Enargeia

the absence of feeling

2012-01-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

desultory neurons bellowing
names names names
empty raindrops sinking
corpses corpses corpses
wooden bench wasting
shadows shadows shadows

The American Jeremiad of the Disenfranchised (?)

2012-01-04T03:48:00.000-05:00

Well, it's 2012 and i have a few things on my mind, mainly, American literature. I've recently been thinking about the American Jeremiad and how, I believe at least, it has been reinscribed by minority writers as a space of productive melancholia. So, what is the American Jeremiad? The Jeremiad is a sermon that accounts for the calamities of the present time as justifiable due to the sins of a community or a nation, but also imagines the possibilities of change. Jeremiad is named after the Biblical prophet, Jeremiah, who was also known as the weeping prophet. The jeremiad is often used as a rhetorical figure to perpetuate the American myth of progress. Yet, the jeremiad, which is inextricably linked to the ideology of American exceptionalism, is based on a paradox that constitutes America as a nation. That is, the paradox of community and the individual, oscillating between the two, but also constructing an exclusionary community based on the auspices of democracy. I will suggest that the American Jeremiad of the minority is characterized by failed mourning that maintains the possible return of the object of loss. The spectre, or the ghost, represents this American Jeremiad of the minority. Spectre, as Derrida defines it in Spectres of Marx, "is some "thing" that remains difficult to name." Toni Morrison's Beloved attempts to name the unnameable, which is paradoxically named Beloved, by either returning to or finding oneself faced with the irrevocable past. But, I would like to argue, that this space can be productive, a means by which to reinscribe spaces of oppression as sites of subversion and resistance. Beloved is about the traumas of African American slavery, and the healing power of "rememory" as the protagonist, Sethe calls it. However, this return, as Sethe discovers can be life-threatening as Beloved attempts to strangle her. Sethe who had attempted to kill her children, and successfully killed her youngest daughter, Beloved, in order to safe them from slavery is haunted by the return of her daughter. The return both seals and opens wounds. It returns without warning, yet can only be removed, in the novel at least, by a community. The imaginary reconstruction of the past is never total; it reveals gaps and fissures that remain unbridgeable.
The American Jeremiad of the minority, perhaps minority isn't the proper term to use, maybe disenfranchised in more encompassing, evokes another type of lamentation that threatens our present, but asks of us to give it voice, even if it remains at times inaudible.

looking

2011-12-24T01:32:00.000-05:00

i look at my image, but only recognize war in scraps of paper floating above my half-opened books. an inward raw terror unmasking, yet too timid and delicate to join the outside world. dragging longing and loneliness in this wilderness that is my eyes. is there a moral dimension to looking, inspecting self as other? the soul is boundless and empty lying underneath a pair of boots. lipstick stains part of this fictional fluidity i call the self. unromantic disguises in four lettered words. i look.

conversation

2011-12-11T04:20:00.000-05:00

his words poured like a broken faucet
the water throbbed beneath my palms
it was lovely and deep
as though we were two
but, the water soon became waves
as the tongue rolled the eyes.

clarity

2011-10-16T02:30:00.001-04:00

Past Midnight
I strive for clarity, always
walking the empty streets to find simplicity:
rummaging every corner beneath the outstretched skies
lifting the dancing dust to expose the fissures of human consciousness
uncovering eye lids and pot bellies below cherry trees and uncut grass
passing sinking ships or swinging hearts of lost souls, beggars, or artists
but, I fear in my straightjacket I cannot erase the raw names, promised lands, cold faces that clutter my mind.

reflection

2011-10-09T13:23:00.002-04:00

the red sky, still, sound
speechless, I sit thinking silky thoughts
of the heavy happiness we carry in frames
that leave us with trembling hands.

appearances

2011-10-07T19:47:00.001-04:00

I'm momentarily back to write, or repeat, that things aren't as they seem.

We always want to create linear narratives to give sense to our lives; and for the most part, we're successful in creating these fictions that create a sense of destiny or fate: that we're moving toward where we're supposed to be. But, a nagging feeling persists that where we are is not where we are and perhaps who we are is not who we are. When we tell our stories we necessarily fictionalize, draw connections where is there none, to produce meaning, or to give meaning. Sometimes, however, there is no meaning to what we do, or what's been done, though it remains important to invest some illusory meaning for the sake of sanity.

double effect

2011-08-28T03:57:00.000-04:00

Every memory is a resurrection: every return yields a potential for insurrection.

summary

2011-08-19T03:28:00.002-04:00

This has been a revelatory year for me. I came into contact with the kindest humans, and was touched by their humanity; their ability to recognize another human being for-itself and not as a means to an end. At the same time, the parasitic nature of some people was revealed to me. And this parasitism resulted from their narcissism, I believe, their inability to look beyond the mirror, to realize their reflection is mediated through an object.
It's also been difficult with my grandmother's passing, whom I loved deeply and who was a truly kind, spiritual, patient, and oft-forgiving person.

Overall, I think something has been unconcealed, but as Heidegger argues in "The Origin of a Work of Art) (1936, published 1950), a moment of unconcealment depends on the concealment of something else.

Now, I'm drowning myself in books, as I have no choice. My involvement in the blog world will begin to dwindle. But, again, I'm grateful to those that have been reading and commenting on my blog, and it has been a delight to read and comment on yours.

