Smitten Kitten, or Tambourining

Can we all just take a minute and appreciate the genius of Jonathan Safran Foer? 

“…and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining…”

Honestly, his writing is just so perfect I almost want to find a way to hate him just to balance out the world. But I can’t. Even a little bit.  I read Everything Is Illuminated last year while traveling in Spain. I have these distict memories of it, in part because I was traveling, but mostly because I fell so deeply in love with it. Curled on hostel couches and perched on palace steps and sprawled across centuries old plazas, I read it, flipped it over and reread it again and again I was so taken with his language and story.

Point being, I’m quite the smitten kitten. Just started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and already writing love letters.

Crushes!, or Space

Confession:  I am wildly prone to crushes.   But these crushes do not limit themselves to the bright and chronically disinterested men to whom I seem to be inexplicably drawn.  No no.  They often are what I call “academic crushes” – usually strong women, often a tad older than myself, who are funny and independent and terribly smart and unabashedly irreverent and often radical in their own ways.  They are the women I want to be someday – the living picture of what I hope my own future might look like ten or twenty years from now.  They are the women  whose very existence says:

You are okay.  You, with all of your quirks and idiosyncrasies and neurosis, are very terribly and oh so fantastically okay. You do need to have shinier hair or wait to have it together or find away to fit into a box for which you were not made.  Strength and beauty and wildness take all forms.  You are finding yours.  And that is so, so okay.

Cindy Milstein is the newest of these crushes.  You guys, I love her.  I kind of secretly want to make her my new best friend.  I went to a conversation facilitated by her on Saturday and I really wanted to meet her.  So, after doing some mental pep talks and repeating of my own name to myself (lest I forget it, as I am somewhat prone to do under stress), I went up to introduce myself.  But then I got all shy and awkward.  Thankfully the lovely Sarah-Cakes was there to smooth the way and say some nice things about me and make me feel less like a blushing school girl.  Which is totally what I was.  I kept  making this unfortunately weird clenchy excited face I seem to be woefully fond of, where I am so excited that I can’t stop smiling and I am know I am smiling Too Hard but I can’t control it so I try to sort of bite it back and my eyes are all crazed and spastic and I kind of stop blinking.  It’s like I become one of those tiny dogs that shakes because it Just Wants You To Love It So Damn Much.  It’s way awkward. 

Crazy Face: Not my strongest look

I’m sure she was terrified.  Wouldn’t you be?  It didn’t help that after finding my voice a little I started to ramble somewhat incoherently.  I’m already like a drunk chattering monkey most days of the week and being near someone I admire only seems to make it worse.  I don’t remember much of what was said, other than at one point talking about space.  Which is a thought that stuck with me for the rest of the day and well into Sunday, when We All Showed Up To Fight At GA.

It kind of made me wonder if maybe, at the heart of it, a lot of our fighting isn’t about space, or the fear losing it.  Maybe we keep fighting because we are so used to not having space in the world that now that we have claimed a little, we are terrified of someone else taking it away.

Making space is a funny thing and one I learned about on very, very crowded buses.  It used to take me forever to get anywhere on buses in Botswana, because the bus would arrive, chaos would ensue, and I would sort of stand back and let everyone push and crowd past me to get on, until there simply was no more room.  Because that is when the bus is full – when every last inch of space has been claimed.  This passive approach to transportation went on for quite a long time, really, until one day a friend from my village said to me:

Mma. The problem is that you are trying to make yourself small when really you should be trying to make yourself big.  No one will make space for you.  You have to make it for yourself.

Or, as my friend Natalie puts it:

You gotta throw some ‘bows.

You just have to make space for yourself.  And that is what we are doing with Occupy, I think.  We are making space for ourselves in a world that has taken it away.  We are throwing out our elbows against the state and the police and the 1% and the corporations and whomever and whatever else and making space.  Reclaiming space.

But sometimes we get confused.  We forget that we aren’t throwing our elbows up against each other, to push each other out, but against something much bigger.   And we get scared.  We see other people making space for themselves and think maybe that means there isn’t room for us too.

But here is the thing:  there is.

There is space for you in the movement.  There is space for me in the movement.  There is space.

But we have to make it.

