they make the room full

a silent intrusion,
the porchlights of strangers
draw a blurred silhouette of
window and tree branches
on the wall.

the muffled rhythm of someone
snoring, the soundtrack. the sources
unknown, but unimportant.
they make the room full, much like
the sounds of midnight snacks

and cats pushing open doors
and the weight of goose feathers
holding me down, and the warmth
of my back against
feline back.

A Painting

that I made yesterday. Acrylic, newspaper, and mod podge on illustration board.

Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

For all those of you who wonder what I do, here's a taste of my week. Today I had to read four articles about social movements, write a 2 page single-spaced paper (with an argument) and lead a 2.5 hour graduate seminar. I also had to TA and proctor a quiz immediately prior. After I got out of my class I had to read over a 23 page strategic paper I've helped to draft accompanied by at least half that many pages in instructor feedback within 2 hours before an 1.5 hour meeting at 8pm. My workday was approximately 12 hours long.

But it gets better! For the remainder of the week I have to finalize the event planning for the departmental holiday party, rewrite a section of the strategic document by Wednesday at noon, continue working on the draft with the group through Friday, grade approximately 60 undergraduate papers by Friday, pull together an annotated syllabus by Thursday for a course that I don't really know what its about yet, and come up with a 30 minute filmed presentation to give on Thursday for that same course, topic undetermined as of tonight.

But it doesn't end there. I could go on to talk about all the work that remains after these tasks are completed, but I don't want to raise the stress level of this blog too much. I'm trying not to think about the weeks to come until I've finished this one.

One thing I am looking forward to, though, is a two-week stint in New Orleans I'll be doing this January volunteering for an organization called Lower Nine (doing reconstruction work -- yes, there's still lots of work to be done). That's right, I'll get to take out all my pent up aggression with some good old fashioned manual labor -- I can't wait to sink a hammer into my first wall. It will also be my first time in the South, and my first time traveling alone. I think in addition to helping other folks its going to do me a world of good. Help me get a change of scenery, a change of pace, and give me some time to think and put things in perspective. It will also be nice to have an 8 hour work day as opposed to 12

In the meantime, though, wish me luck in getting through these last few weeks of the semester. You should also feel free to send me wine, fancy cheese, and/or take a stack of student papers off of my hands.

Thanksgiving

This pumpkin is half empty,
Its thick rind violated, opened up
To expose a crime scene of fleshy fruit,
Leftovers rejected by a series of small,
Hungry stomachs filling up for winter.

You are evidence of this. Fat and gray,
Full of fruit and yourself,
You sit stubborn, triumphant
Atop your prey. Forgetting, momentarily
The softness of your own skin.

Lurve

We watched Annie Hall the other
Night and sat smiling through the
Whole thing, legs crossed and perched
On the coffee table, holding hands, tracing
Cryptic patterns on eachothers
Thighs, until Alvy started singing about
Love and both of our hands
Froze, unsure how manage that word and
A little nervous that if we kept scribbling
That’s what we would spell

Sometimes

Sometimes I think
I’m not like That Girl
In this movie, and
We’re not like Them.
We don’t open our books for each other.
We don’t fall in love in four days.
Sometimes
The thought of this movie, This Girl
Make my lips taste bitter
After they touch yours.
Are we out of sugar
Already?

Sometimes we find some.
Sometimes it spills at our feet
When we open the cupboard door
And I open my book
For you and you
For me,
But sometimes
I feel the idea of Them and Her
Crumble in my hands like old paper
And I can’t seem to grasp
It or You or Us
A pile of dust
Falling in silence
Filling the space
Between our eyes
Sometimes.

Kids these days...

As many of you probably know, Facebook recently changed its layout. And as many of you have probably noticed, the world is up in arms about it. Now personally, I also like the old facebook better. But I think its more than a little ridiculous how angry people are about it. A quick look reveals that there are over 500 groups dedicated to the noble cause of bringing the old webpage layout back, consisting of (assuming there is little overlap) over 2 million people. I'm positive that this is an understatement, since there were several pages more of similar groups that I couldn't bear to look through. In addition to being simply annoying (folks, please stop posting statuses about how you can't find your "flair" or your pet rock anymore -- its probably a good thing that its lost in the digital ether), but I think that it says some disturbing things about the "facebook generation", or if I wanted to be a little more curmudgeonly, "kids these days."

