The End

Some of you know I began my loyalty to the HBO series The Sopranos last summer. When the semester started in the Fall of 07 I took a break because I couldn't watch and study with equal focus. I had only the discs of season 6 part 2 (which came to about 8 episodes) to watch during this winter recess. I finally got to "Made in America" last night. I don't even know what to say. Many of my friends built up "the end" so much that I anticipated several things: Tony's death, drama with Melfi, an arrest of the entire crew by the CIA. But no. No no no. Perhaps my friends hyped the end with such energy b/c the end itself lacks any consistency with the show itself. That is what's so jarring about it. I can't say I'm totally disappointed because at bottom I appreciate ambiguity in 'ends' (and beginnings too for that matter). If nothing else, The Sopranos reflects real life: endings, in real life, are full of ambiguity. But damn, the woven crescendo of events in the last two episodes, and the building of tension in that last scene, left me on the edge of my seat, grabbing for the remote to rewind, asking "wait, did I miss something?" That wasn't authentic, real-life, ambiguity; that was a script writer handing millions of fans a case of viewer blue balls. I vacillate between feeling sad and curious: like maybe if I keep thinking about it hard enough, or recall enough subliminal messaging from episodes past, I might "get it." Truth is: I love The Sopranos like I have never loved anything on television prior to. The series made me think, hard. I didn't want it to end that way. But as I sit here dissatisfied with "Made in America," I'm forced to think about how my investment in anything impacts the way I think it "should" and "shouldn't" die--all the more when I have a developed, strong love of that thing. So the thinking, hard, continues. Perhaps the sign of a brilliant screenplay? Or maybe just another (Buddhist) lesson about the nature of attachment...

Family Holiday

The Tamburrano/McGaughy Christmas Experience 2007
Merry Christmas from Martha, Gina, Mia, Jessica, Emily, Angelo Jr., & Angelo Sr.

Piano

Years have passed since she sat at that bench, tapping those keys--
moving, swaying, syncopating.
Years and years and years.
A magic melody. No music sheets. Just memory.
"How do you remember?" I ask.
"I just kinda hear it." She says.
My mother, the music-maker.
All things beautiful surrender to her song.

I will be what I will be.

Ten feet away sits the newly installed fireplace.
My mom comes here at 3am when she cannot sleep.
I would burn a million times for her to rest the whole night.
Now, I am here, witnessing the heights and flux of the flames
while remembering, sensing and giving thanks for a lover who
recently said "burning, but not consumed: i like that image of God best."
Me too. Kinda how I feel about you.

Two hours ago I sat around the table with thirty women,
listening to one in particular share about the loss
of her alcoholic sister to an alcoholic death.
She wept in that upper-middle-class-white-woman kind of way:
tears reluctant to come, but when they finally surface
(after one hundred compulsive blinking attempts to avoid them)
a kleenex swipes to the rescue.
Too much make-up could smear; too much moisture could fall on the table-top;
too many tears behind these tears--gotta stop them quick.
I get it. Kinda how I feel about dad, church, that baby...

Striking how grief and passion threaten to consume with such similarity;
Fascinating how the burning feels like an eclipse of the erected boundaries we (foolishly) believe in and depend on, both in loss and desire.
Staying awake in such moments is worship,
a witness and testament to the power of our "corporeal vulnerability"
where God en/unfolds us in a blaze of glory.

***Ckeller and Jbutler live in the last 2 lines.

86 Censorship

My throat closed months ago.
I tried to keep breathing with all I was not saying,
but breath--like expression--needs room.
There was no room,
just a corpse with bones clacking through the motions,
making a mockery of some birth between us long ago when
mountain air moved us, speech freed us, and the possibilities
for every condition felt passionate and promising.
Negotiations dissipated, died slowly with a few screams and heavy sighs.
The rituals lost their potency without asking permission.
There is an obituary somewhere waiting to be written. Maybe this is it.

When two people spend enough time together
a language develops that can become
a portal to freedom
or cage of restriction.
Possibilities come to life or die by way of ritual idioms.
Whoever determines what can and cannot be said
in love and in war and in the space between,
determines the conditions for life itself.

Religious Rhetoric in the Advent & Election Season

It's a rare occassion when I feel proud to be a theologian/religious scholar, mostly because our topics have the tendency to get lofty and off the ground (so to speak). But recently, when flipping through magazines like Harpers and The New Yorker and reading newspaper articles in the NY Times, I am struck with the relevance of smart religious rhetoric in public discourse. As we see with growing frequency, headlines pairing political candidates and faith-based belief systems abound during the election season. When it comes down to it, the average citizen wants to know what the person representing them believes about ultimate reality, salvation, moral decision-making and public vs private ways of 'doing' faith. And thank God! Richard Niebuhr once said "religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people." A telling of difference between the former and the latter happens when we have the courage to interrogate belief systems, a move that is often taboo and uncomfortable in public. Though many candidates pay lip service to God, their conclusions about God and application of that belief in real-life, are not qualitatively equal in content. Curtis White in a recent article entitled "Hot Air Gods" says:

Religious freedom has come to this: where everyone is free to believe whatever she likes, there is no real shared conviction at all, and hence no church and certainly no community. Strangely, our freedom to believe has achieved the condition that Nietzsche called nihilism, but by a route he never imagined. (...) Our (American) nihilism is our capacity to believe in everything and anything all at once. It's all good! Ultimately, our beliefs become just another form of what the media call "content." (...) In short, belief becomes a culture-commodity. We shop among competing options for belief.
(Harpers Vol 315, No 1891 pp 13)

Again, I stress that not all belief systems are equal, and certainly the application of those beliefs in the shaping of our lives--individually and communally--differ drastically. Being able to see through paper-thin religious rhetoric masking corporate/capitalist ideology is important these days. This country, with its reliance on foreign aid, addiction to war-making, and isolation from the international community cannot afford to place its security in profit and aggression any longer. I agree with Judith Butler who writes "both our political and ethical responsibilities are rooted in the recognition that radical forms of self-sufficiency and unbridled sovereignty are, by definition, disrupted by the larger global processes of which they are a part, that no final control can be secured, and that final control is not, cannot be, an ultimate value." So if final control is not our ultimate value, what is?

Fact: we lack control. We are at the mercy of free-acting agents and naturally self-imposing entities every minute of the day. Whether or not we admit it, this fact of life scares the shit out of us--sometimes in an all-consuming way, and other times in a low-grade, just-below-the-surface anxiety. This is the oceanic existential condition that religion deals with for better and worse. My friend Wade has a hypothesis: "our religious task is not to provide certainty but to help people cope with uncertainty in an undetermined world." When we are faced with fear and uncertainty, a belief system that encourages us to grasp and seize betrays the potential and possiblities inherent in life for resourceful collaboration, graceful improvisation, and new-birth in relationships.

As our country decides on who will lead us into the next phase of this experimental democracy, I hope religious scholars and theologians will continue to collaboratively write, read and speak out to the heart of the people. The last 8 years have cast a deep shadow over the land: now is the time when the light can break through with greater strength and potency than ever before...and I'm not talking about a political party or particular candidate. Let us prepare it room...together.

Prayer # 121,007

A gradual suspension of known language
takes over this morning
for an allowance of primordial sounds
so that sighs and hums
like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
leap from the depths
and rise as holy smoke.

I hope they reach your dwelling space
no matter how transcendent
or here you are.

You do this:
take words away,
make me yours by making me desperate
and dumbfounded all in the Name beyond
every name.

I groan with creation,
pray from my belly
cry with delightfully haunting knowledge
and sit in awed silence because
I am in love with you still.

Way Too Long like the Struggle

It's a LIE. See for yourself.

With all the Talk about Iran...

...let us not forget:

Op-Ed Contributor
Now and Forever

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04herbert.html?ex=1354510800&en=667b49a4ec418faa&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

By BOB HERBERT
Published: December 4, 2007
The United States is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.