We have to make it collectively.  We have to make it individually.  And we have to remember that when we puff up our chests and throw out our elbows, it isn’t to force one another out, but to force out room in our society for ourselves and, ideally, for one another too.

Making space is messy and hard.  Just as on a very, very, very crowded bus, you sometimes end up accidentally stepping on toes or with someone’s ass in your face or standing pressed up against someone you would really rather not be touching or getting bumped in the face and jostled around, this process isn’t clean-cut.  It is hard and sometimes frustrating and really, really, really messy.  Making space isn’t easy.  It just isn’t.

It never is.

It never has been.

Last night, I felt inspired by the crowd that showed up for GA.  Maybe we were all there to fight.  Or maybe we were there to watch the show.  I don’t really care, honestly.  Because we were there.  Last night, a bunch of people showed up and made space for themselves.  We didn’t all agree all of the time.  Sometimes tempers flared.  Sometimes people yelled.  There was a fair amount of arm flailing and sighing and the general making of exasperated noises.  But we showed up.  Each of us.  We threw out our arms and created a little more space for ourselves in the world.  And there was still room for all of us.  Sure, we occasionally looked like the activist version of a junior high dance with a clear split down the room.  But we took a step.  We learned that making ourselves big doesn’t mean making anyone else in the movement small: it just means making all of us a little bigger.  We still got something done and we got it done well, I think.

When I think about my academic crushes, the thing that stands out the most about each of them is that they are women who made space for themselves in a world that would never have handed it to them.  They had to fight for it and they have to continue to fight for it, and the way they fight inspires me.  They have found ways to do it with grace and humor and stunning insight and tremendous light and beauty.  But there is no doubt that they aren’t to be messed with.  They may sometimes cry in public but they will also fuck your shit up.  They made their space and they are keeping it, damn it.

I want there to be space for me in the world.  I want there to be space for you in the world.  And I want us to create that space together.  I don’t know how the hell we do it, other than by showing up.  We will learn the rest.  We will learn how to communicate better.  We will learn how to be more effective.  How to stand in solidarity more fully.  What it means to really love and respect each other.  But to do any of that, we have to be there.  We have to make space.

Space is where it all happens.

Starve to Death, or What If?

Like most people, I have interests.  Mine, unfortunately, have a distinct tendency to gravitate towards the somewhat odd.  I try not to talk too much about these things, lest I convince strangers that I am totally banana-cakes or bore my friends to tears.  This is fairly easy, because rarely do these things come up in normal conversation.  Prison hunger strikes is one of these little nooks, where I sometimes  live and seem to have an endless capacity to read but for which my friends have about a thirty second attention span.  And that is the generous estimate.

But can we talk about them for a second?

Because here is the deal: there are people on hunger strike in prison.  Like, right now.  One of them just died earlier this month.  Officials won’t give a cause or say whether or not it was related to his hunger strike.  But if I were a betting woman, my guess would be “yes.”

These actions are powerful to me on a number of levels.  The legal implications of force feeding tugs at my more academic inclinations.  The IRA history is fascinating and, I suspect, directly relevant to how the United States has handled/is handling the hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay.  The international split on the issue – from the World Medical Association to the ICTY to the ECHR to all the individual nations – is a like a Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit of joy for nerds.  But, more than any of that, it is the powerful, human connection that brings me back to this action again and again.

Hunger strikes, without intervention, force society to watch someone die for their beliefs.  And to watch them die slowly and painfully.  There is, of course, a tremendous amount of literature on the different types and tactics – not everyone engaged in a hunger strike wants to take it to that end.  And even if they did, at least in the vast majority of jurisdictions in the United States, the prison system can and will intervene to prevent death (and in the process, at least in my opinion, violate not only fundamental human rights but also the Constitution and our international treaty obligations).

It is to me one of the great travesties of our nation that this is all happening right under our noses and yet we are, for the most part, unaware.  We continue on, even those of us vehemently opposed to the prison system.  We do not stand in solidarity.  The strikes are rarely reported and quietly quashed, with the vast majority of us never knowing they existed at all.  Because prisoners have so little power, even their boldest act is so easy to silence.

But we aren’t in prison.

We don’t have to be silenced.

