December Reading: Thorium!!!!!

I read political mags, many of them. With the traveling this past season, though, I bought science mags at airports instead of The Nation, The National Review, The Economist, Harper's, Tikkun, et alli. The science mags lead me to what Jung would have called a kind of universal memory moment, like the memory that makes us afraid of snakes and lions, but in the other direction.

Do you recall personally, or from learning history, or just vaguely and dreamily that in the post-war years we Americans were all hyped up over the "infinite and clean" energy of thermonuclear reactions? I do. I have this vague memory of this  utopian promise.

Well, there were two plans for fission. One involved uranium and its conversion to a fissile material. This substance had two uses: it could make electricity, AND, and this is key, it could make nuclear bombs. This, since we had us some Russians to contain, and mutual assured destruction seemed the most reasonable route to this end. But, the other substance is thorium. It can make electricity, but not bombs. It doesn't contaminate the earth. Its reactors are tiny and require no population buffer zone, and its waste is smaller in both volume and radioactive shelf life than uranium by orders of minitude. It gives off more just plain old steam than waste matter. It is freakishly more abundant than uranium. There's enough of it, thorium nerds think, in the lower 48 to power the US for 1000 years. This makes the electric car look much greener than it does now. Maybe.

What I don't know is what kind of damage is required to mine it. But, here you go: a possible game changer. See these links: Uranium Is So Last Century at Wired, and some rather technical info at Thorium in Wikipedia, and much discussion at the thorium blog.

Happy New Decade? Possibly.

I also discovered that these bugs that live behind the exterior walls of my garage are Kissing Bugs, that they carry Chagas Disease, which is B A D, so you win some, you lose some.

George Lakoff and David Sedaris Back to Back!

Lakoff at the Library, and Sedaris creates a street fair! Left Bank Books has arranged to close the streets in order to seat people for Sedaris's reading from When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

How freaking much fun is this! So. there!

(So that's why I can't get tics to Tom Waits... this was coming.)

Good Medicine Reading Company

No, it's not the name of the press I want to start someday, so if you're out there, and you want to start a press, take that title. I'm fine with that. It's yours. Just make me chief editor, 'k?

H has come up from Tejas to visit. She came for heart-head clearing fun before settling into the groovy flow of her disseration (once she clears a few points up with her committee about just who owns this project [her] and where she going [not academia]). The details are hers to share/not. Find out at The Wood Report. ANYway, her visit has bonked some stuff loose.

We saw Eddie Izzard's Stripped at the Orpheum, which got the happyhappy endorphins rolling. No spoilers here for those of you still checking to make sure you know where your tics are, that you didn't wake up and forget to go to the show, and similar. Eddie Izzard is good for you and tastes better than tofu. I will that while I laughed hard and my face hurt afterwards, I did not quite get my comedy rocks off, but I am spoiled on that front RE: Eddie in particular. May the rest of the performances go better for Eddie and for you.

So, there was some real, like, JOY. And maybe the planets are dancing more elegantly, or more robustly, but M has cheered up in recent days, and though the You Can't Grasp It complexity of my non-conformist family's material life is really beyond even our ken at this point, I have come to the firm and warm observation that It Is Going To Be Fine.

The poetics book is going to go live a good life. M and I are going to keep on keepin on in the way we do, and with more laughing, for however long we will it so. H is going to rock her badass self into a PhD and then go teach bright-souled underpriviledged high school students and make all manner of Art. Lioness as received actual spiritual grace, in my presence, and came to stay with me in order to get it and start processing it. So, also, there is grace. In this case, it bumped Wonder Twin rings with a tree and a 66 Mustang and took the form of a heart.

H and I wandered STL today -- poking around, eating, marveling, lamenting in the city's jawdropping potential and utter refusal to go for it. Like, M told me that STL, which has no less than FOUR children's hospitals, also has the highest infant mortality rate in, like, practically the US (for urban areas, I think, haven't googled it yet). Which just says that lots of immigrant, poor, young, and otherwise marginalized moms are not going to/getting in/staying at these marvelous warm-fuzzy hospitals. !!! Because that should not be hard to fix. Because there is enough.

Now, this gets me to the Medicinal Reading part: At Left Bank Books, I did what I do. Purchased books. One on serendipity, one on robust democracy based on systems and assumptions of plenty (note: Not the system in which we currently sleepwalk), and Jorie Graham's new book o poems. (eeeeyayayayayay!) Now, if you know me, you can read this map. If you don't, you don't read this blog, but I'll explicate anyhow.