Feeding

Check out this article
National
Food Banks, in a Squeeze, Tighten Belts
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: November 30, 2007
Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/us/30food.html?ex=1354165200&en=14d7026c5c814449&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Okay, so the good news is that plenty of us go out to eat, or have stuff hidden in the pantry that we can donate. It takes little effort to hand your left-overs to someone on the street, or to pack a bag of groceries that you carry around with you until you meet someone who is hungry/in need. Consider it the Christmas task of 2007 in light of the food bank shortages.

An Open-Letter to the Poco Prof par Excellance

Dear Professor Rivera:

I've been haunted by my words in class yesterday: "I wish president bush thought g*d was omnipotent."

The truth is: I think president bush probably plays lots of lip-service to g*d's omnipotence: G*d...the ultimate supreme container for all power on earth and in heaven. And it is the rhetorical nature of this lip-service that I wonder about.

It seems to me that g*d's omnipotence is (usually) used for two reasons: 1) to deny creaturely agency and thereby duck responsibility for creaturely decision-making & the consequences thereof 2) to deny creaturely agency and thereby encourage creatures to remain complacent (and thereby complicit) with life/structures as they are. In my working context, I often hear the latter. Lots of women have been told to hold on, to wait for the glory of god to reveal itself to them, when they could be going to therapy, entering into healing circles and healing wounds. In the political context I hear the former. G*d intended Sept 11; therefore the US is/was intended to occupy/enslave the nations assummed to have perpetrated the 'terrorist acts.' No colonial agenda; just divine justice.

What would it mean for pres bush to believe, I mean really believe, that g*d had ALL power and agency? Would he continue to extract, demand and pollute and conceive of it as divine mission? Or would he put down his agenda of mass destruction and wait for the lord to reveal himself? Either way, a sense of participation (either by receiving revelation, or embodying the missio dei) is implicit. Hasn't omnipotence run its course? if by omnipotence we mean power and by power we mean the full capacity to make things happen???

I was pissed off in class yesterday and I'm afraid, because of the anger I feel/hear/experience in my body, that I disrupted and postured in unhealthy ways. I am sorry for that. No one was even arguing FOR omnipotent theology! The voices that have trumpeted omnipotence theology in my/the past were rapists, consumers of the most cruel content, genuinely abusive/selfish human beings (though of course that's not all they were/are). It's hard to separate the "concept" from the living damage caused in and through the concept. And yet, I am highly aware that reliance upon God's power has pulled more than one body/community through trials and tribulations. Sometimes I think my frustration is just the fear of loss that I know comes when G*d-talk/G*d-thought comes out of the closet in complex clothing: never pure, never clean, just dressed up in all kinds of costumes for different celebrations/pilgrimages/funerals. Sometimes I want G*d to come out looking just like me, but then I remember, I need grace in here that I cannot get without the "there" there.

Thank you for your class. I am stretching and growing because of it/us/you.
Love,
Emily Joye

Fierce

Thanksgiving Alphabet

Air to breathe
Beloved: the book and the One
Coffee in the morning
Denial when it saves you
Emptying the garbage
Finding new friends
Glenda Hope
Hermeneutical horizons
Inching closer to graduation
Jessica Petrone
Kissing Lincoln over and over (when he lets me)
Lesbians
Mom
Natural highs and natural byes
Oakland
Peace Particles and PSR
Quality films
Red blood
SafeHouse
Theology talks with theology types
Unlocking the hard places
Virtue ethics
Wonder
Xoxoxox
Yearning by bell hooks
Zap Mama

Bearing the Cross?

Read this report by the National Labor Committee...

www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=479

Just another example, not to be exploited but witnessed, of how symbols are contextually constricted. One person's resurrection sign is another person's sign of torture and exploitation. I am working on this in my head (academia) and heart (faith communities), but I must say, it's articles/reports like this that make me put my head down in shame of what christianity can/has become.

Untitled

I wanted to say something to you
but then i realized you weren't you anymore,
not in the way I always framed you being before,
so instead I opted for silence
and learned a whole lot more in the process of registration.
Sounds broke through, still.
The thing I wanted to say remained
except the materiality of it changed.
As a consequence
our bodies moved closer and further away,
the desires and fears we used to classify as "yours" and "mine"
somehow got murky,
and the 'irreducible ambivalence' of this corporeal existence--
with all its dangers and elixirs--
began to fly in our faces.

4 Proclamations

A couple things I feel like proclaiming to the world right now:

1. Rain began to fall from the sky around 2pm. I was tapping my keyboard, writing a paper for Professor Mary Tolbert, and looked out the window right in time to see the pavement slowly change color as it got drenched. Holy moment.

2. I am obsessed with a song on Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic. The song is actually a hidden track after "Devils' Arcade." This song strangely captures my theology (in a nutshell). Perhaps Christianity's greatest historical gift is this lesson: a person can be remembered. She broke the mold with that brother, in-deed.
***Other artists in season/on my playlist right now: Thelonius Monk, Astor Piazzolla, Alicia Keys, Anonymous 4, Beethoven, Coldplay, Yann Tiersen (as always), Common and Norah Jones.

3. Wade has been gone for 3 months because he is doing a CPE internship in Palo Alto. When he drinks lattes, he text messages (is that a verb now?) me to tell me about it. When I imagine him kneeling before his patients/clients/friends at the VA, in the way he kneeled before me during a foot washing ritual 2 years ago, I thank God. This is how friendship is done.

4. Bodies first. Bodies matter.

Martha

Blueish grey sweater sits beneath a black scarf
that swirls and twirls around her neck
almost as beautifully as the veins circulate
the top of her hands.
I have missed those hands, the way they
illustrate her point and make fists that illustrate
her fierce force--a living, breathing, sometimes suffering
force that refuses to look away, that refuses to look too long.
She sees me.
She always has.
I see a horizon in her, something way way beyond here,
yet obtainable somehow, just not now. Her spontaneous, self-effacing
laughter and southern accent crystallize in my consciousness, lure me
out of the scared places into the spacious places. The spacious places.
Honesty there, with her, in her.
Such dignity and grace, in that one body, on that one face.
Her gaze is a spacious place.
She sees me.

War

On the corner of arrow highway and central avenue,
the words of Audre Lorde ring in my ears
as I look upon the latest cosmetic surgery offering
on a billboard, propped for all to see:

vaginal rejuvenation surgery.

Get that pussy tight, at your local docs office,
where the docs tightening that pussy are women too.
The gaze is no longer "male."
The gaze is only interested in what's for sale.

Don't buy it.

The women are walking

to work, in shoes they bought
this past weekend, at the store
on the infamous boulevard/platform
of the aristocracy, knowing the click of their
heels sounds more like the victory ring of a cash
register than something (not) seen in their eyes.

The women are walking

on sidewalks in their neighborhoods
where they peer into the windows of
houses not their own, where families
not their own look different and somehow
the same.

The women are walking

in the morning, trying to lose the baby fat
they accumulated last year that their husbands
can’t help but comment on even though they
know it’s “messed up.”

The women are walking

too close to the charcoal colored pavement, also known
as the street, in hope that a drunk
driver will lose control and side swipe them, which
everyone would say “was such a tragic accident,” which
appears much easier for people to live with than
the curiosities post-suicide(s).

The women are walking

with headphones on so they can hear a chorus line
or simple ballad that makes more sense than
the morning headlines (sitting there, back on the coffee
table at home just waiting to depress the hell out of anyone
and everyone).

The women are walking

on hiking trails in the forest, instead of aisles in church
because g*d in the trees and on the moss is more accessible
these days than God at the altar, in the cup and bread, or living
vicariously through some middle age priest who fucks women
half his age while preaching grace.

The women are walking

in the downtowns, with signs in their hands that display
the word “NO!” all over them: no to war, no to reproductive
regulation, no to companies that deny a living wage, no to rape,
no to environmental degradation.

The women are walking

into the arms of each other, because there’s nowhere else
to go, nor would they want to go anywhere else because
these arms hold the whole world up while the sky is falling.

The women are walking

a way.