And what if we refused to be?  Hunger strikes are often accompanied by a list of demands.  What if people – people like me and you – went on hunger strike?  What if we refused to eat until those demands are met?  What if we forced the nation to watch us die slowly and painfully?  What if we tried be the human microphone for those whose voices are being institutionally silenced?

Of course, we won’t.  We won’t because rarely will one willingly die for another.  For such an undertaking to be successful, if it could be at all, it would require the ultimate commitment – the willingness to follow through and truly and literally starve to death.  People just don’t do that sort of thing for one another all that often.  I know it scares me out of action, or at least that action.  I am ashamed to admit that, but it is true.

But what if?

 

I Didn’t Unfriend You, or Aspartame Love

Recently I noticed that every day quite a few folks find their way over to N&D by Googling “lonely” or “loneliness.”

Doesn’t that make you feel sad?  That there are people out there who may be so lonely they have no idea what to do with it other than kind of search and find out who else out there is also lonely?  It makes me feel sad.

We are just so lonely, as a culture,  I think.  And we exploit it.  Everything around us tells us that buying a certain product or wearing a certain pair of jeans will somehow make us feel better.

Look look! I’m smoking Salems! And look how happy I am!

It’s just depressing.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about Facebook.  He was saying that he recently read an article about how Facebook is really a rather depressive factor in people’s lives, because they look at it and see what everyone else is doing, and then believe that really, all of their friends are having more fun than they are.  Everyone is doing something, right?  So this tool, that was meant to bring us together and connect us, can really, on some level, tear us apart.  Which I think is true.  I mean, don’t get me wrong: I love a lot of what FB does.  It gives me a quick and easy way to feel connected to friends I went to high school or college with, family across the country, and even those in my own little city.  It gives a little snapshot into these people’s lives and lets me quickly comment and let them know I am thinking of them or that I miss them.  Plus it is often a source of news, a place to read articles and my friends’ thoughts, a way to find out about activities, events, and actions, as well as just generally enjoy the wittiness of those I love best.

But it is also is a time suck, something I probably look at too often throughout the day, and a distraction.  I have on more than one occasion been sucked in, only to realize later I spent an hour doing nothing more than flipping through a near stranger’s photos or moderately to highly moderately FB stalking a crush or reading some comment thread I hate but can’t seem to look away from.  And yet, despite the time spent on this little site that so quickly came to dominate our lives, I’m forever Not Having Time for something – the pile of books on my table, letters I mean to write but don’t, the friend I owe a coffee date to, a lecture, a show – the list is endless.

I guess my point is, there are all these things that are real – tangible and there, to be experienced and learned and done out in the world.  And I kind of suspect they may be passing me by while I check my Facebook app.

The world can be lonely.  Sometimes I feel lonely.  I think we all do, sometimes.  And maybe part of that is because we no longer really know who is in our lives in a meaningful way.  Just as that fake sugar can confuse the hell out of your body, because it is unnatural and unhealthy, I think Facebook can confuse our hearts and minds.  It’s a nice tool, safe in small doses.  But I don’t think it is the way we were made to connect.  And so is it surprising that it leaves us feeling unsatisfied?

I think we were made to be in community.  Real community.  Messy and frustrating and loving and seeping out at the edges community.  To have that, we have to take the time to be in each other’s lives in substantial ways.  For me, that means showing up.  There is no time I feel more safe and loved than when people take the time to be with me – when I know that I am a priority in their life, that my thoughts are interesting and worth being heard, that I am wanted, and that really, I am worth it, even when I am neurotic or annoying or Just A Lot Of Fucking Work.  I can’t get that from Facebook.  And I don’t think I can give it there either.  It is aspartame love, cloyingly sweet and quietly poisonous, tricking me into thinking I want more even as it slowly pickles my insides.

All of that is to say, I think I may need to take a little Facebook hiatus.  Not forever.  And not because it is bad.  It isn’t.  There is a lot of good in our favorite social networking tool.  But I want to develop better habits.  I want to rethink how I spend my time and mental energy.   Because clearly, despite the little ticker on my page, I do not have 823 friends.  I can’t even name one hundred people I talk to regularly, let alone eight hundred.   I have to believe that there is something more productive I could do with all those minutes – the five minutes here and there, which surely add up to hours a day, spent doing what – bantering in the comment section and reading about how the kid who sat behind me in fourth grade forgot to feed the dog today?