A special thanks to Ovais (I was touched by your award), Izdiher (faithful commentator and promoter of my blog), normal.is.overrated (always writes encouraging and supportive comments), and Aman (for her concerns).

i don't know why

2011-08-18T07:46:00.000-04:00

i don’t know why i am so, or why i feel as i do. must be because i’m both outside and inside. my unconditional unconditionality was left outside, but i am inside, an apparition gliding between borders, hovering between neurosis and uncanny calmness. i don’t know why i am holding this angel-sent nothingness between my palms, for i can smell its bitterness. i don’t know why.

more Butler and resistance

2011-08-17T22:45:00.002-04:00

Foucault proposes that sexuality should not be perceived as a natural drive, but is shaped by our cultural context. Modern power subjects individuals, but it simultaneously creates them as subjects by subjecting them. the face of such omnipresent power, the question of resistance inevitably arises. Foucault proposes that we undermine the boundaries of pleasure delimited by discursive powers. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler draws on Foucault’s conception of power to analyze normative femininity and masculinity for that matter. She argues, as I’ve mentioned in any earlier post, that gender norms govern gender identity. To undermine normative constraints, she proposes that one highlights, makes manifest, the constructions of gender. That is to say, to unravel gender performativity, either by exaggerating characteristics associated with being female for instance, or to take on traits that have been assigned to the other sex. In her preface to Bodies that Matter, Butler sums up a major criticism, or response, to her Gender Trouble: “What about the materiality of the body, Judy?...they eat and sleep...cannot be dismissed as a construction. ” She responds by presenting what she refers to as a “process of materialisation that stabilises over time to produce the effect of boundary.” In other words, sex is only posited epistemologically as prior to construction, but it is only language that allows for such a positing. In Bodies that Matter, Butler extends her analysis of subjection to underscore how it affects the materiality of the body and delineates what bodies matter on a social level. In fact she adapts Kristeva’s notion of the abject to analyze bodies that are expelled in society.
She argues that since language conditions the appearance of materiality, materiality remains mutable and contestation possible. So while she doesn’t dismiss the ontological reality of the body, she argues that the body is only understood through language which cannot reveal the body per se, but how we speak about the body, how subjectivity is manufactured.

permanent strangers

2011-08-15T16:16:00.000-04:00

Unheimlich, or the uncanny, for Freud, represents experiences that are uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar. It could consist of the return of a repressed past into the present, or the unconscious obtruding into consciousness. He draws on examples on literary examples, such as the Oedipus myth, moments when life and fiction are blurred resulting in life as fiction. It’s also a moment of uncertainty at the intellectual level, where we are rationally uncertain of how to receive something, whether seeing our double, or an inanimate object become life like. Heimlich is the German word for “homely,” or “native,” and thereby Unheimlich is that which is “unhomely;” yet, it is and is not homely or familiar. The term heimlick contains a paradoxical premise for it is what is familiar and concealed. It’s an indefinite concept and defies a straightforward definition. I wonder to what extent, the notion of permanent strangers evokes the uncanny, a movement from familiarity to absolute strangeness. When your idea of a person is shattered to the point of transforming the person into a complete stranger. What is most sad, however, is the permanent stranger turns out to have always been a stranger. Your conceptions were always misconceptions. There’s the risk of questioning yourself, whether in fact you knew this person and whether this sudden strangeness, even animosity, places you under erasure.

the game of the imagination

2011-08-14T07:05:00.000-04:00

I would transform your cold arrogance; let it crumple the mountain of loneliness into streams of laughter moving along a string quartet with love engraved on the violin playing in a battle field soaking with freedom that retrieves humanity’s lost shadows; i would unearth your heart and let it dance against the moonlight, an interplay of confessions reverberating: a pendulum swing.

love is

2011-08-13T06:23:00.001-04:00

a daydream curving into a petal falling into the shadowy ocean

Kristeva's Black Sun: Matricide or Suicide (metaphorical of course)

2011-08-13T03:15:00.003-04:00

A brief summary of Kristeva's Black Sun (1987), at the least her first chapter "Psychoanalysis: A Counterdepressant."
In Black Sun, Kristeva explores the concept of Depression/Melancholia, for she uses them interchangeably, and conceives of Melancholia as a linguistic malady. She p[oints to the failure of the symbolic for the melancholic who communicates at the semiotic level. She uses the image of the “black sun” which she borrows from Gérard de Nerval’s sonnet as to underscore the simultaneous radiance and darkness of the sun. It’s important to highlight that for Kristeva the importance of what Lacan labels the mirror stage where the child is separated from his/her mother’s body and thereby enters the symbolic realm, that is enters into language and becomes subsumed under the father of the law. But, there’s always a return to the maternal through the semiotic, which is not a system of signs as suggested by Ferdinand de Saussure, but for her is the study of marks. The semiotic, then, is at the level of gesture. To use Freudian parlance, it language that belongs to the pre-Oedipal infant. Melancholia/depression, then, arise when the subject fails to mourn the lost maternal, as such, unable to enter the symbolic system. So subjects under this condition, are unable to articulate their suffering yearns for the maternal Thing which belongs to a pre-discursive libidinal economy. In order to acquire a position as subject in the symbolic, one must commit what Kristeva terms, matricide. The melancholic chooses to sacrifices oneself rather than negate the mother and does not turn to a “third party⎯father, form, schema”As Kristeva writes, : “Of this Nerval provides a dazzling metaphor that
suggests an insistence without presence, a light without representation: the Thing is an imagined sun, bright and black at the same time.” However, as the metaphor of black sun suggests, there are two sides to this condition.
As one notes, Kristeva leaves the melancholic subject with few options, both debilitating in one way or another, and both return to the maternal figure.

lifeless life

2011-08-11T06:38:00.001-04:00

I shall write whatever comes to mind just to force myself to write.