I needed a reminder about serendipity. I used to trust it with my whole entire soul. I could read signs and hear Comos whispering like nobody nowhere ever. I watched Lioness trust it for about a week in person, then some via the Interweb. Underneath grocking it all mentally, I was like, "Th'hell is going on?" It was like I, who once spoke serendipity fluently, had a rail road spike in my head and couldn't understand a word of it. I mean, I could, I knew it was a language -- I just didn't feel it anymore. OH MY SWEET MOTHER OF ALL GODS! Who am I? Well, I'm the gal who jumped a sick life like a sinking firey boat, that's who. And serendipity had a lot to do with that. And yes, it's a Deepak Chopra book, and back off. I need the reminder. I forgot who I am. So, there's some medicine. It's called The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. Go read it. I mean, with that title, how could you not? (there's science in it, for you materialists have not yet gathered the spiritual implications of recent theoretical physics and some very innerestin' experiments with light and stuff)

Then, I found this book by Frances Moore Lappe, and why in the wide world have I never heard of her, and why didn't any of you Tell Me She Exists???!!! Holy cow. It's called Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in A World Gone Mad. If you have also been deprived of familiarity with this woman, rectify that situation immediate-ly. It's a users manual, it's a deconstruction, it's a workbook, it's written this amazing tone that assures you that indeed the world and your future are utterly managable and imaginable, and that completely avoids complaint. She's like, "Sure it's nuts, but at the very same moment we have every tool and resource we need to make it (everything) right, and so here we go." The jacket calls it a vibrant, intimate voice. Nah. The voice is bemusedly assured that "making a world we can be proud of" is quite simply on offer. It is confident and encouraging.

Whaaaaah!? No bitchin and moanin? No initerminable Age of Critique!? Really? I'm in.

If I don't get a job a Nifty Lib Arts College, I am calling her up. I am going to work with these people. Serendipity-do. There is an organization on earth that essentially jives with everything I dream and want, but that does not cater/market to deepening the souls of the rich because then we gurus can be rich (a thing that has bugged the living fuck out of me about Ken Wilber and frankly kept me arm's length there -- not that money is bad, just that not making your wisdom Affordable, really, dude, bugs the fuck out of me), and might spare me the soul-killing that kind of ground level work that people like Lioness have the tungsten for an' I don't. I was just talking to H about that today, how I have gifts, but the one I would need for That Work, I don't have. Get too pissed off too fast in there. Would end up eating my own head for lunch, maybe with side of slaw and two fifths of Jameson everyday until liver failure. Really. I've seen me sadly astounded just at students who hamstring themselves by not doing the Learning part of being a student. I can't handle a whole lot of that particular texture of failure/refusal, from either end.

I'm not proud of this. It's just the case, is all. And I know that writing about difficult poets is not going to really change the world, not practically.

She, Lappe, knows what I rattle on about in my poetics book: all (nearly all) previous notions of love/desire/gender/society/economics (and poetry, and ...) have been based in LACK. This is complete and utter unfactual bullshit. It is despicable and poison. (whew, that was a nice sentence. yeep!) Plenty, and wonder, and extra, and here have some of mine are right here and let me show you how reading poetry that way changes the game ha-ha. Hence also the Murdoch project. As we all know from the many less-fun to read posts about said. Have been wandering my corner of the earth saying this for, well, my whole adult life. I don't mean this in that "I thought it first" competitve way. I mean it in the HEY! LOOK! FRIENDS! way.

AND, Jorie has a new book out. Sea Change. I read one poem from it while sitting at Dressel's waiting for yet more rain and KNEW that Never and Overlord and Sea Change are a trilogy. Other critics who have jobs I want will say this, but you saw it here first. In the way that I now, abruptly, see that End of Beauty and Region are a pair, and Materialism, The Errancy, and Swarm are a set as well. And I do mean this in the I said it first way.

Good Medicine, Reading, Company. All of these for you as well.

Sex, Labor, and My Car

Sexuality became commodified and started appearing everywhere, but without the least trace of individuality. The porn industry taught us how to have sex. Like fashion, the more sexuality is standardized, the more easily it can be sold.

Even the Europeans are getting bored with faked sexuality. Please, do not have your sex by the image. Instead, follow this advice.

Globalized labor in the EU looks a lot like globalized labor in NAFTA (except for the legal status of national borders). But you figured on that, right?