Love In Color

I recognize:

strands of hair,
a baby grand that sits on the south side,
marble walls with diamond tiles,
a woman in the portrait that hangs next to the clock,
husband's jacket slumped over the dining room chair,
the eyes of her, that peer at me, allways, even if only in my head,
a semi crumpled lunch bag, on the counter, in the kitchen,
the skirts and blouses, the earrings and eyebrow toners,
sun spots on her hands, more wrinkled now than before,
dead leaves, layering the sidewalk on Lee Avenue,
leather seats in an Acura on highways too long from home,
picture frames
framed pictures
thick, desiring soil, in the back yard where she plays,
the afghan throw, on the couch, pleated gold,
my prayer beads, both aesthetic and pragmatic,
layers behind and beneath the blonde,
the time keeper that tocks and ticks, on the west side and in my secret spots,
book shelves covering the white-washed walls, in berkeley, in Cofoid,
sweaters, holding me when she is not (t)here

all these things

my mother's brown

Nebuchadnezzar

Sent soaring in the sky,
after being dropped off
at eight fifty eight a.m.,
he arrives at eleven forty a.m.,
--barely--he says.
Because the Santa Ana Winds are
raging in the South, where fires
blaze and occupants vacate, where
the vulnerability of thirsty hillsides
actually become of interest to folks
not in the real estate business.
"The plane cheered when we landed safely"
he says, trying to communicate how scary
the whole thing was without losing his
masculine edge.
"I could see all of the fires from the sky"
he says, warning me about the issues of
proximity: my mother, his mother, our childhood
homes, schools, play-spaces, and memory lanes.

I interpret his codified language
and know
the layers of smoke, piles of ash,
fire truck sirens, relief workers,
and fearful inhabitants of my home-land
are proliferating by the second.

I recite the most over/under rated prayer:
"Oh my God"
because something burns
in here too.
At once a visitor and native,
I'll be back tomorrow, to see,
if the fourth one, unbound and unharmed
will show up, again, to walk with us,
in these e(x)ternal flames.

For the Sake of the Shine

if you are found wanting, still,
after having stood barefoot on wet grass
when the dawn surrenders its last hopes of illumination
(because it forgets the stars are coming,
because it forgets the stars always come)
just before it takes that long, resigned--yet courageous--breath of
its own made-up death, then interrogate and iconoclastically confront
the measuring apparati you have been instructed to love,
and the myth of uniqueness that locks you in mental quarantine.

Remember, the stars always come
without any invitation, for the sake of the shine.

9 children were killed in Iraq yesterday by US armed forces.

9 CHILDREN

The terror we sow is the terror we will reap.

Glory

General Commentary on Things

I would just like to say, during this brief pause between classes on the hump-est of hump days, that my Hermeneutics course with Marion Grau kicks ass. I've never been so comfortable and humbled in the face of my own ignorance as I am at CDSP on Wednesday mornings. My student colleagues bring the heat, and Dr. Grau is...well, see my title. The entire thing is a beautiful collision course.

Secondly, the clouds in the sky @ 6:45pm on Tuesday October 9th, 2007 were beyond belief. I just happened to be driving over the Bay Bridge at a time when I could see them--in all their multi-colored/multi-shaped bliss--descending over the canvas-like skyline of hills, houses & water, which confirmed for me yet again that the industrial spread has NOTHING on the spontaneity of nature. And yet the confirmation was only possible via contrast. Agh yes, the spaces in-between the in-between places...

Lastly: I love my mother and all the ways she shows up in the arrival of autumn. If you don't know her, you should. So proud to be her product. Read that theologically and (somehow) not...

Leaves on the Ground

There was one death--
a loud determining death--
that etched itself into my consciousness
so flagrantly
some years ago
that now, every time something dies,
it's just the loud determining death happening again,
only this time, I am different: older & more reflexive,
yet somehow incapable,
amidst all my psychoanalytic verbosity,
to separate my father from all the others.

Fall cracks itself wide open
by allowing things to die.

I want to be like that.

Sabbath

Stop.
To know you haven't ended in a while.
Stop.
To regain the place in you that doesn't run.
Stop.
To collect your breath.
Stop.
To give others a chance to touch you.
Stop.
To be still and know.

Mic and Dim

I have been missing A Mic and Dim Lights lately. So I bring a few of them back, for you and for me. Enjoye.

Spiritual Autobiography

An assignment I did for class...

To My Future Children:

The imagination is a paradoxical thing: endless and somewhat limited. Endless in that we can conceive of anything and everything and limited in that our imaginations often fail to affect reality in all the helpful ways we think it should. The problem with humanity, once eloquently stated to me by my Professor of Christian History Randi Walker, is that we can imagine perfection yet our personhood is such that we cannot ever attain it. And this, my ones to come, is the story of my experience with(in)/of/for God. Theology and faith are like the imagination, paradoxical things: endless and frustratingly limited.

I wanted to write to you about “the question of God” being central in all my endeavors, yet this nomenclature doesn’t fulfill the communicative task at hand. Although theological questioning colors a majority of my personal religiosity, it does not constitute my faith entirely. My father, a minister, theologian, and institutional skeptic encouraged me from infancy to question everything. My mother on the other hand, when realizing what an extremist, intellectually inexhaustible child she had produced, encouraged me to live a life of balance. These encouragements to question and balance have been at odds with each other from day one. I am much better at the former; hence when I say “the question of God” doesn’t fulfill the communicative task at hand it is because much of my energy has also been spent trying (and failing) to decelerate the questioning process in a pursuit of balance. I believe this quieting of the mind falls under the category of faithful action, contemplativeness, or spiritual discipline. It is a somewhat problematic distinction, this ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ thing, though I must admit in theory and praxis I have not been able to overcome or integrate it. Perhaps you will be the first in a lineage of Type A personalities to do so. May it be so, dear God.

The communicative task at hand is (near) complete with the concept of ‘orientation.’ That is: I have been theologically and faithfully oriented from the womb. Though I have no conscious recollection of my experience in the womb, I bring forth this metaphor to hammer home two points: 1) I believe the cosmos are situated in the womb of God therefore I could never have been dis-oriented from her; 2) I cannot imagine my life without the questions, pursuits, doubts, relations and language of religion/theology. The metaphor serves to illustrate this constitutive element of my identity. And speaking of metaphor, I want to pass on to you one of the most important things I have ever read, that strikes me as Truth (if any such capitalizing or pronouncements are permissible by the time you are born).
This comes to you from Adrienne Rich, one who often prophecies to my little helpless heart when the confines of language threaten to annihilate the planet and those trying to describe it with their stupid religions:

Of course, like the consciousness behind it, behind any art, a poem can be deep or shallow, visionary or glib, prescient or stuck in an already lagging trendiness. What’s pushing the grammar and syntax, the sounds, the images—is it the constriction of literalism, fundamentalism, professionalism—a stunted language? Or is it the great muscle of metaphor, drawing strength from resemblance in difference? The great muscle of the unconstricted throat? I’d like to suggest this: If there’s a line to be drawn, it’s not so much between secularism and belief as between those for whom language has metaphoric density and those for whom it is merely formulaic—to be used for repression, manipulation, empty certitudes to ensure obedience. And such a line can also be drawn between ideologically obedient hack verse and an engaged poetics that endures the weight of the unknown, the untracked, the unrealized, along with its urgencies for and against.

I have found the “muscle of metaphor” to be essential in the religious quest. This quest is one that depends on and deepens as a result of non-narrow communication. If one is talking about God or attempting to deconstruct the idolatrous gods of our culture, the biggest mistake is to employ literal language. I hope you come to know and be a part of the poetic enterprise; it will certainly enliven your time here on earth. May it be so, dear God.

There is a place where God cannot be known, a place where humans cannot even understand what they “know,” and a place where the limits of language obstruct humans from saying what they mean and meaning what they say. As a theologian, this is the place that I yearn to visit. As a worshipper, this is the place I praise for its majesty. As a person, this place reveals my finitude and serves as the great equalizer between me and my human family. I suppose this place is the “unknown, untracked, unrealized” that Rich writes about. Perhaps it’s the space that swims and swirls “for us”: a pool of messy and neat, soft and rigid, birthing and dying all the time. Perhaps it’s the great ontological enabler, our God. Who knows.