Lifeless life. Beneath the light we find shadows lurking, moving, evading. Within this shadow is an other, a self, seeking a lost love object. Dark shadow manifests with light a blurring of shades. This lifeless life is indeed alive awaiting to ascribe meaning when it sees none.

the problem is

2011-08-09T04:53:00.000-04:00

The problem is that this has not turned into a myth, yet. The idea of movement danced and seized upon me, but this figure of liberation is pure figment, an innocent fantasy. I’m in stasis: a transitional space that seems tunnel-like without lights. Perhaps the problem is that I’m waiting for a magical solution after having demystified the situation. Maybe the problem is I’m relying on fictional advice to manifest itself as real. Surely, the problem is that reality is always painstakingly muddled.

False Clarity: An Overview of Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment

2011-08-08T01:33:00.003-04:00

In The Dialectics of the Enlightenment (1947), Adorno and Horkheimer undertake to expose the disillusion of the Enlightenment, what they refer to as the “self destruction of the Enlightenment.” They argue that “myth is already Enlightenment; and Enlightenment reverts to mythology.” In other words, one finds the blurring of myth into Enlightenment and vice versa. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno revisit and revise the concept of Enlightenment noting a continuation between Enlightenment and modernity. In fact what the Enlightenment stood for, such as progress through reason, has turned into a nightmare. While technology exposes the falsity of myths in the past, it also becomes a way of being.
Adorno and Horkheimer take a pessimistic view of the cultural industry, or what we have come to consider popular culture. In a chapter entitled “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Adorno and Horkheimer respond to Walter Benjamin’s essay, “In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” (1936) in which he paints a democratic picture of mass reproduction. His main arguement was that reproductive techniques the aura of ritual that once marked high art and photography. This is to say, that one was no longer enraptured while standing before a great work of art and that art was now accessible to the masses. However, Adorno and Horkheimer who believed reproductive techniques to be regressive They underscore the dissolution of creativity in such an industry in which art, literature or classical music (they have all become commodities) is reduced to commercial rules. In effect, the cultural industry attempts to create products that meet the wants of different consumers under the guise of “individualisation” (this is evident in numerous commercials today) deluding the consumer of a feeling of democracy. This leaves passive and unreflective receivers in the face of the production of cultural clichés and a perpetual reproduction of cultural forms.

What one feels is only a false sense of pleasure, what they authors label as a “phoney catharsis.” In turn, we’re left with notion of boredom, and a need to seek refuge in products as to fulfill this sense of boredom that only leaves us with deflected promises. This, of course, is a hazardous for intellectualism as the consumer becomes desensitised.
Finally, a gap is created between the self and the image portrayed by the media that creates a narcisstic appeal. One is duped into thinking he/she can achieve stardom, that what one sees on TV reflects reality. The cultural industry also creates social control (think facebook) where users (including myself) submit to it, usually unreflectively. Culture, in turn, is transformed into “barbaric meaninglessness.” Culture is now disseminated to us through images, sound effects (think of digital manipulations. The consumer grows more passive relying on names or titles to invoke experience. However, the authors claims that consumers become aware of the manipulations of the culture industry and it’s attempt to control society, and yet submit to it out of sheer powerlessness.
While I agree with A and H’s pessimism especially as it’s relevant in today’s society, one is struck by one-sidedness of their argument. Film is not necessarily mimetic; it can be emancipatory. The totalitarianism of mass media and the culture industry is not impenetrable.

memory, a clip

2011-08-06T02:45:00.006-04:00

I wanted to share this clip as I find it very touching and also thought provoking. It's a documentary about living with Alzheimer; in this particular clip the poet Edwin Honig is being interviewed by Alan Berliner.
Memory is such a complex subject and the loss of it transforms a person. At times, in life, however, it's important to forget as to move on, break the chains of enslavement that particular moments in our lives force upon us. At the same time, unwillful forgetfulness, through diseases such as Alzheimer, can be debilitating on the subject and those surrounding it.
All in all, I find this clip as a reminder to remember to live, to remember those around us, "to remember how to forget."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaQ9K6Yd6So

distance

2011-08-04T04:54:00.002-04:00

this dance lifts
the space between us
in this endless maze of inaccurate accuracy
of parasitic promises
premature judgement
a lost love labouring for luminosity
refracting through broken pieces
of shredded heaven at our feet
on the kitchen floor

...

2011-08-03T04:32:00.001-04:00

just a greeting and a nod and I went under with the moonlight drops as we all do in time of distress.

remembering

2011-08-02T01:47:00.002-04:00

to become a trace of something or otherwise at the painted door or collapsing cathedral
a wisp of shredded photos flailing in the wind
Eastern shrines dedicated to
a sigh, a smile, a stranger
half-written confessions shrivelling under the sunlight
i remember passing over to be remembered, but slipping on uncommon ground
a flickering absence

rain

2011-08-01T01:27:00.001-04:00

from crowded clouds thumping
warm vibrations teeter-tottering
a rocking rhythm tantalizing
the succulent earth embracing
discordant whispers exploding
wailing, laughter ebbing
wet syllables flinging
lost lives floating
freedom lovers fantasizing

An Overview Regarding the Blog + a bit of Sartre

2011-07-31T02:07:00.002-04:00

I tried to remain faithful to my promise to post a blog entry every day, and I was successful, even though some of those entries consisted of meagre lines. I shall try to do the same this month, hopefully write more substantial entries. I'm also thankful for those that have been reading my blog, and even more so for those that have been commenting (Izdiher).

