaddy

2009-03-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

Written December 2008.

The city is large today. Waiting in line for tea in late December? Where did they all come from? It couldn’t have been far, could it?

Children everywhere. Murmur and bubble. We almost throttled one of the joyful innocent throats for his insistent slurping, purposely holding his straw just above the line of the juice in its grubby burgundy cup. Parents sitting by, continuing to chat. At what age is it appropriate to educate children about the health risks posed by pushing adults to insanity with repetitive noise and motion?

There was the time when I ate dinner at a boyfriend’s house and realized that there was no way he could have helped ending up with a smacking problem. I sat quietly chewing my steak and tried to tune out the maddening cacophony of a family of six all smacking loudly with open mouths and slurping iced tea. I tried blurring out all the distinct sounds and focusing on the overall cadence, but that only caused an image to swell in my mind of a giant lump of half-digested meat rolling around in a room-sized mouth, and I was inside.

I excused myself and made my way to the bathroom, where I remained until I thought they had had a reasonable amount of time to finish their feeding trough ritual. When I came out, my boyfriend’s huge, surly father asked me through a soggy lump of biscuit that moved up and down on his tongue as he spoke, “Whassa matter? Upset stomach?” He gulped down the wad in his cheek, and then passed gas loudly.

“Yes, I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me this morning,” I replied, after courteously cursing the dog for the foul smell that now hung in the stale air of the dining room.

Pushing the greasy, wax paper-lined basket of fried shrimp towards me, he insisted that I eat because “I didn’t pull out that goddamn frydaddy and sweat my balls off for the last hour to watch you push food around your plate.”

Why I Teach

2009-03-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

When people ask me what I do for a living, the conversations that follow are often very similar. A typical transcript might read like this:

Me: I’m a teacher.
Acquaintance: Oh, really? Elementary school?
Me: No. High school, actually.
Acquaintance: Really? You’re so petite and you look so young...don’t they take advantage of you?
Me: Um, no. I wouldn’t say so. I show them respect, I make my expectations clear, and so they tend to treat me with respect in kind. I love my kids.
Acquaintance: Well, what grades or subjects do you teach?
Me: English and Journalism. I get a little from all four grade levels.
Acquaintance: Oh, neat. I just wouldn’t have expected that. Do you teach at Asheville High?
Me: No. Yancey County, up north of Asheville.
(look of incomprehension from the acquaintance)
You know where Burnsville is?
Acquaintance: Oh, all the way up there? I went hiking up that way once. Are there lots of rednecks?
Me: That’s not exactly how I would describe them, but you could say that. Some identify with that title. Actually, though, my students are the most open-minded group I’ve ever encountered, even though I substituted last year in the city.
Acquaintance: Really? Interesting. That’s not what I would have assumed. I could never do what you do, but I really respect it. Teaching is such a noble profession...

I continue to be floored by the fact that even intelligent, educated people seem content to use the cliché. I hate the sound of it. It doesn’t make me angry anymore, but I admit that I have felt like saying snarky things to people for dropping that bomb. “Noble.” Bah!

First of all, it makes my job sound like an unpleasant labor of love, involving some kind of heroic sacrifice. This is not what teaching means to me. Teaching is exciting and interesting and endlessly creative. A variation on the above transcript might contain my oft-repeated assertion that I chose to teach partly because there is nothing less boring in the world to do all day long.

For instance, while people my age toil away for tip money and stay up late drinking and making idle conversation with other bored twentysomethings, I stay up late planning lessons that will hopefully get a room full of ninth graders excited about something, or push a group of standard seniors to do honors level work without even realizing that they are exceeding the usual expectations for their “demographic.” Part of my job is to inspire young people to realize their immense potential. What could be more fun and challenging? I’ve put in my time waiting tables and running cash registers, and I still respect that work. Nevertheless, there are few things more mind-numbing than that kind of alienated labor. Call me restless or stimulation-needy, but that life isn’t enough for me.

Furthermore, although I admit to sometimes losing sleep worrying about students, I find teaching to be particularly well-suited to a healthy, balanced, well-rounded life. Since there is always more grading to do, more paperwork to fret about, or somebody in authority who wants something from you, the ubiquity of stress and pressure make it all the more important to keep a healthy psychological distance. If a new teacher values her profession, she must find ways to cope with stress; usually, this means staying in touch with all the things she enjoyed before becoming a teacher, as well as any new interests that come along. This is the only way to prevent losing one’s proverbial marbles, and is therefore an important aspect of being an effective teacher. How could an anxious, unfulfilled, psychologically unavailable person really expect to inspire anyone?

For me, this means reserving time on most weekends to see my friends’ bands play, take walks in the woods, read books, write in my journal, or have long, ponderous conversations with loved ones. I try to make sure that by the end of the weekend, I have had the chance to fully reset myself for the week ahead. This is as essential to my success in the classroom as doing research or grading essays.

I haven’t always felt so positive about my career—I had to go through a long period of turbulent ambivalence to get to this point. When I first found out in the twelfth grade that I had won the Teaching Fellows scholarship, my stomach must have flipped over in my guts. I thought that it must have been some kind of mistake. First of all, I could hardly believe that this stuffy, impeccably dressed group of retired teachers—my interview panelists—would have favored me over all those sweet-faced, agreeable, average-looking girls who love little children and who probably talked about how teaching is such a “noble profession” in their interviews.

I had walked into my interview with a shaved head and a chip on my shoulder, talking about how the concrete prison cells we call classrooms are actually the worst possible places for people to learn anything valuable, and how American school systems are no longer equipped to respond to the demands of our changing society. I walked out of the conference room congratulating myself for doing such a good job ensuring that no one would ever compel me to teach in a public school.

I shuddered at the idea, really. I had been to Governor’s School in the summer before my eleventh grade year, where my mind was irrevocably opened to worlds of possibilities I had never considered before. I thought that I would surely become an artist, or perhaps a political activist, when I grew up. Everyone else expected something of the sort from me, too. Teaching seemed to me like something people do when they can’t do anything else, or when they have become so complacent that they can be satisfied with a confining, highly localized sphere of influence. (Was I ever in for a shock!)

Applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship had been something that an adviser persuaded me to do as a backup plan, to which I had only grudgingly conceded, all the while feeling absolutely certain that it would not, could not happen. Yet, through round after round of applications and tests, my name kept appearing on the list of finalists.

And then I got the letter. There was no hiding the results from my parents, who had been waiting eagerly for the envelope with the blue star logo to appear in the mailbox. (They had hoped to be able to invest some of the money they would save on my expenses to open a restaurant, which they did the very next year.)

I tore open the envelope and read the first word, “Congratulations,” and immediately dissolved into tears. I had been duped! My plan to avoid teaching by telling the truth in my interview had failed! What could it mean? Could these old stiffs and bureaucrats actually want to see real change happen in public education? It ran contrary to my whole belief system. Clearly, this was the first of an ongoing series of surprises. Here I am now, a teacher in a tiny farm town just like the one I ran away from years ago, and I can honestly say that I feel excited to go back to work each Monday.

confabulation defined

2009-02-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

From wikipedia, 22 Feb. 2009: "the formation of false memories, perceptions, or beliefs about the self or the environment as a result of neurological or psychological dysfunction.^[1] When it is a matter of memory, confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, or the confused application of true memories.^[2]"