1) That people are so wrapped up in themselves, as well as dependent on technology to express themselves, that a minute change in a website devoted to shameless self-promotion and self-aggrandizing constitutes a crisis that demands immediate attention and collective action.

2) That the number of groups devoted to bringing back the old facebook rivals the number of groups dedicated to ending world poverty or environmental degradation. This reminds me of a sign I saw on the UMass campus the other day recruiting students for the non-profit MassPIRG. Providing a brief, schizophrenic list of the causes one can work on by volunteering for the organization, it listed "save the environment" next to "lower textbook prices." I wish I could remember the other examples, but the point being that each cause is seen as equally important -- that problems affecting the entire human race and the fate of the planet are put on even keel with a financial issue impacting 1 percent of the world's population, most of whom are pretty well off when compared with the rest of humanity.

3) And finally, that the primary form of collective action these days consists of forming and joining groups on facebook. Clearly, MassPIRG shows us that students do still volunteer for non-profits. However, I doubt that over 2 million students do so. Cyberactivism, or slacktivism, is one of the easiest, laziest, and ineffectual ways to feel like you're making a difference. I'm sorry -- you are NOT saving an African child by clicking here. You are NOT saving endangered elephants by getting 1,000,000 people to join your group. You are breeding inactive, apathetic, atomized self-righteousness, where activism is something you do on your computer to kill time in between classes.

Anyways, I apologize for the rant. If you agree with what I've said, and want to do more to help, please click here and help me get 6 billion people to join my totally rad facebook group. Its got flair and everything.

Music...makes the people...come together

This past weekend I ventured home to Maine to see the fam. It was nice to get back home for a few days, and to be able to show Mary and her sister Annie around my old stompin' grounds (Brunswick, ME: a lot like Noho, but cheaper and with less hipsters). One of the highlights of the weekend was catching a free show at L.L. Bean with Richie Havens -- one pretty hip old guy who opened Woodstock back in the day.

Now, I wasn't really excited about the show before going to it. I don't really know his music that well, and feeling somewhat introverted (see my last blog post), I really felt more like wandering around Freeport, finding a coffee shop, and getting some reading done. However, a few minutes into the show I became very glad that I decided to stay and listen. This is why.

Not being very invested in the show, I felt like an outsider, a situation that Susan Sontag once said (when speaking of the social position of the photographer) causes one to alternate between feelings of boredom and fascination. While there were certainly moments of boredom at the show (I didn't know the words to many songs, I couldn't sing along that much), I was mostly fascinated by the world of aging hippies that surrounded me. I watched them as they were transformed from a disparate collection of lawyers, nurses, teachers, and what have you into a collectivity -- brought together and made forty years younger by the sounds of their youth. They clapped and sang along, flashed peace signs, hollered, and whistled. Havens covered a number of old protest songs, and the energy of the crowd escalated as memories of past rowdiness and civil disobediance took on new relevance. I looked around, captivated by the bobbing heads and toothy grins that filled the darkening space around me.

This experience reminded me of the incredible power of music - to transport, to invigorate, to bring people together in a way that's hard to rationalize. There is something that music does to people that nothing else can. Despite Sapir and Whorf's hypothesis that we can only think within the confines of our linguistic ability, it seems that music can make you feel things that you often can't put into words. The way it can turn a moment into an event; the unique way it can celebrate and memorialize.

While it made me happy to see this, it also made me feel something like jealousy. I wish that I had the ability to do such things to people, to myself...

I'm going to buy some fingerpicks for my autoharp this week. You guys need to hold me to it. :)

introversion in an extraverted world

So, to preface this, I have to say that I totally stole this blurb from my friend Meg, who I'm pretty sure stole it from some personality test website. And while I don't agree with everything in it (the references to one's soul/true self and Carl Jung are pretty annoying, and I honestly could care less about Ivy League schools and National Merit Scholars) I like what it has to say about what we value as a society and the way in which introverts are often criticized for our supposed "antisocial" behavior. And since I've been feeling somewhat more introverted than usual as of late, I thought I'd share...