I’ll comment briefly on what I read today, I started reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. His prose seems circular to me, and I find myself constantly re-reading certain lines. Thankfully, I don’t have to read it in its entirety, but I am finding some of his ideas appealing. I’ve come across them in one way or another in the past, but I’m experiencing his concepts differently. In summation , what I understood so far, is that Sartre disrupts Kant’s distinction between noumena (or appearances) phenomena (things as we perceive or experience them), and posits the latter as the only reality. From there, he analyzes two categories of being: being-for-itself and being-in-itself. The former is the conscious—characterized by concreteness, passivity, and physical-- and latter the unconscious—characterized by fluidity, movement, and nonphysical. These categories extend into one another, since the being-for-itself comprises of physical attributes as well. We exist in an ontological web in which our facticity (being-in-itself) and our transcendence (being-for-itself) seep into one another, or even collide.

Also, Ramadan Kareem everyone.

brief sentiment + Irigaray quotation

2011-07-30T03:00:00.002-04:00

As usual, I am moved to explore the past, mine, that is, but I’ve discovered it to be a wastebasket

I will invoke a quotation by Irigaray, which might seem out of context, but it’s relevant, nonetheless: “Women among themselves begin by laughing. To escape from a pure and simple reversal of the masculine position means in any case not to forget to laugh.”

Laughter should transcend spaces, times, and tenses.

this feeling

2011-07-29T03:12:00.000-04:00

this feeling of slipping, i sought silky sin hung on clothes lines. thoughts sinking of self worth slyly swinging against the murmuring wind.

july 28, birthday

2011-07-28T02:02:00.003-04:00

i charge your memory amiably and there i am a sunken sun against the violent sky, aging.

ruins, repeitions

2011-07-27T02:41:00.004-04:00

we repeat to forge simplicity; paradoxically this repetition enables us to zoom in on the shimmering details of dawn, colour in the crevices below the moon-windows, supplement angry fixes with fictional heroines, slip the sun-god underneath the door, invent embryos embracing magic balls, touch threads swinging forth from the painted curtains. repetition is a detachment from an origin, leaving not a trace, but a caress. this repetition betrays us, moving onto its own path, never settling between dreams.

Agency and Butler's Gender Trouble

2011-07-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

Here’ s q quick post summarizing what I’ve read concerning gender norms and it is a text I’ve read a few times before. So you may have guessed which book I’m referring to, it’s Judith Butler’s groundbreaking book Gender Trouble. Following Simone de Beauvoir’s famous observation “one is not born a women,” Butler shows that gender roles are performed according to scripts that precede the emergence of the body. These are scripts that delineate our behaviour and normative constraints. It is only through repetition that these gender norms appear natural. She wonders whether there is room for subversion and whether such gender norms enforced on our bodies can be subverted. In response posits her famous example of gender subversion through performance: drag. She asserts that the parodying of gender norms does not, contrary to what some have argued, reinforce patriarchal norms, but, in fact, exposes the constructedness of that gender, whether through femme-butch or male drag, that is supposedly traced back to the body. Her work has been influential not only for queer studies but also for minority studies, but it did come under criticisms that were rallied with the following two objections: Butler assumes a fluid identity that one can slip into and out of as one wills; she evades the materiality of the body. In Bodies that Matter, however, she addresses both criticisms making a strong argument against the first criticism, and what I find a less persuasive response to the latter criticism. Perhaps more on that in a post to follow.

take your time

2011-07-23T03:53:00.002-04:00

turn it over slowly
scatter bullets on the album which is bursting with fables of fanciful thoughts exposing
open minds that bleed through bright lights demolishing someone’s reality, a being’s fantasy
scattered with doubt, toxic drinks below pyramids, peel the sky and look, name the bitter being
then
admit you could have been somewhat, slightly, perhaps, possibly, maybe...
no, take your time

nightly abstractions

2011-07-22T03:47:00.000-04:00

while the world lies asleep in a field, here, now, i am meaning. less devastating than the past. forgotten national realities. as i move i’m momentarily moved fort/da by the details. iteration makes me less lonely. i know what is passing has passed, no epitaph uncited. i slow down for the stars are statues made of glass, glowing, swirling. beauty. i lift the lid. there are no stars outside. there is no field.

Here I am

2011-07-21T05:22:00.002-04:00

Here I am past 5:00 a.m. and i can't fall asleep. so many factors; thoughts of space and difference. in between a bridge i've fabricated, so the distance is as it always was. i feel like a cloud that has descended onto the asphalt ground that is decorated with a looming street light. this fall is heavy, yet immeasurable. i’m not here, but here i am listening, trying to splice the silence, the past. complicated, the now is so tense. forms transform in the shadowy heat, but here i am listless, lying awake. where are you?

what freaks me out?