Also, my little 92 Nissan Sentra gets 34 MPG, with old oil and underinflated tires, and maybe a power steering leak (to be rectified shortly).

Hi, My Name is PRSC, and I Am a Bookaholic

So, Shane sends me "Bookshelf and Self" from the Chronicle, two views on the morality of the bookshelf, and a response. Which, sent me on this head-run about books since lots of people send me articles that are related to books-qua-objects, or qua-sign, not reviews of things I might want to or should read. No, reminders that I am an addict who loves the smell of books, loves used books For the marginalia, every book promises a new jolt. An addict. Anyway, there are these very American views, and then a French one that I would like to consider.

View one: display no book that you have not read, Says Matt Seigleman, a blogger for Time. Stern. Honest. This is about the work one has done. I do not abide by this maxim. (though for the record, since i live in my parents' house right now, 95% of my books are in 30 or so banker's boxes in the basement, labeled "Theory Althusser -- Bataille" or "Religion Ayurveda -- Buddha Diamond" or "Poetry Sexton -- Whitman" and similar, and i can't find shit when i need it, so it's not modesty people) In regular life, I do not abide by this maxim because I never know when I will need to read that which I have not read and -- in response to another book, or for a new project, or because it has simply become Time To Read That Book. Truth is, as a hardcore reader, I often need/want to read only part of many of my books, like cirtical anthologies. Hence, indexes. And, if the book is hidden, I go have a coffee rather than look for it. Still, if you come to my (future) house and ask, incredulously, whether I have read all those books, I will answer honestly: I have read parts of most of them.

As for Time to Read That Book: books-qua-objects often come into my life as signals, post-its if you will, of thinking in the future. Part of any decent bookshelf, I think, is this reminder to myself that That Thought Is Waiting For Me. This is both inspirational, and a little bit masochistic since I'm often irked with myself that I haven't gotten to that thought or subject just yet. Something like 30% of my books are yet-to-read, and of them, about 1/2 are really for the future. The other 1/2 are books meant to round out or fill in stuff I already kinda know and need more of, I think.

View two: Ezra Klein responds to Matt, "Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read,” says Klein; “those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be." Our author Scott McLemee finds this rule equally silly,and so do I. While I am the type of person would read dense and poetically slippery Derrida, the fact that I have not read every one of the Derrida books I own in no way cancels the fact that I have read 10 out of 12. The fact that I have not read many of the feminist political anthologies I own in no way cancels the fact that I have read many such anthologies -- it's just There's More! I have a Very Impressive library of texts in and about Buddhism. I have not read most of them. Why? Because I have issues with surrender, and because what I should do is go learn it the experiential way, but I have issues with surrender... And I'll tell you as much, right before pulling one of the self and saying, "Listen to this! passage! from the Fire Sermon!!! It's amazing!" In the same way I read everyone the first and second Duino Elegies after three glasses of wine.

So, all this is rubbish, and Scott thinks so too because

My experience (which can’t be unique) is that some books end up accumulating out
of a misguided attempt to win the approval of authors already well-entrenched on
my shelves. A few years back, for example, Slavoj Zizek started to insist that I had to be familiar with the work of Alain Badiou – a French poststructuralist philosopher whose work I had never heard of, let alone read. Well, OK, sure. Thanks to some busy translators, Badiou volumes started crowding in, next to all the Zizek titles.

But in short order, Badiou lets it be known that I am expected to understand something about mathematical set theory — and furthermore should come
to appreciate one particular approach to formalizing the basic axioms.

Because, god help us, books lead to other books, either in Scott's psychologically interesting way (proving something moral about himself to someone he does not know) or simply because, Books Are All Connected to Each Other in a way that nerd-addicts like me find totally compelling.

Scott has a very interesting analysis of all this, and you should read the rest of it, and likely both Matt and Ezra in toto. I will not. I am skimming. Besides, one commentor put it well: real readers dip in and out of many books at once, and it's the marginalia that Really Shows Who You Are Or Want To Be Anyway. Always the "real" you is not display-able. Performable, sure, but never made completely transparent.

Now, all these views, whether they are about the sociality of books in some way or not, are moral. Show only what you are, show only what you want to be, or show yourself to be working on what you are. But, let's get real. There is no promise like the promise one imagines invested a New Book -- I digress.