"It's obvious that the American dream is to be extraverted. We want our children to be "people who need people." We want them to have lots of friends, to like parties, to prefer to play outside with their buddies rather than retire with a good book, to make friends easily, to greet new experiences enthusiastically, to be good risk-takers, to be open about their feelings, to be trusting. We regard anyone who doesn’t fit this pattern with some concern. We call them "withdrawn," "aloof," "shy," "secretive," and "loners." These pejorative terms show the extent to which we misunderstand introverts.

"The majority of Americans are extraverted (about 75%), but the majority of gifted children appear to be introverted (about 60%), and the percentage of introverts seems to increase with IQ (Silverman, 1986). In addition to the problems encountered with being gifted, these children are frequently misjudged because they are introverted. Introversion is a perfectly normal personality type identified by Carl Jung. It is actually healthy to be an introvert. The only unhealthy part of it is denying your true self and trying to disguise yourself as an extravert.

"Introverts are wired differently from extraverts and they have different needs. Extraverts get their energy from interaction with people and the external world. Introverts get their energy from within themselves; too much interaction drains their energy and they need to retreat from the world to recharge their batteries. People can be extreme extraverts, extreme introverts, or a combination of both. Since extraversion is the dominant mode in our society, there are no "closet extraverts," but there are many "closet introverts," people who are so ashamed of their introversion that they try to be extraverts.

"Introverts need to learn about the positive benefits of their personality type. They need to be taught that reflection is a good quality, that the most creative individuals sought solitude, and that leaders in academic, aesthetic and technical fields are often introverts. Parents need to know that more National Merit Scholars are introverted than extraverted, and that introverts have higher grade point averages in Ivy League colleges than extraverts (Silverman, 1986). Contrary to public opinion, success in life is not dependent upon extraversion. Introverts also have an advantage at midlife in that long, hard journey to the soul which heralds the second half of the life cycle. The time has come to respect the introverts in our families and classrooms, and the hidden introvert in ourselves."

What's the Rush??

After spending the weekend in Boston for the ASA conference (American Sociological Association for those who aren't huge nerds), I was happier than ever to roll back into the Happy Valley. The past few days have confirmed for me the fact that I am most definitely NOT a city girl. I can't stand the stale environment, where everything has been paved over with concrete save a few obligatory trees stuck nervously between freeways, where instead of mountains you have malls full of Gucci and Louis Vitton, and where the people look like uprooted mannequins, walking briskly from store to store completely unaware that other people exist around them.

I never understood the allure of the city. I'll admit they can be fun to visit. For about an hour. After that, the anxiety that permeates the air starts to creep into your bones. Maybe I'm being overdramatic, but I just can't stand the artifical-ness that seems to characterize everything there. Even Boston Common seems so contrived to me. A frog pond, yes -- but its lined with concrete and conntains no frogs. Bizarre.

Even though I was happy to be back in Northampton, I still feel like some aspects of the city have seeped westward. On my drive home today I watched nervously as a motorcyclist passed me in the brakedown lane, revving his engine, and continued to weave in and out of traffic. Clearly, he had things to do and people to see. He made such a spectacle of himself and his rush. "I'm an important person," his engine screamed, "I have no regard for the people around me." Immediately afterward, a gigantic truck thought it imperative to squeeze his way into the turning lane, leaving about a half an inch between his side mirror and my own. Was it really necessary to do that? Couldn't you wait 30 seconds for my light to turn green. Spend that time admiring the sights and sounds of downtown Noho? Of course not. What good would that do?

I'll tell you. Today at lunch I took some time to feed a momma and baby bird some of my Doritos. Granted, not the healthiest thing to feed a bird. But it was fascinating to watch the mother bird pick up the little pieces, chew them up, and place them into the baby bird's mouth. The baby would make a commotion and flap its wings furiously inbetween each bite. It was really quite beautiful. And it was something I wouldn't have seen if I had been rushing to finish my lunch and get back to work. If I had been eating in the mall food court instead of outside in the fresh air. I guess I'm a country girl at heart, but I think that there's something to be said for living a slower-paced life surrounded by trees and mountains, that maybe its a good thing that the stores close at 6 pm and the city sleeps for a little bit. Even though Noho is a little more built up than the western mountains of Maine, spending some time in Boston helped me to appreciate the unstructured, un-commercalized rurality of this place even more, where the air is full of pollen and clouds and birdsong instead of smog and billboards and carhorns.