2011-07-21T00:55:00.000-04:00

Well, many things, but lately it has been critters, whether strange or familiar. They freak me out and appal me. My place, being extremely old, attracts strange bugs and insects particularly in the summer. It’s one thing to see them outdoors, but in doors is a completely different matter. If I see a fly, it must either leave the house or I spray it with Clorox bleach. Last night there was a flying ant in my place and, for whatever reason, it completely freaked me out that if it flew in my direction I would jump out of the way and freeze momentarily. I embarked on a journey to kill it; yes, I’ve become a ruthless bug killer. I feel badly about killing them, but they truly freak me out. The worst I’ve seen was an earwig, didn’t even know the name of it until I looked it up. Earwigs are creepy. I sprayed my entire place (being a very tiny as I live in a bachelor or more properly called a studio) with bleach and Lysol and told my landlord about the earwigs (because I saw a few). Imagine that. Thankfully, I saw none today or I would’ve sprayed my entire place with the bug-spray my landlord bought. I’m not normally a squeamish person, but I jump and my heart races when i see them in my place, particularly because I’m so careful to keep it clean. It even goes further, I dream of these critters with their red eyes and hairy bodies. My apologies for what I’m going to share, because it’s disturbing, but I dreamt, I had a nightmare to be more precise, that tiny black worms came out of my foot. Why should I dream of this? It was disturbing, disgusting, and dreadful. Bugs, insects, they make me nervous. Some times it seems that I have a warped imagination.

A quotation on language and violence

2011-07-20T03:29:00.004-04:00

While I haven't read Gloria Anzaldua's beautifully written and dense text Borderlands in a while, I was reminded of the epigraph she uses at the beginning of her chapter "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." Here she quotes Ray Gwyn Smith who posits the following rhetorical question: "Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?" This theft amounts to: the premature silencing of a people; the erasure of an identity; the cutting of a tongue. This insidious erasure is at times subtle, silent, but never sudden. So let's not devalue our tongues.

Here's a painting by Ray Gwyn Smith:

Ray Gwyn Smith, Dream of Eritrea, 2002

Brief summary of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle

2011-07-20T01:48:00.001-04:00

I didn’t write last night as I was feeling a bit tired, but will hopefully make it up, perhaps two entries tonight instead of one.
I’ll discuss what I read today: I just finished reading Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle(1920) published right after the First World War, so Freud is preoccupied with trauma. Having already made the discovery of the pleasure principle, he is puzzled why trauma victims seem to compulsively return to the traumatic event instead of the pleasure principle? His text is based around the aforementioned inquiry. While he doesn’t deny the pleasure principle, he argues that there is an instinct for self-preservations that delays pleasure. To examine his question he turns to an example of his young grandson, Hans, who would repeatedly throw his toy away and yell fort (gone) and then retrieves the toy exclaiming da (here). This game, for Freud, functions as a child expressing the absence of his mother and his attempt to return to the situation as to regain control. Freud’s discussion of reliving or repeating unpleasant events for the sake of mastery culminates in his analysis of compulsive repetition, which works in contradistinction to the pleasure principle. He ends his discussion by turning to biology speculating over the tendency of organism to return to its earliest state, which is that of being inanimate. He calls this the death instinct and argues that this concept is opposed to the life instinct which he refers to as Eros. The death drive obscures the life instinct, which Freud saw as the purpose of civilization.
Essentially, Freud calls the pleasure principle into question by introducing the death drive particularly by showing how the psyche compulsively repeats traumatic events. This is not to claim that Freud is postulating that we strive for death, rather than pleasure, but of an ongoing tension between the two instincts.

this silence yearns

2011-07-18T02:04:00.000-04:00

Despite questioning the valorization of voice, this silence yearns to hear its name. This yearning is not for mere confrontation; nor is it to have a gaze returned. As Fanon notes in his chapter “The Fact of Blackness,” a black man (woman) experiences “crushing objecthood," as his (her) subjectivity is denied. He does not fall under the universal conception of human, according to his oppressors. Though, Fanon is referring to a racial gaze, and the alienating consequences of colonialism on the psyche and the body, the act of non-recognition, for an identity formation, creates a non-identity, a negative. This weighs down on the created, with each footstep chains ring. For in the end, as Fanon contends, the colonial subject experiences itself as nonexistent. It is not only the thoughts that are deemed nonexistent, but the whole. This silence yearns ....
Sorry for the short and choppy entry, but I decided I will not sleep without having written something down, any thought and this is the thought that came to mind.

Here goes another dream: pale strangers

2011-07-17T00:29:00.002-04:00

I begin watching a movie in medias res: a young girl waiting for a train with an elderly man standing close to her; he is dressed in a suit with a hat covering his eyes and grey hair falling to his shoulders. I fear that this man wants to kidnap her, because even with their proximity, I could tell they were strangers. As the train stops and they begin to enter, I also merge into the movie and enter with them. I note that the young girl with blond hair is approaching a group of three other girls, a bit older than her as they appear to be in their early teens, they also have blond hair, but much shorter than hers. She tells them that she wants to live as they do. I am struck and puzzled by her request. What does this mean? What are the implications of her request? Can one choose to live as an other? Upon closer inspection, I notice the girls have an otherworldly paleness. I'm disconcerted and suddenly cold. I begin to worry as to how she’ll survive and how they’ve been surviving.

another dream, full of twists this time.