This is less autobiographical than I had anticipated, but to know your mother, is to know her thoughts about the great mystery. So in a sense, this is my autobiography. Just know that every move I have made, relationship I have formed, prayer I have said, fit I have thrown, atheism I have adopted, music I have played, body I have touched, or career path I have chosen, it was because that thing kept my orientation in tact.

And so I end as I began: with paradox. The more I pursue theology/religion, the less I grasp. The questions usually get me off balance. The balance, when it comes, often leads to new insights which bring about more questions. I have no answers and very little balance, only metaphors, paradoxes, and infinite hope that as Adrienne Rich says, I am on the side of the line that is capable of “enduring the weight of the unknown.” May it be so, dear God.

Actually: there is one last thing I want to say. I love you already, even before you are 'materialized'/born/here/alive. This is, without a doubt, the greatest illumination of faith and hope I can bring you. This world is an ugly place a lot of the time. People get hurt and then they get angry and punish people for their hurt. Then those people get angry and punish other people for their hurt. The cycle is on-going, some might say 'hopelessly' so. There are acts of horrific violence and violation that testify to this worldly ugliness every minute of the day. And yet...I still want you to 'be here,' to know the smell of morning time, the breath of the ocean on your skin, the secrets of standing alone after you've hiked a hillside, the give-it-as-you-go spirit of compassion, the grief of love lost, the beauty of your bodies...all these things. I have faith and hope, for you, for everyone but especially for you, that forgiveness and grace somehow infiltrate this world in ways that make life worth loving.

Sin

I saw your face for the first time this past friday
though you've been frequenting my cupboards for weeks.
Reluctant to admit the scratching sounds might in fact be creaturely,
the covers-over-my-head method sufficed in denial, in the dark, night after
night as your nails went deeper into the wood, your teeth deeper into
the excess bags of pasta on my wooden shelves from ikea.
But when you decided to traverse from the kitchen through
the hallway, past the front door, under the bookshelves, to the
big brown leather chair--five feet away from my bed--you sealed your fate.

Or perhaps my fear sealed your fate.

The nearness of you, the possibility that you might, for whatever reason
come at me, hurt me and leave me sleepless for years
(which has happened before with other creatures of a somewhat anthropocentric nature)
was too much for me to fathom.

I bought the poison the next day.

The Longs Drug Store, on Rose & Vine, had 4 options, technologies (?), tools available for a killing plot such as this. I stood on aisle 3 for what
seemed like an eternity, considering things like
poison or snap?
how long will it take?
is it big enough?
will you suffer too much?
do the remains remain?
and finally decided to go with the little turquoise pebbles that
you'd unknowingly eat up like candy before
they caused your intestines to malfunction. i thought:
maybe this way I won't have to see the body after it dies;
perhaps you'll just crawl outside and pass away,
out of sight, though certainly not out of mind.
You came out of your hole at 10:30pm that night,
ate the entire tray before morning.

The package said the process could take anywhere from 4-6 days.

Night #2, post-operation-poison, you began crying out from the cupboards.
I started crying too. What had I done? You were just hungry.
I called Lincoln who said "Grab your baseball bat, go in there and put him out of his misery. It's the right thing to do. You can't just let him suffer."
I hung up the phone and cried harder when I realized I could never
bash your skull in: I just don't have it in me.

Today I got a huge rat snap trap, one that will surely
take you out the minute you step on it, which I hope might lessen
the amount of suffering I originally prescribed.
By my hand you are going to die; the least I can do is make it faster.

The reason I am writing to you tonight is not artistic, but apologetic.
I am sorry I couldn't come up with a more creative way for us to part ways.
I am sorry someone fucked me a up a long time ago, in the middle of the night, in ways that are now affecting you. Han?
I am sorry that life has become so boundaried: human/animal, home/nature: that your little body was seen as such a threat.
I hope there is a heaven for you, and yet I know, such a "heaven" exists to absolve my guilt and nothing further.
So I guess what I am saying is, I hope you can forgive me, or that something can because I feel so god-fucking-awful.

I was there.

Power to the Peaceful
Golden Gate Park
September 8, 2007
Indigo Girls & Michael Franti & Amy Goodman

...um yes.
so fun
enlivening
hippie-fied
all prototypical bay area elements in one place, mixing like potion
swirling like a whirlpool in the ocean
of g*d
re-minding us of the power of doin what you love
and lovin what you do, like music and dancin in daylight
and moonshine and feelin fine
even though the wars wage and famines plague
because celebration is part of liberation
and showing up in solidarity is fighting the good fight.

i was there, in the grass, on the field
with my peeps through the san francisco streets
hoping to lose my desperation and sense of separation
hoping to see purposes of passion put us in positions
of resistance and assistance.
i was there in 2007
like my mom was there in 1969 because the love of justice
runs through ancestral lines
and won't die so long as try
to keep it alive.

"There is a whole lot of meaningless sufffering." --Wade Meyer

"You're love birds, I can tell" she said
as we hobbled slowly on the sidewalk
twenty minutes after tiny specs of my cervix
were divorced from me by the speculum-looking-scissors
that had been resting on the table next to the
other sterile tools: big swabs, littler swabs, iodine bottles full
of iodine, acedic acid, the actual speculum, and of course
the blue dressing covering the cold metallic tray table without
which none of these objects would be propped.
(These objects are enough, by themselves, to give you a heart attack
before the doctor even asks you to "scoot down.")

"I can tell by the way you walk" she said
completely oblivious to the residue of pain
living between my thighs that slowed my pace down at least
forty percent and had me grabbing Wade's arm
for stability all the way to the bank, to the parking garage,
to the car, oblivious to how long I had been "open" at someone
elses command, subsequently stretched, raw, exposed, in pain
and "closed again" with no one to scream at because this is all
done in the name of Health Care.

"Yeah we are" i answered her
laughing at how things can be true and not true at the same time
because though he's gay and I am Lincoln's
a love so complimentary, enduring, and free-flying
certainly deserved her analogy of birds.

Jeffrey

The moments I still be believe in God
fall into two categories:

1) When something grace-fully takes me by surprise
2) Encountering you, doing anything you do

You are the kind of academic, activist, administrator, christian, father, minister, friend, & mentor that most folks only dream of being. In watching your kindness, hard work and spirit of tireless generosity, I am assured change from within is possible, one person can make a difference, and the institution can't corrupt everyone. For the ways you held me in Asia and the ways you hold this school accountable with love, for your prophecy, poignancy and passion, for your fire, can't-stop-won't-stop ethic of justice, and the way you humble us all: thank you Kah-Jin Kuan, thank you.

Missing

Many, a multitude in fact, show up missing:
feelings, yearnings, memories and ideas of get-togethers sometime soon.
This morning, the meditation went something like this
longing is the core(…)your desire must be disciplined
and so I let them be away from me, in ways
I cannot fathom maintaining much longer than
this day, hour or moment.

What I miss cannot be calculated or concretely named though
I suspect all the ghosts and now remnants fit
inside the same body, the body I quit acknowledging
months ago because simple faith, no longer sensical, went away
with other novelties, delicacies and comforting things.

She is what I miss: her body so beautifully becoming with mine,
though not restricted by my stunts, stops or short-comings, her gracious
g*d-like and God-less rises, her fierce and fiery falls. She used to
breathe into my lungs until I would cry out her name. She used to know
I was looking into her, all of her, and would thank me until I cried myself empty.
Her rivers seeped through the cracks of my toes;
her branches balanced my hanging torso:
back and forth, high and low, all night long.
She reached into me outside a pool in Costa Rica and ferociously pushed me
on a dance floor in downtown San Francisco. She wrote poetry to
me in the hills of Oak Glen and sang soft hymns, lulling me to sleep, in Claremont.

Her people once wrestled with her story in a book.
They wrote “certainly mercy and goodness will follow me
all the days of my life.” I pray they knew what they were talking about,
that I might find her, creeping, laying low, right behind or beneath me.
Then desire and discipline will disappear in each other as we re-unite—
missing no longer maintained.