French Literi Big Man, Pierre Bayard, published a book, How to Talk about Books You Have not Read. A guide to a way of presenting oneself that our Americans clearly do not approve. The Telegraph reviewer Sam Lieth ultimately sides with the Americans, but let's consider this:

Most of any books we've read, we have forgotten; many books are skimmed or half-read; our knowledge of those books - and of books that we haven't read - is mediated through commentaries on them, our discussions with other readers, our apprehension of where they sit in the canon, and our personalised mis-rememberings. So, he argues, we need not feel too guilty about not having read certain books; and it is reasonable to express views on those you haven't. He introduces at the outset a neat notation system that he uses to footnote any of the books he mentions: SB for "books I have skimmed", HB for "books I have heard of", FB for "books I have forgotten" and UB for "books unknown to me".

Most English speaking reviewers seem to go the same way. Bayard is poking a hole in the notion that there is some moral good in reading, or, to be more precise, that there is a Competition to be morally good, and the proof of goodness is how Much one has actually read. Really? What about all those scholarly articles downloaded from databases that are so neatly hidden on your harddrive, and which you may have read not nearly all? He's thinking salon-talk, he's really thinking about performance, and he's thinking too that there's more to know than one can. Ever. Even what one once knew.

And what is this competition about? It's academic nerd suave, social cache. I for one have mostly Books I have Forgotten. I have to re-read, or re-skim them all the time. In fact, I can hardly remember Who wrote them, and therefore am not good that the great academic pasttime of name dropping in conversation. I know what it said, generally, somtimes. I know what I want to say about it, but the author and title are really fuzzy. (It's the ideas in them, not the book or person, that I'm with, and let's just skip how embarassingly metaphysical That is for now.) It seems to me it's not about Truth in Self-Re-Presentation. It's good old American One-Upping. The question seems to be: to bluff, or not to bluff? And we all know that the bluff can pay off.

And why the unit of the book? One learns in preparation for one's qualifiying exams that reading the Whole of every book on your areas lists is simply not possible, not if one wants to graduate. Part of that lesson is a honed sense of selectivity -- of what I might call Deep Skimming.

So, to hell with all this worry and moralizing and post-strucutral undoing. Books, for book nerds, are very like every other thing we buy. They are useful to us, they represent us accurately or not (what health food do you buy and not eat?, what 'cool album' did you buy and not listen to?, do you really Like your suit?), they are markers of our aspirations (as noted by Ezra) and our aspirations are as real of us as what we are, they are status objects, and depending on contexts are objects for intimiation or overwhich we bond as friends, and they are very very pretty and smell good, and how I love the oddly shaped ones!.

My books, before they were boxed and categorized like the phone book (thanks Karen), were on shelves in general categories: Religion/Myth/Yoga, Poetry, Lit Crit, Theory, Philosophy, Fiction, Unassimilable. Working Books were on my desk (which had a book shelf on top!) and were changed out as projects moved along (now they're in my room, next to my desk). Inside of those categories, they were not alphabetized. I found them by color of jacket, then by title. Authors? Schmauthors.

Hence, Skye and others send me these pics of books organized by color. They're very attractive this way. (some artist noted in the last did up a whole used books store by color...... holy cow!) I would do that inside of categories and I think my scholaraly life would progress just fine -- let the associational magic happen! Then, this is even better, you can make bookshelves out. of. books! Make the shelves out of Books You Will Never Read, or Never Read Again Because They Sucked (as lots of books do -- don't write the scathing review, display your disdain and superiority by using the books as the wood they are!!!). And, rather orgasmically, build stairs that store books!!! Oh. pant. How much more room is That!!!

Now, back to, ahem, writing a book.

New Stuff and Old Stuff New

Host Publications: Literature from Everywhere Else! -- they're sending me fliers....
Daedelaus Books/Music: cheap, cheap, cheap. -- not new, but sure cheap.

Does anyone know why I would have written myself a note that said "diving bell and butterfly"? I don't. Let's ask Google.

Oh! It's a movie!!! Oh, it won at Cannes. Oh. heh. Neat. Found that note in my pocket the other day, had no Idea why. Cool, will have to watch soon.

Ok, so here's the Old Stuff New. I made a MySpace page to keep up with Mystk who went to Korea. I have no other use for it. Imagined no other use for it. When he comes back, I'll likely delete it. But, about two months ago, someone found me there.