2011-07-16T00:22:00.002-04:00

I thought I`d record another dream I had, this time, however, it was a bit more odd. At the same time, I`m prone to having weird, but vivid, dreams. It`s going to sound like a clichéd movie, so brace yourself. It was dark outside as I entered a new city only to be met with a row of cars where the windows were covered with patches of crimson red, for the passengers and drivers dead. It was a horrific scene, but I wasn't afraid. It turns out there was an experiment being conducted whose effects were horrific, tragic, and beyond anyone`s calculations. There are some survivors it seems, and as I wait a driver in a jeep stops and I get in, but the passenger seat is too narrow for me, and I feel myself squished, uncomfortable, almost suffocating. Suddenly, we arrive at a food market where all the survivors had gone to eat. Yet, I hear some child complaining that they eat things differently here, and, for whatever reason, I note a cereal box with almonds in it thinking to myself that that wasn`t so odd.
The second part of my dream consists of me listening to a woman describe how she`d met her lover, who happened to be a superhero, by the way. There had been two superheroes standing next to each other on top of a building, she explains, and she had pushed one and fell with him, and with that fall, they both fell in love. He happened to be a British superhero with a bit of acne.

Very odd, indeed.

a dream

2011-07-15T01:09:00.001-04:00

It was a somewhat hazy dreams, as dreams usually are, though the main topic being going out. It was a mundane dream, but yet I`m curious as to how it may be interpreted. It consisted of several stages, but in stage 1, apparently i had taken too long to meet up with my friend, not that I was busy getting ready, but rather I was preoccupied with chores, that they had left. However, finally, when I do met up with my friend, one of the friends, we are at a cash register and said friend is about to pay when i note that the bill she`s carrying is counterfeit. I expose the fact that it`s counterfeit not to embarrass X, but rather to avoid the discovery by a stranger that may provoke hostility. At the same time, in the dream I was also aware that X`s not completely at fault for having counterfeit bill and that someone else was behind them.
What could this mean? Am I exposing a friend's duplicity? Am I question the concept of friendship?

death, a theme

2011-07-14T14:53:00.004-04:00

I didn't write last time, but will sum yesterday up. There seems to be a tendency where an idea, an occurrence, an event, at theme, and so on, is unleashed. Yesterday's theme, undoubtedly, would be death. Naturally, when you're having a discussion on a particular topic, your discussants will only add to this topic with their own examples and experiences. But it's odd when the conversation continues even when you speak to a different group that same day without having initiated the topic, as it's probably on one's mind. At the same time, death isn't an odd subject to bring up when one is mourning. However, yesterday, death seemed to be an event. After these conversations had subsided we heard news of a few deaths, none related and for all different reasons. Further, these deaths had a similar origin, that being human stupidity. Because all of these deaths were untimely and were due to avoidable factors. They could have been easily prevented with a minute of reflection. For instance, I heard of a 22 year old boy that was shot in the head due to a brawl during a basketball game by a 34 year old man. There was nothing at stake but this older man's ego and absolute lack of thought. Let us not underestimate our rational and emotional faculty. I was both saddened and angered by this news, and all the others, because there were no justifications for the killings, I'm not sure there ever is, and no regard for life. Allah yer7moun.

at this moment

2011-07-13T03:00:00.005-04:00

I feel guilty that I haven't written today, so I shall write whatever comes to mind before I head to sleep. In this state of semi-consciousness, i'm filled with uncertainty and doubtfulness about a great number of things. I feel as though I've currently begun building a fortress, but with sparse windows for strangers and friends, but some weave intricate tales that mangle me, while others speak of frailties, and still others place bricks unto this fortress with their thundering silence.

tracing scribbles

2011-07-12T02:29:00.000-04:00

in describing the instability of a sign, Derrida uses the word trace to signify that signs bleed into one another, leaving a trace. he defines trace a “a mark of the absence of a presence, an always-already absent present." traces have ghostly effects. In my passion to write, traces manifest themselves. to desire to give birth to words already born; forgo sleep; scribble notes on walls; tip the scale; eat songs; all without uttering a word. to have words rush out so fast that they are barely audible, understandable; free sentences of syntax; express the inexpressible; scream noise; drown in words softly sinking; to make meaning. this artefact is not without its ancestors; it is not without its chains.

promises

2011-07-11T02:22:00.001-04:00

leaving always
the warm moonlight dipping
into my pockets
an automaton
interpreting
pictures
Perfected by fog

sigh

2011-07-10T00:55:00.002-04:00

A sigh turning against the stillness of a battlefield where lilies no longer breed
because the rain drops like granite covering decaying secrets , Marx and Lenno taking over the world, sweet scented grandmothers holding up pyramids, a lover’s howl.
at the end of the field i hear that honesty takes bravery, but my honesty is repulsive, distasteful, unnecessary it seems.
my listener decries my words as poetry continuing that poets only imagine diaphanous forms hung on a clothesline. I wanted to share my pain, not all of it, only a segment, an episode, a flash, waiting again, even for a tip of a hat, a frown, a sigh, my breath slips between lips, again knowing i await nothing, but for the sky to dry up granite

my grandma`s passing

2011-07-09T00:58:00.001-04:00

Death is always a difficult issue to talk about. It’s bewildering, foreign, and not something I can easily rationalize. It’s inevitable, of course. Yet, sometimes we’re selfish that we’d want to extend the person’s life, even when we realize he/she is suffering. In the morning, I heard the terrible news of my grandma passing. I knew of her illness and that her days were dwindling down, but it’s always a shock to hear. The tears didn’t flow right away, because sometimes it takes time to realize what you’ve just heard—that the last time you say this person will be marked as the last time you’ll ever see this person that you hold so dear. Let me tell you about my grandma for a bit, if you’d met her you would’ve fallen in love with her. She was kind to everyone, even strangers. She had so many virtues, all of which i can’t recount. Overall, she was a good person with a tender heart. She never upset anyone and spent her life giving. Her passing is loss for the entire family and every single person who’d come into contact with her. Even though she didn’t live the easiest life, this never made her a hard person, but always forgiving, understanding, and a joy to be around. Allah yer7mek ya tata wh yej3al matheek el janneh!