Financial Aid

This is going to be full of negative whining, so if you're not in the mood, miss me. If on the other hand, you too struggle with financial insecurity, read on and comiserate with your girl.

I just did my 2007-2008 total budget exercises and figured out than when my financial aid arrives next week-ish, after paying all necessary fall semester expenses and my left over summer rent, I'm going to have little or no money left over. This means I am going to have to pay for books and any other supplies (all semester long) out of pocket.

Fuck.
I worked three jobs this summer.

From a different angle, because the intersection of "different" angles inhabits G*d, let me say this: stressing over finances sucks which is why I struggle with economic justice the way I do. I am a single, white, educated, female from privilege and this shit stresses me out. Often when I read the latest financial statement or status of my checking account I experience shortness of breath, and/or minor panic attacks. Can I buy groceries this month? Can I buy my best friend a birthday gift? Can I get quarters to do laundry and still pay my car insurance? These thoughts run through my head a mile a minute. I cannot even imagine what a low-income, differently abled, working womyn of color with kids goes through on a daily basis. Quite aware that the anxieties I experience are minimal compared to most, quite aware that there is NO shortage of capital in this country, quite aware that the distribution of resources is part of the problem, I wonder why people who question the economic infrastructure of this country/global system are STILL labeled communists. Are some people just destined to suffer because the upper echelon of society won't share? If so: hell no.

My mom is helping me this academic year by giving me my father's pension from the presbyterian church, which means I am going to survive. Thank God. I'm glad some institutions take seriously the welfare of their constituents. That's a step in the right direction, for sure. But what about the educational system? In order to "make something for myself," which inevitably meant getting educated, I had to go $70,000 dollars in debt. Surely going to graduate school in a less expensive region of the country would have helped, but cmon, is de facto indebtedness part of the "american dream"? What a way to trip people up before they start running.

What makes everything worse is how that future profit (interest rate revenue) for the government will probably be used. I can't even think about it; it makes me want to cry.

Anti-War Film: spread the Word

Passed on to me by the Rev. Glenda Hope...

PLEASE JOIN US FOR ONE OF THESE FREE BAY AREA SCREENINGS AND HELP US SPREAD THE WORD! THIS AMAZING AND POWERFUL NEW FILM BY PAUL HAGGIS (CRASH) LOOKS AT THE IRAQ WAR
AND ITS EFFECT ON OUR SOLDIERS COMING HOME WITH A POV...WE CAN NO LONGER IGNORE.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH!

Directed by Paul Haggis and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, James Franco and Susan Sarandon. Based on true events, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH has the power to create dialogue and increase awareness regarding soldiers returning from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.

See the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3OKyqDGaHo

Please feel free to forward this invitation, and RSVP to: inthevalleyOutreach@gmail.com

SAN FRANCISCO

Wednesday, Aug. 22 at 7:30 PM
Sundance Kabui Cinema
1881 Post St.
San Francisco, CA 94115

Thursday, Sept. 6 at 7:30 PM
Embarcadero Cinema
One Embarcadero Center,
Promenade Level
San Francisco, CA 94111

Tuesday, Sept. 11 at 7:30 PM
Century 9 SF Centre
SF Shopping Center,
845 Market St., 5th Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94103

Thursday, Sept. 13 at 7:30PM
Sundance Kabuki Cinema
1881 Post St.,
San Francisco, CA 94115

In the spirit of peace and struggle for justice,
Ejoye

Artist of the Season

I'd like to give a shout out to this man:

Gustav Klimt.

Any person who can create this kind of beauty...



deserves praise on a Sunday morning.
:)

Maria

white shirt, darker-than-tan khakis and black flip flops
stroll up the stairs to meet and greet the differently aged womyn
occupying couches in the corner.
they have been drinking coffee and tea,
eating yogurt and scones,
talking about their men (and womyn),
gossiping--a little--about the people they see at the places they share and
it's been three hours since their arrival.
he comes and sits beside the younger one, who though
excited to see him won't be the first to extend a loving touch.
the matriarch looks at the couple hoping
a semblance of long term survival exists for them
but
she doubts a man and womyn can do anything in the long term, anything but regret, that is.

he has come from 2 miles down the road, probably 17 blocks in all, to recount for
them what the first day of law school was like. the 2 mile/17 block spread
includes a city change. the apprehensive girl, who is a theology student, flanks the
lawyer-to-be caring not about cities or blocks between them, but the truly divisive things: disparate languages,
incompatible world views and years of accumulated student loan debt.
after (quietly) boasting about his first "right answer" when first called upon by his first
professor of property law, he reaches across the couch and places his hand
on her knee. with all his firsts, she considers the possibility of lasts and moves
into his intimate gesture.

the container of wisdom sitting across the way, gazes at this melancholy, age old tug-of-war
while breathing through her teeth. she is at once smiling upon his ambition,
empathizing with her female companions fear,
and forgiving herself for all the ways she fell in love so young and so stupid.

2 Things

Upon leaving southern california I have 2 things to say:

1. Most womyn put on a clown suit before exiting the house.
2. The New Testament is a story about frat boys.

Thank you and good day.
Ejoye

An Interesting Discussion of Anger & War

Hey: I wrote a section synopsis/commentary on "Multitude," which is featured on the SEW Sow Peace site. It has started an interesting discussion about the intersection of anger & healing in both the personal and political arenas. All you on the spiritual & activist path should check it out and give us your thoughts--especially those of you working in social service.

http://sewpeace.wordpress.com/multitude/

The more time I spend on the planet the more aware I become that the wars "out there" look strinkingly similar to the wars I experience "in here." As I protest one, I reinforce the other. As I criminalize one, I justify the other. This work, the work of cleaning house, accepting responsibility and letting go of the need to be right...is the hardest work of all. I need all the patience, forgiveness and nurture I can get from every person I encounter in this work. I assume y'all might need the same. That's what I'm trying to cultivate today: a never-ending supply of agape for us all. Dear God, may it be so.

The Consequences and Trade Offs of Panentheism

Oh to look back and see something other than stupidity.
Let me say this: I am humbled, today, by memories of and present moments with
my inability to be the things my mind can imagine but my person cannot always accomplish: grace, forgiveness, nurture, honesty, peace.
I wish I still believed in God in a way that would set me free of regret. Perhaps days like these and feelings like this help people construct the idea of an all powerful savior who cleanses his followers of their sins and makes them whiter than snow. Unfortunately I don't buy it. Therefore I get to sit with yucky feelings. The trade off is that when something terrible happens or something unbelievably beautiful happens, I cannot claim it was solely my or God's fault.
All in it together now. Aren't we?

From Generation to Generation

Who will speak for the man
who
though old and resourceful cannot utter a word
who
though patient and kind in hours of need
cannot calm the storms in his own chest cavity where
years and years of miss-steps and acerbic, tawdry ties
linger out loud?
Who?

Who will speak for the man
who
though lost and afraid cannot put down his false aegis
who
though strong and myopic in a multitude of ways
cannot extend an opening, even for a second, for fear
of seismic (and somehow familiar) betrayals?
Who?

Who will speak for their women
who
though compassionate to the end cannot keep the fridge door closed
who
though competent and care-full in salvific proportion
cannot save themselves from diseases of self-destruction and
the never-ending satisfactions of stress?
Who?

And who, oh who
will speak for their children
who
though they swallow whole and see transparently
cannot undo the ancestral ties that bind
who
though they weep behind closed doors and resolve to place the patterns down
cannot help following the primordial map "home"?

Following the Happy Trail Down South

Hey everyone:
I'll be in the Upland/Claremont/Redlands/Riverside area for the next week. Though I plan to relax a majority of the time, I will be stopping by some old stompin grounds. So...if I haven't seen or talked to you in a while, hit me up (909) 921-8787. And if you're in the mood to hear about storage being the number two growing industry (second only to military defense) in this country, come to Riverside First Congregational Church @ 9am this Sunday morning where I will be preaching on "The Parable of the Rich Fool" from the Gospel of Luke (12:13-21).
Bay Area by choice; IE by origin.
Power to the peaceful!
Ejoye

Mom

I remember that time you told me
"Love is touching souls."
Surely you've touched mine
cause part of you pours out of me
in these lines from time to time.