A Story About Me and the "Mick Jagger of Cultural Philosophy"

Pawing through the documentaries at Pleasant St. Video tonight, I was -- appropriately enough -- pleasantly surprised to find a doc about Jacques Derrida (the "Mick Jagger of Cultural Philosophy" according to Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe). I was happy to find this, not because I have any particular fondness for the philosopher as one might think, but because I have a particular dislike of him. It's not even that I dislike his ideas, though. It's because I don't really know what his ideas are. It's a problem I have with his writing style -- maybe its him, maybe its his translator (the equally impenetrable Gayatri Spivak), or maybe its just the nature of philosophy, but his writing is like a huge, concrete monolith covered in hieroglyphics: it seems to be a pretty darn important thing, but I can't figure out how to get inside of it or what its saying.  I hoped that in movie-form, his thoughts might be a little more accessible.

I was right, for the most part. Whenever he spoke, it felt like being in a favorite class, or reading a good poem. It takes a little bit of work -- as all worthwhile things do -- but every so often you get floored with an "a-ha" moment and you're left thinking about things a little bit differently than you did before. However, the narrator reciting excerpts from his text was a little harder to follow and mostly left me confused, reminding me that there's often a fairly large gap between the way people express ideas verbally and in written form. 

I often feel like the opposite of Derrida in this regard. While I think that I express myself pretty well in writing (or at least I hope I do), I often stumble over words and ideas when in conversation with someone, or when speaking in class. I feel like I have same effect on others when I speak as Derrida has on me when he writes. Things are never made as clear as they could be, and others are left feeling like they're deciphering hieroglyphics. Maybe I'm projecting my own insecurities on others, but I'm pretty sure I'm at least half-right.

I feel like this ties in with something Derrida said about storytelling. He said he refuses to tell stories because he's never satisfied with them. What comes out, he confesses, is never as good of a story as he wants it to be. Additionally, stories are never complete. In the process of constructing a narrative, you're forced to leave things out (whether by choice or by faulty memory) and weave incomplete facts and anecdotes together into something coherent. All stories are therefore subjective, autobiographical fictions that nonetheless attempt to accurately represent reality as something objective and stable -- something in which Derrida apparently refuses to participate.

This all brings up several issues for me, all of which remain unresolved at this point. First, even if storytelling is incomplete and arguably deceptive, is it fair to give up on it as he has? Isn't storytelling part of what makes us human? Is it really possible to live our lives free of narrative, or is it enough to just recognize its faults and limitations and work with it anyway? How can we ever hope to communicate effectively with other without it?

Second, why is it that some people are better storytellers than others, or better in certain situations than others? Often I feel like the choice Derrida makes to "give up" on storytelling I do involuntarily in certain contexts. I don't think I have any objection to storytelling as long as its done critically, but -- at least when speaking -- I have trouble weaving together facts and anecdotes into something clear and coherent. While its certainly not without struggle, I find it easier to do so when writing. Why is that?

In any case, I'm not going to attempt to stabilize reality but constructing an autobiography about why I am the way I am, or even try to turn this blog into a story by wrapping it up with a neat, satisfying conclusion. I'll leave things open, as Derrida likes to do, and just think on it. Also, I'll end with a lighter note, since I think philosophy makes people take themselves too seriously sometimes.

On Amateurism

As most of you should know, its summertime. And as some of you might know, I’ve recently rediscovered my love of arts and crafts, spending more of my time thinking about all the unique and interesting things I (and anyone, really, as you’ll see) can make with paint, magazine clippings, glue, buttons, wire, fabric, thread, and a little imagination. So when, in my quest for some light summer reading, I recently stumbled upon the latest issue of UTNE with its cover emblazoned with a close-up shot of a bunch of crayons and the phrase “The Future of Creativity” emblazoned across the front, I knew I’d found the perfect magazine to peruse while lounging in the hot summer sun.