So I’m going to try and be better.  Quiet some of the background noise in my life in the hopes it will help me be a little free-er.  Help me remember to make the time to be a better friend.  Show up for people more.  Be more focused on what I am doing and the people I am with, not what someone else somewhere else may or may not be doing.  Spend energy on finding ways to let the people I love know it.  Invest in the things I love more fully.  Spend less time looking at my phone.  Spend less time looking at robots in general.  Spend more time doing the things I love and care about.

So let’s get coffee or go to the record store.  Maybe just read books quietly next to each other while someone else cooks dinner.  Let’s fight about our politics and talk about our families over beer and cards.  We can make things out of other things and use our hands.  Dig in the dirt or jump in puddles or sit by the water.  Let’s explore and climb those staircases you sometimes find going up a hill and aren’t quite sure where they lead and then get really lost in a neighborhood we don’t know.  Let’s ride our bikes late at night when the roads are empty and owned only by us and we can sing as loud as we want into the dark.  And let’s do it all in person and far away from any robots.  At least for a little while.

What Are You Talking About?, or Violence

The topic of violence is one that has dominated conversations in Occupy for months now.  It is hard and complicated and means so many things to so many people.  And it has been, at least for me, draining.  When I was younger, I spent a great deal of time with a family I love.  And they were hilarious, for a number of reasons really, but one of my favorites was that often you would be in a room and each one of them would be having a different conversation.  They would all be talking and you would think they were talking to each other, but eventually, someone would say:

Wait. What are you talking about?

And it would then become clear that no one had been listening to a damn word anyone else had been saying.

Sometimes Occupy feels that way, only it is much less funny.

Part of what has made the violence conversation draining for me is simply how hard it is.  We each have such an individualized experience with violence – the violence of the state, the violence of society, interpersonal violence.  And the word simply means so many different things to so many different people.  Some people mean purely physical violence.  Others mean verbal violence.  Some include property destruction.  Others believe that it is simply a meaningless term – the world is so violent that one cannot parse out some parts as violent and others as not.  So, when we start to talk about the topic, we carry all of that in with us – our meanings, our experiences, our understandings.  And so does everyone else.  But because life is not like one of those boxes of Valentine’s chocolates with the little diagram on the back of what is what, we don’t know.   It is a mine field of hurt feelings, personal triggers, and misunderstanding, really.

I’ve been thinking a lot about violence lately.  Not in the way we sometimes talk about it at Occupy – theoretically or tactically or intellectually – but in the very real, very personal This Is Your Life way.  Because violence is there.  It is there for me and it is there for you.  And the ways we experience violence are so multi-layered and so deeply personal that they do not always lend themselves easily to a group email thread or the GA.  Some forms of violence are just hard to discuss.  Statistically, one out of every six women in the room have been the victim of rape or attempted rape.  One in four have been the victim of domestic violence.  The vast majority of those women probably have not ever reported the incident to the police.  And that is to say nothing about the men,  7.6% of  whom have statistically been DV victims as well.  Add in all those other forms of violence – from police violence to muggings to child abuse – not to mention all of the race, class, and gender issues involved in all of this, and we are just a hot mess, really.   And so, when we jump into these conversations – these huge conversations – about violence and the police and what all of it means, how could we be anything but confused?  How could we end up doing anything but saying

Wait. What are you talking about?

It would be lovely if the conversation could be contained.  If it could really just be about tactics.  But it can’t.  At least, I don’t think it can.  And I don’t know how we have it.  And even more importantly, I don’t know how we create space to even have it.  It’s just hard.  Life is sometimes made up of shades of grey.  When we pretend it isn’t, we cause so much damage.  We throw around terms – be it ACAB or “Non-violence” – without recognizing their import.

I don’t have an answer or know what we do, other than keep trying.  Try to listen.  Try to understand.  Try to create space.  Try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.  Try to be open.  Try to remember that there is probably more to the story.  Try to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

I think it will get better.  But I don’t think this conversation will ever be over.  I think we will have to continue to confront it.  I really hope we keep talking about it.  Not in the circular “We should have a non-violence statement/We shouldn’t have a non-violence statement” way.  But in the very real way – the way that addresses what we think is right and true in the world, what is necessary, what we will tolerate, what we won’t tolerate, and how we will support each other as we each individually define and make those choices.