You're in my blood like holy wine--today
and forever more.




I love you.

Resemblance

This poem was featured in the New Yorker a while back. I've been flirting with its truth(s) all month long. I miss my dad, everyday.

ResemblanceBy David Ferry

It was my father in that restaurant
On Central Avenue in Orange, New Jersey,
Where I stopped for lunch and a drink, after coming away
From visiting, after many years had passed,
The places to which I’d brought my father’s ashes
And the ashes of my mother, and where my father’s
Grandparents, parents, brothers had been buried,
And others of the family, all together.

The atmosphere was smoky, and there was a vague
Struggling transaction going on between
The bright day light of the busy street outside
And the somewhat dirty light of the unwashed
Ceiling globes of the restaurant I was in.
He was having lunch. I couldn’t see what he was having
But he seemed to be eating, maybe without
Noticing whatever it was he may have been eating;
He seemed to be listening to a conversation
With two or three others—Shades of the Dead come back
From where they went to when they went away?
Or maybe those others weren’t speaking at all? Maybe
It was a dumbshow? Put on for my benefit?

It was the eerie persistence of his not
Seeming to recognize that I was there,
Watching him from my table across the room;
It was also the sense of his being included
In the conversation around him, and yet not,
Though this in life had been familiar to me,
No great change from what had been before,
Even in my sense that I, across the room,
Was excluded, which went along with my sense of him
When he was alive, that often he didn’t feel
Included in the scenes and talk around him,
And his isolation itself excluded others.

Where were we, in the restaurant that day?
Had I gone down into the world of the dead?
Were those other people really Shades of the Dead?
We expect that, if they came back, they would come back
To impart some knowledge of what it was they had learned.
Or if this was indeed Down There, they they,
Down there, would reveal, to us who visit them,
In a purified language some truth that in our condition
Of being alive we are unable to know.

Their tongues are ashes when they’d speak to us.

Unable to know is a condition I’ve lived in
All my life; it is a poverty
Of imagination about the life of another.
This is, I think, the case with everyone.
Is it because there is a silence that we
Are all of us forbidden to cross, not only
The silence that divides the dead from the living
But, antecedent to that, is it the silence
There is between the living and the living,
Unable to reach across that silence through
The baffling light there always is between us?
Among the living the body can do so sometimes,
But the mind, constricted, inhibited by its ancestral
Knowledge of final separation, holds back,
Unable to complete what it wanted to say.

What is your name that I can call you by?

Virgil said, when Eurydice died again,
“There was still so much to say” that had not been said
Even before her first death, from which he had vainly
Attempted, with his singing, to rescue her.

Doug Adams

A legacy in our community.
May you rest in peace, Professor Adams.

Music & Memory

Popped in the disc you made me last fall,
to hear that new Dylan song with the Om-ish beat, you know the CD
with Dylan, Parson, and Young written on the top, the one we listened to
over and over before blazing trails, in the mist turned rain on
the cliffs where redwood trees shot up and away like rooted rockets--
yeah that one.
I call to tell you I'm listening over and over to the chorus: "old man take a look at my life"
and you respond by saying "I need to make you a new CD; that one is old."
I don't want a newly burned, present moment compilation
because the past-time favorites usher in connections to the times when
you were here, and the new stuff--well, no matter how good it is--will be
played in a climate of absence, and who wants to reminisce on lonliness?
All I can do these days is write poetry about what was
and what appears, even if it just appears in memory,
because hanging on is a full time job,
and music is a hallway bridging the gaps between
present need and future fulfillment.
So let me hear Neil Young whail about becoming exactly like his dad,
because I love the part of you that picked such a song
and identifies with its content now and forever more.
Or perhaps its not about you at all,
but about my own desire to be seen and reflected on by my father.
You would never conversate with me about it either way;
just don't make me a new CD.

Birthday Presence

It was my birthday yesterday.

I turned 26 with flowers, hiking in Muir Woods, a cookbook and anthology of quasi-erotica, tapas

and chocolate mousse to inaugurate my continued becoming.

Few friends called. Grief.

My mom made a trip up to celebrate with me and

I leaned close to her skin every chance I got—closer than before.

By pushing away the inches between our faces I became a warrior

on the battlefield of things- slipping -away:

my leaning –

a shield

mother daughter breaths waltzing in midair –

knives cutting through the enemy of distance.

Her Friday night theology put Amos, Ike and Zeek to shame. Grace.

She drove away, after kissing my cheek with force this morning.

I watched the white SUV—that I’d deplore anyone else for driving—cruise down

Le Conte slowly and fingered eye sockets for fear of control loss.

Ten minutes later I found a project to do

in this empty apartment and poems snowflaked from on high

while Sade’s King of Sorrow cooed my silly little sadnesses

back to their sleepy places.

The Morning Desert

the morning mouth smacks
--the ones you made on the verge of waking up--
filled the air as I waited
and waited
for eyes to open, thoughts to return, and limbs to shift in-between sheets that
smelled of our cigarette conversations the night before

sometimes I would wait
and wait
down the street on the couches where I would bury myself
in theory and fill my tummy with yogurt, granola, fruit
and coffee until you phoned to say “come home”

other days I would enter the circle
and melt into your family’s gift to me
while I waited
and waited
for your dreams, or residue high/hangover to subside
so I could crawl in and claw (lightly)
the places on your back that only a mother
or lover are allowed to touch

now,
a cat's collar bell rings outside my window
to announce a new day but I wait
and wait
for the moment you decide to re-member me, though
the first voice over obscured lines
compares little to the ocean of absorption I swam in,
thanks to our circadian rhythms of old

Shake Shake (not in the Yin Yang Twins way)

I was startled out of my sleep early this morning, around 4:30am, by an earthquake. My heart leaped into my throat. I quickly jumped out of bed, but the earth returned to calm before I reached the doorway. I couldn't catch my breath for 5 minutes. My psyche doesn't respond well to lack of control. I will move myself if I fuckin feel like it...thank you very much. When I have no say and come directly into contact with outside forces, I am humbled by my own powerlessness in the web of things.

This morning when discussing with friends what type of earthquake we prefer (eg: slow, long rollers or hard, quick, forceful booms), I realized we were talking about something more than tectonic plates shifting. It's kind of like the question "how would you prefer to die?"
-slow cancer?
-or an unexpected bullet through the heart?
Such questions and answers, preferences and dislikes, point to our ideas of how things ought to be. The mind has all kind of ideas of life, death and freedom from fear of death that we transform into philosophies and theories. But in the end, I think folks want to control how and when and why things happen to them. (Hence the virtual worlds and "second life" type spots where people have complete artistic control over how they appear) Regardless of our desires to avoid being victims of reality--we always will be. Like Hillary said last week: life is messy.

I didn't want to wake up 4 hours early this morning. But I did like the extra time I had to watch the Sopranos. Sometimes the unexpected is a good thing. Touche :).

Back to Poetry

This one was passed on to me by Steven Peele. Who knew the man recites poetry on a regular basis? It's the surprises in life that keep us going.

WHAT YOUR BODY HOLDS AGAINST YOU

could be love in the right proportions. Don't confuse
form and content where a good sense of humor becomes

the kind of curves that makes a room loosen
around her. Look for a woman that listens to music

drifting over a lake, hovering like flies, or someone who will watch
the landscape emptied of azaleas under a setting sun

with you. By forty there is a sideshow of vanities:
the dragon breath you wake to, bones tossed

against your skin like saves, or the flesh that grows
where a waitress tucks her loose change. We measure

time with our lives, counting out the coins
year by year. We all become detectives of broken

hearts in off-season hotels where love and its accoutrements
wait by the roulette wheel for once chance at the big time.

--Laurie Blauner

Quote of the Day

Yesterday it was poetry; today it's a quote by Charles Hartshorne.