Inside this magazine, I found an interesting and far-too-short interview with author Bill Ivey, who is currently director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. In it, Bill was arguing that “arts policy has long targeted two issues, arts education and increasing funding for nonprofit organizations, that aim to ‘bring more fine art to the American people’ without encouraging more people to actually create.” That is, as much as we as a society claim to value art, we do very little to encourage its creation, except among those in whom we see some special talent. Those individuals are dubbed “artists” and are seen as different and unique, possessing some amazing skill that the rest of society lacks, and the rest of us are encouraged to sit back and marvel at their creations. In his words, we “denigrate the amateur.” As a result, a large number of people are left with the impression that they’re not good at art, can’t draw, can’t paint, can’t sing, etc., etc.

I can see this all around me, and I think it’s a terrible waste. My friend Mary and I have been having “craft night” for some time now, and it’s been one of the highlights of my summer. We’ve painted, made note cards, made collages, stitched, made jewelry, and – for our newest project, will attempt to breathe new life into thrift store finds with the help of this book. We revel in our amateurism, without regard to how our creations measure up to some abstract artistic standard.

However, upon inviting others to join us, I hear the same responses over and over: “Oh, well, I’m not an artist,” or “I don’t know how to do anything like that,” or worse: “I can’t do that.” I want to yell, “Of course you can! Who’s stopping you! You have hands don’t you?” I heard this from my mother on several occasions, and upon my persistent prodding (as well as some other folks) she has finally embraced her ability to create, and in really unique ways at that. She carves avocado pits. She even won first place in a library art contest. Its amazing to hear her talk about the things she makes with pride, and how much fun she had making them, when a scant year ago she was convinced that she was not “artistic.”

Of course, this kind of problem is not only found in how we think about art. The bigger shame, I think, is that it’s found in how we think about thinking itself. To use my mother as an example again, she is the proud owner of a functioning brain, just like the rest of society. She clearly knows how to use it – she can hold an intelligent conversation, and she can do Sudoku puzzles and the Friday New York Times crossword puzzle faster than anyone I know. However, whenever I talk about what I’m doing in school right now, I can see the uncertainty flood her eyes. She claims that she can’t understand; that I’ve gotten too “smart” for her. It really upsets me to hear anyone talk like this, especially my mom. Why is it that she, and so many others, have convinced themselves that they’re not smart, that they are literally unable to participate in certain kinds of conversations, or unable to think about things at the same level as other people?

Recently, my friend Mary was telling me about a book by Neil Postman in which he argues that elitism is necessary in education (something that seems to fly in the face of most of his other work, so please don’t judge him by this assertion). While I see why he says this – that the idea of education is based on certain people (the elites) having more complete knowledge than others, who then have to pass on this knowledge to non-elites – I completely disagree with sentiment of this statement. Everyone is capable of thinking and producing ideas, just as everyone is capable of being creative and producing art. Education should be a collaborative process, one in which the line between teacher and student are blurred, everyone is encouraged to express their ideas, and in which every idea is considered as potentially valid. However, somewhere along the line we get very clear messages about what we are capable – and not capable – of doing, and those who can’t adequately communicate in the official language – of art, of music, of academia – are made to believe that they are “bad” at those things. We academics are encouraged to foster these distinctions. Some elite grad schools are designed as boot camps to weed out those who don’t “make the cut” academically. We’re trained to use words like “hegemony” and “ontology” that make it almost impossible for the average person to understand what the hell it is we’re talking about. In effect, a select few people are set aside as really good thinkers and writers, and the rest of society is denigrated as amateurs, feeling inadequate and thus not very likely to try and think and write on their own terms. How many ideas are lost in this process? How much literature? How much art?

My point, after much ado, is this: we all have hands and hearts and brains. We are all capable of creating and feeling and thinking. No one should be made to feel inadequate. This is not to say that people shouldn’t be encouraged to improve their abilities. I know I’m not the best artist/thinker/writer I could be. Nobody is. My point is people shouldn’t measure themselves against some elitist concept of what makes “good” art, “good” ideas, and “good” writing. We should all embrace our amateurism, recognize that everyone is potentially an artist or academic, and not be afraid to grab that box of crayons or strike up a conversation. Just like my momma, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you’re capable of.