Like A War Chest For A Picnic, or Cards, Stories, and Cheese

I love stories.

Like, a lot.

I come this great big family of story tellers.  They are all a lot better and a lot funnier than I am, if I am being honest about it.   Family gatherings, for as long as I can remember, have involved three things:  cheese and crackers, pinochle, and telling stories.  And I really, really love them all.  My fondest family memories involve sitting around a card table, first listening and watching while my aunts, uncles, older cousins, and other undefinable relations played pinochle – a rather incomprehensible game to an outsider but really the best thing ever to the initiated – and swapped tales, and, when I was older, being at the table myself.  It is home in the clearest, warmest way possible and what I look forward to with every trip back to Pittsburgh.

Some of the stories told at these gatherings are new – job site follies, work, daily adventures, dating, kids.  But a lot are old – stories we have heard a million times but always need told just once more, because one can never quite remember the details – my Aunt Jane carving “Elvis” into her arm with a knife (or was it a pen?), my mom accidentally dying my grandma’s hair green (or was it one of my aunts?), my Aunt Lorie locking Uncle Ed in the playpen (or was it Fred?), Pap-Pap saying you always bid to 25 on a bare ace (or was it 24?).  The telling and retelling of these stories – so deeply rooted in our city and our past – gave me a sense of self, a place I belong and and am connected to through our own personal lore.  We have this incredible family history and we pass it down around the card table.  Which is pretty cool, if you ask me.  I have no doubt that my kids, and my siblings’ and cousins’ kids, will, one Christmas many, many years from now, be telling some of these same stories to their kids, long after the rest of us are gone.

All of that is a terribly long way to get right back to: I really like telling stories.  But even more, I like hearing other people’s stories.  I am forever trying to nudge the people I like best to tell me something I don’t know or describe their family or talk about their day.  And one of the best parts about having a blog is that sometimes I don’t have to ask – sometimes they just come my way, from hand written missives to long chats in the hall to email.

Yesterday I got this email from a friend I went to college with.  He was a few years ahead of me, the RA in my dorm freshman year.  I didn’t know him terribly well – our social circles never overlapped in the way the put us in the same place at the same time all that often – but I was always fond of him and a fan, because he liked to build and make things with his own hands and he was interesting and creative and kind.  Since I started my little Blog-venture, I have heard from him on occasion and it has been a treat.  He sent this email, with the subject line of “Re: St. Valentine’s Forks” and it is wonderful and such a great story.  Such a great story, in fact, that I felt compelled to ask if I could share.  (He said yes, in case that wasn’t clear.)

Dear P. Sully,

Every so often I attempt a “lovely and generous gesture” in response to your writing and my excess.  Today’s offer is tan earthenware and used used utensils.  I’m not as overstocked with glasses, but dishes and butter knives, most definitely.

 

It all started with the prospect of marriage.  I once knew a girl, and through some unfortunate confluence of well-intended but unworkable social conditioning, we were engaged to be wed.  She insisted that we register for “gifts” at Bed Bath and Beyond–wherein I used the laser-operated greed-selector gun to mark some silverware for some family member’s obligatory purchase.  It was the only selection I made at the store.  It was a somewhat miserable experience.  I–and we–didn’t need anything else.  She chose a number of other items.  Soon thereafter, a bridal shower was held and one of her aunts bought the forks.  Not long after that, my love and I invited some friends over for dinner.  Before that occasion we unpacked the new utensils and I retired the forks, knives, and spoons that I inherited from my college house.  With great lightness of conscience, I went back to Calvin College and left a grocery bag in front of Commons Dining Hall marked with a small note saying “thanks”.  My fiancee told me a couple months later that it would be too much work to be in a relationship with me.  I really liked the forks and had thrown away the box.  My now-ex returned other gifts she received, and when she told her aunt that I offered to pay for the flatware, the lady replied that if they wouldn’t invoke bad feelings, I could just keep them.  Piercing, cutting, biting, whipping, mashing, and chewing do not invoke bad feelings.  Besides, I really like the silverware.  I similarly received a wedding-shower gift card and was told to keep it.  I went to Pier-1 and bought new dishes to serve friends a meal on my next birthday and salad tongs, and a candle for each bathroom.