"It will eventually be acknowledged that women are wiser than men. The essential proof of female wisdom is that women commit far fewer crimes and antisocial acts."

Word up.

Art Supreme: Elias & Gregg

I am currently listening to Johnathan Elias' "The Prayer Cycle," (thanks to Wade). And this...this is a poem worth reading. Enjoye.

The Precision
By Linda Gregg

There is modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body swoons,
it is because the heart knows its truth.
There is directness and equipoise in the fervor,
just as the greatest turmoil has precision.
Like the discretion a tornado has when it tears
down building after building, house by house.
It is enough, Kafka said, that the arrow fit
exactly into the wound that it makes. I think
about my body in love as I look down on these
lavish apple trees and the workers moving
with skill from one to the next, singing.

Happy birthday to my lovely and lively Joy Lynn!

Dave Zirin

I went to hear sports journalist & political activist Dave Zirin speak about his new book Welcome to the Terrordome at Cody's Books on 4th street last night. The event was the highlight of my summer thus far. This man is doing incredibly important, virtuous, commendable work. He writes about the "pain and politics" of sports from a social justice, left wing perspective. The man is hillarious, brilliant and one-of-a-kind in his field. He encourages sports fans, in no airy fairy way, to resist the commodification and corporate take over of athletes and play. If you don't know about him and the movement he's a part of, please check out the two things I have posted below.



Being Ali Or Being Owned: An Open Letter to LeBron
By Dave Zirin
At the tender age of 22, you have the galactic talent to make us wonder if a mad scientist had Magic and MJ genetically spliced. But talent ain't wisdom. In a recent interview, you said that your goal in sports was to become "the richest man on earth." You also told ESPN, "I'm trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali."
These dreams are compatible only if you choose to emulate Ali the icon and not Ali the man. Ali the icon is used to sell books, computers, snack foods, and anything not nailed down. Ali the man sacrificed his health, future, and untold millions by standing up to racism and war. No one is demanding you do the same. No one is insisting you get in front of a microphone and say, "I aint got no quarrel with them Iraqis."
But you should understand that the reason Ali remains a "global icon" is precisely because he didn't define himself by his corporate sponsors. When his handlers told him to stop throttling the golden goose of fame he said, "Damn the money! Damn the white man's money!"
Evidence is accumulating that this won't become the King James catchphrase of choice.
Your teammate Ira Newble tried to get every member of the Cavs to sign a letter calling on China to stop exacerbating the genocide in Darfur by dealing arms to the government. "There's innocent people dying, and it's just a tragedy to stand back and let them do what they're doing," Newble said.
One of Newble's inspirations take a stand has been the person he "idolized as a child": Muhammad Ali. That would be Ali the man, not the brand.
Newble stuffed fact sheets and articles in the lockers of every member on the team. He organized almost the entire squad to sign a letter that reads in part, "We, as basketball players in the N.B.A. and as potential athletes in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, cannot look on with indifference to the massive human suffering and destruction that continue in the Darfur region of Sudan." Larry Hughes signed. "Big Z," Zydrunas Ilgauskas signed. Drew Gooden signed.
Only two people refused and one was you. Nike, with whom you have a $90 million shoe deal, does business with China so you treated that letter like Dick Cheney treats a salad.
[There's no guarantee the young Ali would have signed this letter either. He may very well have said he wouldn't sign any letter telling China to get out of Darfur until the US was out of Iraq. After all this was a man who said, "The real enemy of my people is here." But one thing is for certain: "show me the money" would not have trumped "damn the money." No way.]
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader also tried to give you the chance to walk the Ali path. He sent you a public invitation to a forum about conditions in Nike factories. In the letter, Nader wrote,
"Mr. James, you are in a unique position to stand up for the people who make the products you endorse and to make the world a better place in the process. You can improve their working conditions in the contracted factories and pressure the entire sports shoe and apparel industry to change."
You replied to the press: "No, I haven't responded to it. But I think Nike's a great company and they would respond if need be."
The shoe wars continued in March in New York, when you dissed and dismissed Stephon Marbury's $14.98 sneaker line. You, whose signature Nikes go for $150, were asked whether you would ever sell a shoe that didn't cost a week's pay at McDonalds. You said, "No, I don't think so. Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high."
Marbury answered your words with the underreported smackdown of the season, saying, "I'd rather own than be owned." Damn.
Jim Brown once explained the allure of Ali in the 1960s this way: "White folks could not stand free black folks. White America could not stand to think that a sports hero that it was allowing to make big dollars would have the courage to stand up like no one else and risk, not only his life, but everything else that he had."
The choice you face is frankly quite stark: how free to do you want to be? Do you want to be "King James of Nike Manor" or the King of the World? Only by refusing to be owned, only by displaying independence from the very corporate interests that enrich you, will you ever make the journey from brand to three dimensional man.

Accreditation

Any credible academic institution
must undergo accreditation
every ten years. My school is currently preparing for
this arduous process by compiling data that either
confirms our consistency in relation to
or calls attention to our inconsistency with
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work.

Because I am a student worker in the office of the president,
I have been asked to use my 20 hours a week
to help prepare the report
before the accrediting team arrives in
September to see things for themselves.

My specific task is to hyperlink the data
(visual, charts, graphs, statistical analysis)
component of the report
to the narrative
(written explanation in paragraph form)
component of the report.

I am, in essence, making the walk match the talk, on screen.
Really: it's just a click away.
I must, of course, first convert and transfer all kinds of documents.
And you must, of course, first slip the disc into the drive,
and hope your PC or Mac likes the disc,
and hope adobe acrobat (or adobe reader--based on your budget) behave,
and, of course, you must be able to understand, interpret, and make decidicions about (without ever having actually seen the students, faculty, administration, staff, buildings, curriculum, & classes in question)
the data.

But first off: i have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.

Lincoln left yesterday.
Funny how the professional often mimics the personal.
How do you hyperlink lovers
across freeways
or air traffic lines
over minutes, days, & months of uncertainty?
There's data and then there's narrative
but they are off screen
and intertwined--already--so
our chances of passing the accreditation process
are high because
the mission and goals we profess to guide our work
were dually chosen
and no one is coming, except ourselves in the future,
to judge the (in)consistencies.

But first off: we have to learn these conversion & transfer tricks.

Antonio Taguba

This guy was my hero a few years ago. Why didn't he take Rumsfeld's spot?



Please read about his bravery, and the corruption of his colleagues, in Seymour Hersh's June article of the New Yorker entitled "The General's Report." I can't help, after having read the piece, wondering if anything can be done to stop the current administration.

Please do this...

SafeHouse, a non-profit organization and transitional housing facility in San Francisco for women leaving prostitution, has entered the final round of a competition to secure program funds. I did my internship at SafeHouse last year and continue to run a group there on thursday nights. I know personally how badly this money is needed, and HOW EASY it is for you to help: it's just a click of the mouse.

Please hit this link and cast your vote for SafeHouse:
http://www.searchkindly.org/
You can vote every 8 hours between now and sunday.

Will you forward this opportunity on please?
Thank you, in advance, for your service to the women of SafeHouse.
Peace,
Emily Joye

Subversion

Just in case you haven't, please visit: http://sewpeace.wordpress.com/
It's the blog of my heart. I posted this particular essay at the Seminarians to End War site last month, but figure I should place it here too. It's a nice deviation from the Plath-ish (read: pathetic) poetry I've been producing as of late. Agh seasons...


Subverting the Ends and Means of Perpetual War

In their recent publication Multitude, authors Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put forth the idea that perpetual war has become the political modus operandi of the global empire. A current “state of exceptionalism” (applied in general by global networks but most specifically embodied in the political strategies and actions of the US) is part and parcel of this perpetual war paradigm. They cite this exceptionalism by locating its function in both legal and national behavior. A “state of exception” happens when, in a time of national upheaval, the constitution is “suspended temporarily and extraordinary powers given to a strong executive or even a dictator in order to protect the republic.” (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. (Penguin Books, NY: 2005) 7) This is the legal form of exception. The national form happens when any given nation state considers itself a) an exception to the rule of universal law and/or b) exceptional in its definition as superior over and above other nation states. Hardt and Negri contend the current disposition and political action of the US fits into this national “state of exception(alism).” In recent years, especially with regards to the US invasion of Iraq, we have both claimed our exceptionalism by assuming our supposed role as ambassadors of democracy and by preemptively striking Iraq without UN support.