Mike. Mike was my first lover, this was college, a while back. Things did not go well, or at least they didn't end well. In fact, they rather exploded. But, so there was this message, from this unrecognizable person who seemed to know me. I didn't answer it. For a long time. Then there was another that explained who he was, and I didn't answer that. I couldn't get this person and that previous person to meld, to make a continuum, because I hadn't seen/heard/or talked to him in nearly (wow) 20 years. Nor wanted to. Not. One. Bit. And here's this groovy, cool, sort of spiritually blissed out cat who is not-Mike, but Mike. And he's DElighted to have stumbled across me because he had some apologizing to do and some karma to clean, and a hope that we might be buddies. And he means that, buddies. And it was said that if I was in no mood for this, that was fine too.

Soooooo, I didn't write to him. I had some feeling around to do. Is it possible that That Guy, who got so possessive, who got so mean, who stalked and bothered and nearly threatened me, who left a voodoo pouch for me on my car with a spell written in blood and the whole nine, it is possible that he's This Guy, who is all "Hey, my sister's running the Buddhist center up there, and you might check it out, and how's your life, and I'm working on a movie I'm producing myself, and I'm really sorry I was such an asshat back there, and knowing you did me world of good, and I wanted you to know that."

Huh.

????...????

So, after a while, I answered him and explained that I had to think about this. That I had spent a lot of energy getting That Crap Back There off of me. And that this new Mike seemed nice enough, and whatnot. Now, one of the better legacies of That Mike, Old Mike, is that I am, well, cautious (internally, anyway). So, I said, look, nobody should have to carry bad karma when they've outgrown it, so OK, look, I want you well and happy, and there. Better. And I was cool and pretty distant, and thought that would about do it for Mike.

And better. He's really OK, and he's not that scared and scary boy who punished me for insisting on being myself, discovering that doing that with him was not possible without constant psychic self-defense, and leaving. The warning I gave him was exactly this, "The less you try to hold on to me, the more I'll stay." He did not listen. I didn't know I was telling myself about him. It was often marvelous and often very, very messy.

He's grown up, and grown way less scared. And yes, people, he's very aware of M, and how we're loving each other, and even reminded me that if I just set my heart right, I might find a job M and I can both go and live with, and gee PRSC, how good that would be since you're digging this guy so much. And so, I might have a new friend, we're chitting and chatting and catching up. He's still working with stories, being all creative and interesting, got things to say and good questions to ask. He's just. way. less. of. a. mess. Generous, even.

And so, huh. Look at the cosmos at work there. Here I am with a chance to re-examine (though not necessarily expunge) my rule about f*ckwits from my past remaining forever and eternity encased in their own hell of being their horrid, shriveled selves. While, I, you know, just sail on along free of them. They freeze in the ick, and I get to keep moving. No processing, no closure. I'm done, that's the closure. Why X and So came unglued is not interesting to me. That they did is a fact, and one to be responded to decisively. I stop imagining them and their lives, caring. Because, that's been the game plan so far. I'm also getting a little affirmation on my policy: If I meet you and feel an inclination to warn you about some aspect of myself; well, I'm really warning me about some aspect of your self. For now, I don't feel much inclination to warn him about anything.

Which goes to show, to my utter amazement, that some people really do, honest, grow. Which goes to show that you can, and I can, and that maybe that asshat in your past might have too. (note the might, people, i'm qualifying here -- i know good and well some folk are just plain bad and probably need to just live with their bad juju)

So, new stuff.

Creating Order

First, the unknown in the lover: turns out M was unavailable by phone allllll day Super Tuesday. I was going to invite him to come vote with me (should we vote at the same polling location) or meet after (should we not). But, nooooohoohoo, Mr. Very Available to Moi was not so. Why? Why? It was strange. Because, he was an election judge. Just another reason to admire him: he does good things, and doesn't brag. And I voted, which was an attempt at a new order, too.

Second, the unknown in the self: I had an organizational fit. Like, I think, most people, I do not purge objects in one concentrated blitzkrieg of shedding. I do this in bits and peices: some books here, some papers there, some clothes here, etc. So, part of the rainy Super Tuesday cum Mardi Gras, I was sorting out my desk (which had slowly become clogged and useless -- father's daughter there) and my dynamite box in which I keep an assortment of files and old copies of poems (same problem). Low and behold, I ascetically sent to the burn box all the drafts of old poems. Whatever those thoughts were, it seems someone else had them, and most of the poems were crap anyway. But, again, low and behold, a Whole Bunch of Notes and Research For The Poetics book about which I had totally forgotten and now pretty much can't use (meaning, fit into the book, not that the work of these Esteemed Others is useless). F*ck. Here I am, face to face and mano e mano with my impulse to compendium, not so much totality as transparency, and cornucopia, not so much responsibility as generosity. Oh well. Am going to have to just Stop All That.