 

Four years later, marriage still seemed like a good life-thing to do, but this time I had met someone with a similar interest in silverware.  Her name is —.  Some of our first shared experiences were in the kitchen aisles of thrift stores selecting every non-rusted, and non-plastic fork, knife, and spoon we could find.  At each store, we bought all except the last few (because emptying-out what could be welfare-recipient’s, or lawyer’s main shopping center just isn’t cool), and in a matter of weeks, we had over 300 sets.  My mother soaked them in boiling water and wrapped them in sets, each in a brown paper shop rag and a green paper ribbon.  I’m fairly certain that each of our wedding guests received a unique combination of utensils.  We didn’t register for wedding gifts.  We both had dishes and blenders and towels, thank you very much. (And we didn’t want to think about more stuff while working, going to school, and planning a wedding in 4 months.)  There was one passing comment we made about some Fiesta dishes we saw at a local hardware store.  That landed us more than a cupboard full and sent my pier ones to shelf zero in the basement–not far from the roughly 1000 shiny tools I keep in a plastic treasure chest.  Like a war chest for a picnic.  I haven’t quite brought myself to send them to the unknown in need, but the prospect of sending them cross-continent because I know an author, seemed like a great idea.

 

Actually, I was thinking of you because —- and I are going to Seattle to visit her sister and are going to Eugene to visit some other Grand Rapids expats.  ‘Mermaid Cave was the first I’ve read in a while.  I had planned a much more mundane, “hey person I haven’t seen in almost a decade, I’ll be in your city wanna meet?”email.  A story about forks and plates seemed much more appropriate than saying “my wife and I will be in Seattle” and asking if you want to meet-up.   We’ll fly in and out on March 3 and 10, and I plan to go to a coffee shop, the fish market, Eugene Oregon, and possibly see Boeing sometime in between.  I also propose the possibility of you meeting us over food or drinks.  Let me know if you’re interested in dishes: from Michigan to keep, or some in Seattle to be rented with contents.

Brave Love, or Some Gratuitous Capitalization

Reblogged from Near and Dear from Afar:

I had drinks with my friend Arthur tonight.  He is excessively lovely and I was far too talkative.  The things a beer will do to a girl, I tell you.  One of the things I like about Arthur is how much Arthur likes his wife.  He told me once that they fight a lot, but it is because they both have Big Personalities and even Bigger Love.  And I believe him. I’ve been called a Crappy Romantic.  At least in the Traditional Sense. Over done first date sentiments make me Profoundly Uncomfortable.  The …

A Repeat For V-Day, or Still Brave Love

Free Mermaid Cave, or I Could Use That

Can I point out that right now I somehow seem to be the reluctant owner a juicer, a coffee maker, and a blender but not a single glass?  My life is pushing the bounds of absurd.

The problem is, I seem to move quite a bit.  And, during my third year of law school I took a little foray into Dutch living and packed up and headed east to Den Haag and rid myself of a great deal of whatever furniture and other household belongings I had acquired.  Then I came back, got a little hipster studio, and six months later promptly moved in with a friend.  At which point I really purged my belongings and got rid of pretty much everything but my bed and most of my books.  I knew it wasn’t going to be a long term situation, but storing things Just Seemed So Complicated.  And she already had things like plates and glasses.  So really, why have two sets?  And thus saw the end of the remainder of All The  Useful Things.

Long term planning is not always my strong suit.

In any event, now that I once again am living alone, I’m realizing I could quite use all of the little odds and ends I so freely gifted away this summer.  Because while eating cereal out of makeshift cardboard “bowl” with a spork has a certain charm to it, it isn’t the most time efficient way to dine.  Or probably the most sanitary.

Because of this little “books are great but you can’t boil black beans in them” dilemma, I have started scouring the “free” section of Craigslist.  And let me tell you, there are some gems.  Who knew so many people were trying to give away free dirt?  I’ve also found free books (but all in Swedish!), about eight thousand free TVs, a hot tar kettle (half full of asphalt, yours for the taking!), and a Vietnam shaped clock (just kitschy enough that I kind of want it, honestly).

