Curiosity killed the... wait, what was I talking about?

Current Mood: chipper

CHARACTERIZE: To describe or delineate the character or peculiar qualities of (a person or thing).

I characterized my friend as light-hearted and funny.

Current Mood: scared

Note me and my friend Ben in the reflection...

Current Mood: groggy

The Broken Sandal
By Denise Levertov

Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
              Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt.  I would
hobble.
And--
Where was I going?
Where was I going I can't
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I'm
to stand still now?

Current Location: San Francisco, CA
Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Listening to Riversong

The Most Unwanted Song, however, is mesmerizing: over an accompaniment of bagpipe, tuba and accordian (statistically, America's least favorite instruments), an operatic soprano (our least favorite type of singer) raps (ditto) about cowboys (ditto). Their research indicated that the most hated lyrical subject is holidays (disliked by 33%), so the song is suitable not only for Christmas, but Easter, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, and Halloween. These interludes are introduced abruptly by a children's chorus ("Hey everybody, it's Yom Kippur!"), who couple their refrains with cheerful commercial messages. By the end, the subject has shifted to human slavery and genocide. The whole thing, going on for nearly 22 minutes (the least favorite song length), is as impossible to ignore as a car crash. [It's estimated that only 200 people in the world will enjoy the song.]

Listen to the The Most Unwanted Song. Or read more about it.

Current Location: San Francisco, CA
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: The Most Unwanted Song

http://jef.raskincenter.org/published/i_before_e.html

"Instead of interrogating a category, we will interrogate a woman. It will at least be more agreeable." -Ep Thompson (1978)-- cited in Denise Riley, Am I that Name?

Current Location: San Jose

(12:14:42 AM) borgicheb: i was lying in bed
(12:14:49 AM) borgicheb: and i was like, hmm, im still awake
(12:15:00 AM) borgicheb: and like anytime i moved the dream images would start to fade
(12:15:04 AM) borgicheb: so eventually i moved less and less
(12:15:08 AM) borgicheb: and the dream became more and more real
(12:15:12 AM) borgicheb: but i still thought i was awake
(12:15:18 AM) borgicheb: and then i started to hallucinate things
(12:15:23 AM) borgicheb: and imagine people were next to me
(12:15:24 AM) borgicheb: and touching me
(12:15:27 AM) borgicheb: and talking
(12:15:31 AM) borgicheb: and i started to hear and see things
(12:15:38 AM) borgicheb: and then i'm like, oh, i must have fallen asleep
(12:15:43 AM) borgicheb: so i turn on the bedroom light but it won't work
(12:15:49 AM) borgicheb: i try a different light nad it won't work
(12:15:55 AM) borgicheb: then i remember that that's usually a sign of being in a dream
(12:15:57 AM) borgicheb: and then i wake up
(12:16:01 AM) borgicheb: and turn on my light and it works instantly
(12:16:05 AM) borgicheb: and im like, woah, creepy

Current Mood: uncomfortable

What are the three things I want to accomplish today? I want to have a good time with a friend. I'd like to spend time with someone I have never done such before with. And I would like to make another phone call related to the paper I am working on on gay teachers union caucuses.

"Conventionally, when one comes out of the closet (and yet, how often is it the case that we are 'outted' when we are young and without resources?); so we are out of the closet, but into what? what new unbounded spatiality? the room, the den, the attic, the basement, the house, the bar, the university, some new enclosure whose door, like Kafka's door, produces the expectation of a fresh air and the light of illumination that never arrives..." -Judith Butler, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, 309.

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yet another serious post. *sigh* Someone who I considered to be a friend told me today that they no longer wish to ever speak to me again. Two other people have done the same thing in the past month-span. I'd like to try and prevent this from happening with anyone else. So, two questions: a) Do you have any issues regarding me which you haven't spoken with me about or that hasn't been resolved to your satisfaction? and b) Have I ever given you any cause to stop speaking with me?

@james

ugh. got up early and went for a nice breakfast with my roommate. that was the last thing that went right today. got to qi gong class and found out that i was 2.5 hours early. got a lot of reading done, but was becoming increasingly worried because the friend I was supposed to hang out with wasn't answering my calls.

After qi gong, got a text message from him: "Don't call me again. I'm just not feeling it." So basically after a month of friendship, he's going to throw it all away on a whim. Well, f*** that. I'm probably better off without him anyways. What kind of a person treats people like that???

So then I was totally distraught but decided to go to a party anyways. On the way there I lost my cell phone in golden gate park and the city people i called said they can't help me until 8am Monday. They wouldn't even let me file a formal complaint. So I went to the party and spent about two hours shaking and crying in a corner until finally i calmed down a little and had some good conversations. On the way home, realized I left things at the party. had to call my roommate to call my friend to let me back into the party. got my stuff and got home without incident.

so all in all, it's the worst day I ever had.

So, apparently, (according to Kristeva) when we expel feces or menstruate, it reminds us of the traumatic separation from our parents when we discover we are separate beings...


Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory: "Abjection"

"Abjection describes both the founding and traumatic moment of separation from the child's archaic and undifferentiated relationship with its mother, and the process of the expulsion from the body of substances such as excrement or menstrual blood... It encapsulates the memory of the violence of separation from a level of existence prior to the establishment of object-relations, and that memory is reactivated by the expulsion from the body of abjected substances."

Current Location: Sunnyside District, SF
Current Mood: accomplished

Hmm. I've been reading a lot about critical theory and critical pedagogy these days- Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of Indignation, Myles Horton/Paulo Freire's We Make the Road by Walking, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, a book about critical theory and marxism, ...

And I wonder, how is all of this useful in my life? Should I run out and join more activist groups? Start a literacy program for illiterate adults? Go into adult education? Get my teaching credential and teach special ed? Educate people about critical theory in my everyday interactions with them? Try to change ingrained patterns of communication? Become a better listener? Become a facilitative leader? Train others to be leaders?

I guess I'm left with more questions than answers...

@james

Current Location: Funston Ave, San Francisco, CA, USA, SOL III, Milky Way Glxy
Current Mood: discontent

"Critical theory is, above all else, a way to ask questions about power. Who has it? How did they get it? How do they keep it? What are they doing with it? How do their actions affect the less powerful? How might things be otherwise? " -Patricia Hinchey in Finding Freedom in the Classroom

Current Location: Sunnyside District, San Francisco, CA, USA, Earth
Current Mood: artistic

I'm currently reading the book We Make the Road by Walking which is a dialogue between Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. Paulo Freire developed a program of teaching illiterate peasants in Brazil to transform their world through language. Myles Horton developed a union/activist/civil rights training school called Highlander in Tennessee. He also developed Citizenship schools that taught blacks how to read, write, vote, and become active participants in democracy. It's a fascinating book, but it makes me wonder-- what have I done to transform society lately? Sitting around and reading books is one thing-- when am I going to teach? I look forward to working in the schools in SF Unified this year-- but will I really able to be the kind of person that Freire or Horton are???

Current Location: Sunnyside District, San Francisco, CA, USA, Earth
Current Mood: thoughtful

"... real liberation is achieved through popular participation. Participation in turn is realized through an educational practice that itself is both liberatory and participatory, that simultaneously creates a new society and involves the people themselves in their creation of their own knowledge."-We Make the Road by Walking, page xxx.

Current Location: Max Field's House of Caffiene
Current Mood: blah