Just know that when you read this book, there's lots of sources that I could have referred you to that are not in it. There are plenty to get you oriented, but just not every single one.

Third: the unknown book: The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban, a Brit, which is very much about one fellow's rather serious difficulty in finding a new order for himself. It's subtle and smart fun with all manner of synchronicity and mythos layered in, and some hope in it. Do read it. You'll have to order it used since it's out of print in the US (if you're in the US, that is).

Conclusion: Time to stop the Klage.

Addendum: I have lots of looking up words to do. I generally LOVE Fowlie's translation of Perse's Amers, but there's a word here and there that in French I suspect carries valences we need two words to carry in English (because that IS the nature of that particular interval), and because his choices seem occasionally a shade too dark. Though the poem is not without this darkness, threat, danger, I'm just not sure it's as terrible as he does. We shall see. Picture me with dictionaries, sorting through French words I don't know / forgot. (Hmph, in looking for that link, I discovered that Perse was buddies with Dag Hammarksjold, second secretary-general of the UN and rather interesting ethic0-mystical thinker. Not too shocking, P was a diplomat for France for a much of H's tenure. But, Hmmmmm... speaking of synchronicities).

OMFG the future of publishing

O M F G lust desire lust desire! The Amazon Kindle. OMFG! I could mainline books!

Dear Publishers: Get the poetry, the scholarly books, the everything ever ready to go for this as soon as digitally possible!!! Please. Oh, pant, please.

Dear Kindle Coders: make lots of these, make it pretty.

Oh, lust, oh, pant. And, here, watch the discussion on Charlie Rose with Jeff Bezos from Nov 19.

Will I trade that book smell for bulk....it would seem so.

Academic Job Search Resources

Yeh, it's a dry title, but Google just dredged up this site, Ted Jobs, and while the site is focused not at all on the Humanities, the Faculty Job Seeker's Resources is FAN-ASSED-TASTIC. If you're looking, or advising a graduate student headed into the fray, start here. It's quite the helpful.

I'm still working on the Dublin post. First, there are com/con paragraphs to assess. Woo-hoo.

I'm reading Cortazar Blow Up and Other Stories and Hesse Pictor's Metamorphosis, and really want to develop a class on the 20th Cent. fable/fairytale. I just feel that would be great fun. These two, plus some Calvino, a little Marquez, Roy, some of the PoMo work over FC2, Maso.... we could go everywhere and think about everything.

Oh, and the local news says that the yearling cheetah that escaped is back home with mama in the zoo. Couple days ago, two men were arrested for aggravated flight when they stole formula, diapers, and toilet paper (or something) from a Walmart and then fled the police for half and hour before their tire blew ... shades of Raising Arizona. Couple weeks ago, some college kids were buying a hefty load of pot, two of them took the dope and RAN, leaving their friend to be beaten and tortured by the dealer with ... ... fresh Tollhouse cookies. Yep, they burned the kid with cookies. Crime in Walden. Oh, well, not so Walden, an 11 year old was sentenced to 60 years for the rape and near fatal beating of an 8 year old, and a substitute teacher is under indictment for statutory rape of an 11 year old boy. Lately, it's all News of the Weird around here.

And we just really have to stop being so psychotic about sex in this culture. We really, really, do.

College, a prism, or Wake Up Thinking 2

"If something happened to empower those people, there would be an incredible efflorescence of culture in this country, because there's more of them now than there ever has been. But they are too busy scuttling around getting shitty jobs."

The conventional wisdom dictates that this is merely smart politics, since the young tend not to vote. Nor do college kids make for particularly sympathetic characters—they're often portrayed as hedonists who simply want to spend Mommy and Daddy's cash on a Cancún bender.

While a generation ago Benjamin Braddock recovered from his crisis in the arms of Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine. NARG offers recent grads resources, community, and even a little optimism—without all the awkwardness of having your former mistress as an in-law.

Random Distraction from thinking

About husbands in India: Kali says, "Men of Earth, sexual responsibility is yours too. This sense you have that women are sex, are responsible for your sexual urges and choices, is wrong, deadly, stupid, childish, and simply not up the par of any real or serious masculinity. I will crush you like bugs."