But I have to say, my all-time favorite is this bad boy:

Free Mermaid Cave:

"I have a mermaid cave,made from .not to heavy,got a use for it? its free"

You kind of want it, don’t you?  Admit it.  It’s okay.  I kind of want it too!

This is why I will probably never find silverware and ultimately end up living in what should probably be a Shel Silverstein poem.

Fuck Your ‘Ism, or Nothing At All

A friend and I got into a spirited political debate yesterday.  He was frustrated -which I understand – because I wouldn’t declare an ideology, pick a team, line up with a side.  He wanted to know – what am I?

And the answer is nothing.

I am nothing.

I am P. Goddamn Sully.  And if that’s not good enough, too damn bad.  Because I won’t sport your logo.  Fuck your ‘ism.

I am loathe to align myself with anarchism or liberalism or communism.  I am loathe to label myself in any “ism” at all.  I wish only to be me – to think and explore freely, unbound by the constraints of some label.  If some of my ideas or beliefs fall in line with anarchism, so be it.  If others do not, so be that as well.  If some fall in line with some other ‘ism and others do not, so be that too.  They are mine to find the metes and bounds of and I reject any constraint, well meaning or not.  I refuse to jump into a pre-fabricated box, no matter how much room to run its owners promise I may have once inside.   I want to read everything, explore everything, debate everything.  And in doing so, I reserve - unequivocally - the right to accept what I think is right and true and good and to reject all else.  I will take what is true from whatever its source, regardless of what else I may as full heartedly reject from that same source.  I will do so freely, without allegiance to some pre-determined ideology.  I refuse to define myself on someone else’s terms.  I am me and I will do and think as I please.

I was reading Volume II of Living My Life by Emma Goldman this morning.  Goddamn I love EG.  I love her story and find myself connecting to her deeply – she is honest and raw, throwing all the bits and pieces of her life on the page.  Incredible – unbelievable, really - stories of her work fall adjacent to tales of the personal – a crush gone wrong, jealously, personal insecurity.  I love that.  I love how honest she is.  But I think what I love most about her writing is her ability to acknowledge her own changes and transformations over the years – the rejection of ideas she once accepted, the acceptance of ideas she once rejected, the bending of certain ideals (and the fierce refusal to bend on others).  Her’s is not just the story of her life, it is the story of the growth of an activist, a reminder that we will change and that we need to be open minded enough to allow ourselves to.

I want to be in a place where I can always come together, always collaborate, always be open to what is new, what is radical, what is innovative, what is creative, what works.  I’m not saying you can’t do those things while lining up with a particular ideology or set of ideas.  You can and I know I lot of people who do.  But I can’t.  I feel shackled and hemmed in and I hate it.  So I won’t do it.

So fuck ‘isms.  Fuck dogma.  Fuck boxes.  Fuck labels.  Fuck intellectual constraints.

Embrace good ideas.  Reject injustice.  Live compassion.  Stand together.  Love.  Fight.  That’s what I want to be.  

Rocks and Bigger Rocks, or Anyone Want To Huck Things?

I once asked my friend Andrew what he was on his way to go do.  His response was

“Oh. I’m going to go smash rocks against other bigger rocks.”  

This was not a euphemism for anything.

Totally getting that today.  I hella want to smash rocks against other bigger rocks.

Or maybe just huck smallish things off of something tallish.  Or not smallish things off very tallish things.

Break glass.

Yell loudly.  Probably while flailing.  And listening to very angry music.

Play some crazy aggro faux sport, like full contact Dodgeball, where instead of throwing rubber balls you just full-on launch yourself at people.

But really, smashing rocks off of bigger rocks sounds the most satisfying.

I feel all stressed out and unsure.  Like the kind of stressed out where you just need to do something.  Hence the rocks and bigger rocks.  Like I need to go run a million miles or maybe just jump up and down aggressively for a very long time.  But it is also a little ragey, like I just want the satisfaction of breaking something.  Like good and breaking.  Like throw the TV off the roof just to hear its landing, chuck bottles at the wall, smash the windshield with a baseball bat breaking.

I would try and give some interesting commentary on why that is, but shit isn’t going to break itself.  I have a busy schedule people.  There are rocks to be smashed, after all.