“Estranged Labor” and Friendship?

2011-07-08T03:01:00.001-04:00

Today I read Marx’s essay “Estranged Labor” or “Alienated Labour,” and on the back of my mind was thinking of friendship. While I seem to be drawing a far-fetched link, nonetheless, I find we can establish a relationship between “estranged labor” and friendship, failed friendship to be specific. In this essay Marx explicates the economic system in terms of ownership divided into two classes: the property owners and the property-less workers. The workers experiences estrangement from the external world, because the objects he produces belong to the outside world. Here the worker is alienated from the product of his labor. Further, the worker is alienated from the activity of production belongs to an other, who is superior, independent, and is characterized as hostile. As such, the work arises not from one’s creativity but is forced from an outside force. After experiencing alienation from the act of production, the worker is also alienated from “species-being.” That is to say, the worker is estranged from other humans because being human, or recognizing one’s identity, arises from creating things from inorganic matter. The final estrangement that Marx postulates is the estrangement of man to man because the owner is not perceived as a human.
I think it may have become clear why I’m drawing an analogy between Marx’s description of estranged labor and friendship. Friendship should arise from the premise of recognizing the other as human and like oneself. It must be consist of mutual exchange. Not to say that the same things are being exchanged, but rather a mutual recognition of the other’s humanity. Marx’s final description of alienation is particularly relevant here, because once one feels alienated from his/her friend, friendship stagnates and returns us to the relationship between lord and bondsman as explicated by Hegel and which Marx takes up. While friendship isn’t always consistent, it should not fall on possession.
This entry will strike you as commonsensical, but I’m curious as to how you would define friendship? Is some sort of estrangement required for a strong relationship to develop? Have you been in a friendship that ended in estrangement?

Unhappiness as worthwhile?

2011-07-07T03:44:00.001-04:00

SO, happiness, what is it? How can we attain it. In the Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel investigates the evolution of consciousness and the attainment of the Absolute. What’s most interesting is postulation of the concept of “unhappy consciousness.” which results from estrangement. Here’s a crude summary: Hegel illustrates the development of consciousness which relies on a life-and-death struggle that results in the figures of bondsman and lord. Bondsman must be aware of his subordinate position and for the lord, the bondsman is unessential and so he negates the bondsman’s consciousness. However, the lord feels unease at doing so, because earlier he had radically identified with the bondman in order to conceive of himself as independent. Therefore, he feels guilt over denying mutual identification. Social life, then, is based on competing moments of mutual identification and objectification. Moreover, the bondsman identifies with his labour and is able to establish some sort of independence through the things he creates. But self-consciousness that is aware of this duality is labelled by Hegel as “unhappy consciousness.” While I’ve oversimplified here, underpinning his description is the idea that with awareness and recognition comes moments of unhappiness. That is to say that recognizing our own otherness and the contradictions inherent in self-consciousness. This is not to say that Hegel would advocate the adage that “ignorance is bliss.” For, in fact, he turns to religious matters and describes this “unhappy consciousness” as other worldly consciousness where one devotes oneself to the Absolute which will be rewarded. In this case, unhappiness is worthy.
In my attempt to reach out to my readers, I wonder whether you can think of ways to complicate this? Or can you describe some unhappy moments? Can unhappiness be productive? The question I began with, what is happiness?

A poem revisited and Lacan's repetition automatism

2011-07-06T04:32:00.002-04:00

Even though I promised myself to write daily, I've decided to revisit something I've written before. This led me to think about, not only my laziness, but of memories and the fixation of certain memories. Some memories return for obvious reasons, because they played such critical roles in our lives. But there are memories we wish to put to rest, yet we’re constantly returning to them. I’m reminded of Lacan’s notion of “repetition automatism” which he articulates in his seminar on Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Purloined Letter.” It is this compulsion to repeat and it is related to the death drive. We are compelled to repeat painful, even destructive, actions, many times in hope of a different outcome. So, in other words, the death drive leads to the continuous re-locating/moving/positioning of the subject which “materializes the agency of death.” For Lacan, as for Freud, this repetition s inevitable as we’re moving along a chain of signifiers. Alas, we should examine why we return to certain points.

I’ve always wondered what you think of
When you stop talking

You do think, right?

Your thoughts are surely of a light blue
a blue flame -- Copper Halides
you were always warmer in silence
your frown calm

or have you been enveloped by capitalism
that you think in green
meadow fields on fire

or do your neurons dance
every colour
and all you see is movement
swings and hips

or do you deconstruct the alphabet
digging up ancient codes
translating red scripture

or are you thinking of a response
and rethinking that response
and of my response to your response

