Monday, January 30, 2006

essay due tomorrow = start tonight = let's do a quiz

I thought I would put this up here because it is so ridiculously false.

Your Animal Personality

Your Power Animal: Deer

Animal You Were in a Past Life: Panda

You are a fun-seeker - an adventurous, risk-taker.
While you are spontaneous, you are not very rational.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

not sad


today i was reminded that my life is not in balance.
***
>>> i learned that gender assymetry may or may not be universal and that rice agriculture may or may not have first developed near the yangtze river, or maybe the yellow river, or somewhere in between. either way it's not important.
>>>
reading lisa's european updates i was also reminded that yes, i must go to france, especially with all this talk of southern peasants and intriguing localized cultures along the coast. in the meantime, i do believe that i am quite aimlessly floating around, doing this and that and rushing to finish one thing before another item finds itself on my plate. there really is so much going on, yet i feel that nothing, really, is going on.
>>> but alas there is no time to think about the meaningless of it all. we must invest meaning in what we do, wholeheartedly whether or not we are co-opting to an illusion. because really, i do have to wake up tomorrow at 6:30, and i don't want to feel the consequences for not doing so.

>>> and no, i do not think that it is a sad day for canada.

listening: vusi mahlasela - troubador

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

the darnest jello-loving sitcom music recordings.

who knew that Bill Cosby made recordings?
and, in tune with Martin's funeral, the following from the same site:

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured... - Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution 1968.

more on Martin Luther King Jr. later. where are the truly challenging, inspirational, and revolutionary speakers of today?

listening: bob dylan - corrina, corrina

Monday, January 16, 2006

a new space

> So, if you know me, you would know that my room doesn’t stay in the same arrangement for long. Copy and paste into the rest of my material life and you’ve now found yourself in a new template.
>
On Saturday I spoke at a reading week workshop before giving my own workshop at the leadership conference on leading in the classroom. People in the background cried out, hypocrite! But I shut them up, citing optimism.
>
On Saturday afternoon I went back with three friends, and people on the bus took second glances. In every group I somehow end up being the minority, even within the minority.
>
Sunday was a beautifully sunny day that I spent inside the apartment.
>
I’ve been using Pandora far too much. It has, however, indeed unleashed a wealth of artists and songs that I am loving.
.......Today: In Marion Williams, one of the best versions of God Bless the Child.
>
I was looking through former writings and came across the following below and realized that things do change. I believe we tend to think too much; that’s a belief, not a thought. Not talking is conscious.



G O O D M O R N I N G

I dreamt of a fever, one that would cure me of this cold winter-set heart with heat to melt these frozen tears, burned with reasons as to carry on. Into these twisted months I plunge without a light to follow but I swear that I would follow anything, just get me out of here.
But you get six months to adapt and you get two more to leave town and in the event that you do adapt, we still might not want you around.

But I fell for the promise of a life with a purpose but I know that that's impossible now. And so I drink to stay warm and to kill selected memories because I just can’t think anymore about that or about her tonight.
But I give myself three days to feel better or else I swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff because if I can’t learn to make myself feel better, how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?

And I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere, just get me past this dead and eternal snow. 'Cause I swear that I'm dying, slowly but it’s happening and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere, just take me there...just take me there. Lie to me and say it’s gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright.

So, the “venerable emo luminary” Conor Oberst is a little too emo at times. The snow has actually been trampled upon, soiled, melted, and evaporated. But it never really leaves and carries out its vengeance on the city in rain and fog. [The wind blows the rain to render any umbrella or rain jacket obsolete. The weeks of rain don’t really matter because, as I say, it gives us something to talk about at the office water cooler. But as courses progress and burdens compound, the depression hits.] Still, it encapsulates some of what I can’t be bothered to otherwise articulate.
Imagine the boy, tired and bending forward in ruined arch, yet he can’t sleep, he’s in pain, and the pulse in his heart increases to gain conscious attention from his disturbed mind. And you want to let him in and let him out simultaneously, resolving and reinstating. All the while he cuts a brown seed into disproportionate pieces with a pair of scissors.
What becomes of little boys? She wonders. “Disappointed once again, Do their lives become a lie, Should they wither up and die, When they find out they deserve more than they know, And no matter what they say it’s the same thing everyday” –LH
And old men “wrapped so miserably in this deception, wear it like a skin,” too tired stare numbed at nothing.
Wine ages, cheese matures, and we call the aspens beautiful. Let's see the same for us.