About philosophy in the Financial Times: Hmmmm. and ????. and Hmmmm.

Kill Your Television.

One Personality Profile: yeh, not today.

Culture of Death:
For this? So you can do this? This and oil?

Humor, almost missed it

Turns out Barbara Ehrenriech has a monster sense of humor. You see, I just up an swallowed the phrase "War on Infrastructure," because, well, at this point, why wouldn't I?

Perspective Check

Read this from Guernica. Just read it.

There's the obvious moral of the story. And then there's a chance to contemplate just how complex are the forces in/with/against/for which we exercise our agency.

Also, starting to lock in on the Dublin Anti-Death Culture paper. It's starts, "All of this, literature, criticism, theory, breathing, all of this is about the education of the soul for me lately. You see, in the world of ideas, we progress by return and swerve....." And then something really, really, really smart. What-ev-er that will be. But, I've got the tone, I've got the direction. A toehold.

Reading Lately

Feminism, Art, Theory, Ed. Hilary Robinson -- comprehensive study of women's art movements 1960-now
A doorstop, but an anthology, and thus dippable.

Generation Debt, by Anya Kamenetz -- no you are not a slacker. The economic order Is, in fact, stacked against you and in favor of Boomers. "Kristof is right. Instead of saving for their own retirement, let alone our future, the Boomer are going into deeper debt than any generation before them. Becuase of their projected retirement expenses, the entire nation is essentially bankrupt with a total accumulated funding gap in the federal budget that's greater than our national net worth. Whose going to be around when that bill comes due? Young people. (Gen X and the Millennials that is). // Add to these material debts the ominous global legacy our parents and grandparents have left us ... and the smugness [of labeling us slackers and "adultescents" and buying H2s] starts to look downright cruel." (xiv) -- Read this book. Think you're the only one not "on schedule"? Oh no. There is a structural problem here, not just a personal/familial matter of responsibility (though there is that too).

The Medium is the Massage, by Quentin Fiore and Marshall McLuhan, produced by Jerome Agel -- graphics to match the message about the total media environment in which Generations Debt swims like guppies and brought to you by... the Boomers. (yeh, i've been a little peeved with you Age of Aquarians).

Scroll down. Buy some damn books for the kids whose reading room got robbed. Do it now.

Foul Play Stealing Books from Children!!!

Left Bank Books

August 3, 2007

Dear PRSC,
Dozens of donated African-American children's books were stolen from Faces in the Loop, a decades old art studio in University City dedicated to helping children in public housing.

KSDK's website has the full story of the break-in, which happened Wednesday at the former Guardian Angel building at the Clinton-Peabody housing development in St. Louis.

Book Drive

Left Bank Books and Subterranean Books are working together to help replace the stolen books. We are collecting books from our shelves to be donated to Faces in the Loop, and we are collecting donations from our customers to add to the stack.

If you have any African-American children's books to donate, or would like to purchase books from us to donate to the cause, you may drop off your donation here at Left Bank Books or at Subterrranean Books on Delmar Avenue.

To purchase and donate a book online, click here for a list of suggested titles.
********&&&&&&&&********

Why only African-American children's books? Because that's what they asked for.

Greak Grock

Ears open lately. Lioness and I identified the feeling we have, and she acutely of late: we are aliens. Full of enough knowledge and experience and visitations to other ways of the life that we don't fit. Upside: a strong sense that life can be artful and rich, that one is writing one's own story. Downside: the distinct impression that one is a dangerous freak. Alienation, in short. To this, Ken Wilber, that ubiquitous guru has a short speech. To sum up: there is a vast imaginative, decentralized conspiracy to make the world kind to humans and their fellow creatures. You are a dangerous freak, but not alone, not without agency, and blessed in your prodigality.

Consciousness, as we know, is constantly evolving through deeper and deeper waves of care and complexity, bringing our hearts and minds ever closer to the limitless depths of our souls’ potential. And as consciousness continues to evolve, there are always individuals who are riding the crest of that wave—which is actually not quite as glamorous as it may sound, as these people typically find themselves feeling alone and alienated in a world which simply cannot speak their language. Therefore, when these people are finally able to find each other, something truly amazing happens—like an intersubjective supernova, the Miracle of We is born anew as a new truly cutting edge culture begins to emerge, forging a path which may very well play a central role in the future of the human species.