Twentieth century neo-Marxist philosophers have often maintained that the ideology of super-structure is maintained by cooperation of ideological state apparatuses. (I am drawing here largely from the work of Louis Althusser.) These ideological state apparatuses must enforce the means of production and the conditions for reproduction that keep such an ideology afloat. Needless to say, in a state/world of perpetual war—and herein the ideology of super structure maintains that war is ontological—ideological state apparatuses must enforce means of production and conditions for reproduction that sustain the war industry. The war industry, though mostly dependent on the development of weapons, relies on various means and conditions: communication networks, political systems, rigid understandings of boundaries, the willingness of men and womyn to serve in the military, etc. This large spectrum of dependency creates an environment in which social apparatuses are largely responsible for and participants in perpetual war.

An ideological state apparatus can be two things: 1) an institution or group that is commissioned by and operative on behalf of the state, i.e. public universities, governments, police, etc and 2) an institution or group located within a particular state, though not commissioned by or operative on behalf of the state, that participates in the construction of infrastructure, public life & opinion, and social networking, i.e. non-profits, churches, private schools, etc. Again, the ideology of the super structure (in our case: “democracy,” capitalism, and “free speech”) is maintained when all ideological state apparatuses work in unison to upkeep the means of production and conditions for reproduction. The ideology of the super structure becomes vulnerable when one or two or three or four ideological state apparatuses start dancing out of sync.

Ideology is produced in a myriad of ways though we often assume word-systems are primarily responsible for the construction and deconstruction of ideology. While it is true that slogans such as “These colors don’t run” and “God is not a republican or a democrat”, documents such as The Communist Manifesto and Letter from Birmingham Jail, and speeches from the mouths of Malcolm, Stanton and Mao certainly participate in the ideological life of peoples, words are not solely responsible for ideology. Symbols systems and communal rituals also have the potential to enforce means of production and the conditions for reproduction. So now Christians, I hope your eyes and brain cells are waking up!

The Church in America is an ideological state apparatus. We do not work for the state, in fact in regards to the topic at hand we should be working against it, but because of our location in state territory we are participants in and susceptible to American ideology. Further, just because we are located in a certain nation state does not mean our allegiance must be given thereto. If our God is one whose love is not limited by borders, skin types, religious affiliations or mistakenness of human action—and really, isn’t that what grace implies?—then our attempts to be human in the image of God must mirror this limitless love. Our allegiance is not to the state, our allegiance is to love. And let us be clear about one thing: love is the opposite of war. If we believe that God came so that we may have life and have it more abundantly, then we simply cannot dance in sync with perpetual war. It is our duty, therefore, as the Church in America, as an acknowledged ideological state apparatus, to subvert the contemporary super structure. Our word systems, symbol systems and communal rituals must negate the role of violence and war in global politics.

I wonder, what does this mean for the way we have done worship? Can we continue to elevate a sign of politically-sanctioned torture as our dominant Christian symbol? Can we ever sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” or even allow this song to be reprinted in our hymnals? What about continuing the theological characteristics of God as vengeful, jealous, desiring the ‘victory’ and full of wrath? If we save these religious vestiges for the virtue of preserving tradition we are putting our stamp of approval on the super structure’s fascination with and reliance on mayhem.

Water Creature

arising out of the lake,

like a water-creature

ravenously hungry and

capable of ripping apart any flesh with breath

(especially one of domestic familiarity)

she peeps and screens the scene

dreadfully anticipating the slightest

error or offense

because

if in fact

a mistaken step

cacophonous sound

or outright slap should surface

she will punish

in all the ways they have told her

she dare not

why

because they signed her up to hate

every morsel, orifice and vulnerability

she can identify

at home

in herself

and around the town

as a result

somewhere along the way

she could no longer recognize

her kept quiet desire from their

artificially-activated, addict-producing want want want

though it grew larger and larger

like a cancer come to kill her

so

once a month

twelve times a year

or not nearly enough

based on your measuring apparatus

she does things no one understands

(though they understand it enough—apparently—to call her “crazy”)

like faking delirium

instead of putting up with everyone’s unconscious hysteria

screaming/singing/crying/fucking/dancing/fighting/laughing

instead of

curtsying/silencing/pretending/swallowing/lying/half-smiling

dying.

she

punishes the want

by letting loose the desire

and she bleeds

for all to shamelessly—

for all in the dehydrated/starving—

se(a)e

Passing

No statistic exists to confirm my point,

however I am virtually certain almost everyone

imagines a threshold, courtroom or pearly gate

where at the end of life all things are examined for their credibility,

morality and/or absurdity before a passing happens.

You pass if honesty,

good association,

adequate contemplation (and the like)

colored your big and smalls,

moments and decades,

stillnesses and sounds.

Your loving me

appears the only thing

that would get me a pass during

this small moment of stillness.

Peep the Brilliance

A+

Generations of the Circle

Tai Chi Chuan is the only thing I cannot describe.
So I won't try.
But I can say this:
I am grateful to my teacher and her teacher and his teacher
and years and years and years
of students being students.

Rich

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ ¹⁴But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ ¹⁵And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

Exodus

A girl found herself lost, alone, and confused in the woods. After hours of walking in this unexplored, undesired territory, the girl reached a river. She walked up to it, saw her reflection and began to cry. Her tears hit the surface of the water and awakened a figure therein.

"Why are you crying?" the reflection asked.

The girl thought she was crazy. Certainly it was her own voice she was hearing; had she been alone so long that her own thoughts began to take on an outsider's voice? She poked through the water, penetrating her reflection.

"What are you doing?" the reflection asked.
"What the fuck?" The girl turned around, looked up to the sky, pushed the surface of the water again. This could not be happening.
"What are you trying to touch?" the reflection asked.
"Are you talking to me? or am I crazy?" The girl looked deep and hard into the water as she questioned the reflection. Sure enough their mouths were moving in sync.
"You're not crazy. What do you want from me? I am here after all. Isn't that what you wanted: someone here for you?"
"I want to get out of these woods" the girl responded hopelessly.
"Build yourself a fort out of things you find in the woods--for shelter."

The girl gathered big branches and large leaves from the floor of the woods. She thought she'd go talk to the reflection again, but by the time she was done gathering, the daylight was minimal; hence she would wait until tomorrow to return.

Sleeping was difficult. She could not get comfortable. Every time she remembered the conversation with her reflection a sneaking suspicion of insanity would creep in. Eventually she got tired of her own thoughts and fell asleep. In the morning she went back to the water.

After looking at her reflection with morning eyes--tired morning eyes--the girl said "Okay, now tell me how to get out of here please." She felt bad about being overly demanding, but couldn't muster a semblance of courtesy. Besides, who would she be offending? herself? a figment of her imagination?
"What are you talking about?" The reflection looked perplexed in a condescending way.
"You helped me yesterday; so help me now." She was rather turned off by his lack of knowledge and display of superiority.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Are you nuts?" The reflection looked away.

...are my own eyes turning away from me? she wondered.
...what could he possibly be looking at? i'm right here.

She took a huge rock and dropped it on the face of her reflection. Then she collected small stones and hurled them into the middle of the river. She threw them hard, over and over, until her arm felt like it might rip out of the socket. When the pain of her arm took over the girl screamed long and hard. The scream echoed five times. The final echoe felt like a sacred return--like the fury she released into the air came back to her out of loyalty. She returned to the place where her conversations with the reflection took place. There her face remained staring back at her, as if unaffected by the displays of rage. After a lengthy period of sustained and unobstructed staring the reflection lifted his palm in display.

The girl turned away and ran. She ran like she was being chased. She ran like someone was hanging on to their last breath just waiting for her to arrive. She ran like her body had trained for this moment for years. She made her way to a road. Her toes hit pavement. She was out.