Of course, Ken-Man sees II as the epicenter of that delicious earthquake. But, there are many such centers.

Like Mark Morford's column, which recently said this:

Here's what I find fascinating and somewhat sad about the crazily tumescent phenom of women (and increasingly, men) spending larger and larger piles of money -- a great deal more than four grand a month, btw, if you're truly wealthy -- on expensive high-tech spa treatments just to look like someone could walk up and eat raw sushi off your perfectly spotless expressionless wrinkle-free inhumanly porcelain face: It isn't about sex.

Which is to say, you'd think it would be about sex, at least a little, that most people who spend more than their mortgage payment on grooming and put that much effort into zipping from spa appointment to cuticle scraping to hyperbaric chamber are trying to look, consciously or unconsciously, at least somewhat hot, are trying to really enjoy their bodies and maybe attract a mate, or just get laid, with the added bonus of making others of their sex totally jealous of their overall, you know, staggering hotness.

Yes, you might think that. But of course, you'd be wrong.

Arabesques new issue is on-line and is chock full of international women writers. A big picture of life and thought amongst the gals there. I think you can read the whole thing if you sign up for the newsletter. Which you just ought to. Here's a couple of random tastes from mine: One and Two.

On Speaking of Faith (an APR joint) recently: Pastors of various stripes discuss marriage, and what it really means/is, which is just so Not what Focus on the Family has in mind. Heartening. And, to my happiness, very Irigarayan.

On Fresh Air recently: Terri interviewed fusion poet Sekou Sundiata, who died last Wed. This man was a walking, talking testament to loving the hard cold world. Listen up.

And Orion mag argues that the Hubble Deep Field photo needs to be every classroom for Copernican reasons. As well as that there's a not entirely unreasonable secession movement. I'm Hell Yes on the first, and too exhausted for the second. On that, I'm just certain that we have enough to work on, and that if we turn that energy to working on it will not be required, even of Vermont.

Here: I cleaned out the salt-lick for the horses and was rewarded with much large mammals standing with their heads over my shoulder and snuffing of my head. I feel much better.

Darn it all

So, I'm recumbent, reading Proust (no, really, all of it) because I don't want to take this tome on the plane to Tejas; though, revisiting would make doing so just. I have achieved page 773 of 1018 of the first volume of The Novel, which, as you know, is .... hefty. Proust is on a carriage ride. In "Place-Names: The Place" (which is also title of part of Bonnefoy's Douve I recall), I read this:

Presently, at a crossroads, the carriage left them. It was bearing me way from what alone I believed to be true, what would have made me truly happy; it was like my life.

I watched the trees gradually recede, waving their despairing arms, seeming to say to me: "What you fail to learn from us today, you will never know. If you allow us to drop back into the hollow of this road from which sought to raise ourselves up to you, a whole part of yourself which we were bringing to you will vanish forever into thin air." And indeed if, in the course of time, I did discover this kind of pleasure and disquiet which I had just felt once again, and if one evening -- too late, but then for all time -- I fastened myself to it, of those trees themselves I was never to what what they had been trying to give me nor where else I had seen them. And when, the road having forked and the carriage with it, I turned my back on them and ceased to see them, while Mme de Villeparisis asked me what I was dreaming about, I was a wretched as if I had just lost a friend, had died myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god.

Because That is true-true, I know have to take this book on the plane. Oh. Poor. Me. Boo. Hoo. And harass my friends by playing "hey, listen to this." la-la!

Oh, my phone's working. And the folks I interviewed with tonight for that director's gig: yeh, those people are bon-kers.

Happy Almost Independence Day

Always worth rereading: The Declaration.
A worthy companion piece: Ginsberg's America.
And, mine own response to both: A Poem. (in which the line breaks went kabloowie)

Got Lit?

Psst ... you need some. If you're within driving range of Dallas, TX, hie thee hence to the Texas Unbound Literary Festival. This year's offerings are rich and risky -- as you have come to expect from my friends in Texas. Due to my expatriation from the Lone Star to Goshen, I will not be able to attend, so one of y'all send a report. This is the first fest I'll have missed in five years, and WS babes, I'll be missing you keenly these weeks.

Bahghhh!

Dear Publishers of Books:

Ok, stop publishing feminist art/lit/crit/philos books with either purple or pink covers.

Just. Stop. It.

Ever so gratefully yours,
Feminist Lit Critic