or has the conversation ended
and your thoughts colourblind

Constructing Space: from Pizan's City to Woolf's Room

2011-07-05T03:27:00.004-04:00

Forgive me if this is rushed, but I’ve promised myself to write on a daily basis, even if a few sentences.
So I read Virginia Woolf’s Room of One’s Own today and having read Christine De Pizan’s A City of Ladies, a comparison was inevitable, as I’m sure many have done. Pizan wrote in the early fifteenth century and Woolf five centuries later, but lamenting the status of women in literature, particularly as depicted by men, and the need for women’s voices to be heard. In short, Woolf argues that women writers require a space of their own and must be financially capable of attaining and sustaining such a space and Pizan an entire city. What’s interesting is not only the relevance of Pizan’s work at the present time but her aims surpassed Woolf’s, suggesting that women have been able to acquire a space of their own. While both attempt to distance themselves from their work, Pizan by introducing three allegorical figures, Reason, Justice and Rectitude, and Woolf by introducing the first person narrator as Mary Breton. Unlike Woolf, Pizan herself is the first person narrator actively constructing a city of women. So while sexual politics are present in both texts, Pizan attempting painting women as superior beings as to oppose the common held belief of their inferiority. Woolf was aiming for something more androgynous, yet her definition of androgyny sprang from a masculinist view of literature and writing, that is not to say a patriarchal view as she clearly denounces patriarchy; that is, she aimed to write as men have written, since they’ve had a freedom of mind and space. Throughout her text, she represses any form of emotion or anger in the hopes of appearing as a rational, collected, suppressing that which is connected with the feminine, mainly emotions (I’ll have more to say on women’s writing and essentialism when I write on Cixous and Irigaray).
An abrupt ending for now!

The Lights went out: Kant’s Sublime

2011-07-04T02:11:00.000-04:00

Last night there was a storm that wiped out the power and I was reminded of both Lebanon and Liberia particularly when I took a shower by candlelight: places where both water and electricity were scarce, and still are. Though, this time, I didn’t have to worry about running out of hot water or water in general. But I was also reminded of something else, particularly of Kant’s conception of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment. He defines sublime in the said book as that “which is absolutely great.” As branches fell outside, and the unstoppable rain poured and thunder and lightning played a dramatic beat in the background and the sky began to change colours, I was faced with the absolute. The storm instilled both fear and awe, overpowering my cognitive faculties. At the same time, I became cognisant of myself as a rational and moral subject, more so of the former. For Kant, the sublime, as I understand it, registers in two parts: at first, it represents the inadequacy of our imagination, but at the same time, since we have access to it from a position of safety, we sense superiority over nature; that is, we find “a faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature." In this scene, the storm proved the inadequacies of our physical capacities, in that we are not able to resist it, yet this is revealed through our faculty of reason. In other words, the sublime subordinates our imagination to our reason.

backward

2011-07-02T01:46:00.002-04:00

i wrote this a while back, but thought to return to it:

uttering lacerated words--
like bullets searching for a lover
in a straitjacket
I reach out my hands to touch a stranger
but I’m read in reverse

insanity

2011-06-24T03:09:00.003-04:00

How does one approach insanity? By what criteria can we judge it? Is recognition sufficient to making a claim that it insanity is manifesting itself? Would Kant’s list of categories regarding the judgment of beauty—quality, quantity, relation, and modality—apply to judging insanity, particularly one’s own?
***
Insanity feels like a shadow lurking beneath moving, vibrant vessels, feigning deep sleep as it chases laminated dreams across stained pages. drained of hope it seeks meaning by aligning shattered glass, deciphering the message of a broken bottle, tossed night after night after night when the sunrise is brilliant advancing straight to the heart, but is soon enveloped by an endless chain of jasmine fragranced shadows and nothing else.

...

2011-06-03T01:07:00.003-04:00

If I had to choose one word to describe life it would be flicker. Life consists of an on and off rhythm presenting us with our greatest challenges when it's off, and all turns pitch-dark like the womb of a spider and we're asked to crawl within and against. An unsteady movement like our eyelids as we glance onto the sun. It makes you question the reality of life and all we deem real.

this conversation

2011-05-23T02:29:00.002-04:00

This conversation: a cool breeze unravelling, dispersing, awakening meaningful past moments. Spaces travelled, thoughts gathered, memories opened together. Live words erupt a streaming symphony rupturing silky blades against the winnowing night. Your words like curves, yes curves, never harsh, but expanding, soft against the dying light, moist. I listen. I move. I look. I wait. There are photographs in the background, catastrophes abroad. Politics empties cities, pouring souls to merge in tongues across the globe, all in search of proximity. They sail on edges, tattooing wet passports where the heart should be. I speak. You hear nothing.

revisiting

2011-05-06T03:13:00.001-04:00

in the dark
I clean
memories between crevices
soft, yielding
laughter

signifying shapes

2011-03-07T02:18:00.002-05:00

a moment flashes unfiltered shapes:
a series of plaited shadows:
perfect, fragile, severe.
in your absence:
stars fall:
snow.

words

2011-02-03T03:09:00.001-05:00

Strange, stranger than flesh--
Without memory, my thoughts are deep, heavy, and profound:
Tossed against a brick wall.

falling sky

2010-11-29T04:40:00.002-05:00

i don't mind if the sky chooses to fall, splutter, break, flutter
as long as I'm there to catch it

5 rivers

2010-11-29T04:17:00.003-05:00

I wrote this a while back and have just re-visited it.

I drowned in five rivers, each one at my fingertip, stipend wit.
I felt rage at each damp page, my words revolving into a rampage.
The beginning of my sin ended in Phlegethon, seared skin speared in sorrow—Acheron
Reaching out limits at Cocytus, laminated by peels of lemon, to falsify the scent of the parched yet soaked skin, to satisfy lethally legalized weapons of mass, masculine ass, Lethe, please leave a message of peace behind, a mythological yet illogically divine, support the troops, support the pores, sport the poor, sport the moor, report demure, forgot to lock the doors behind, blame it on Alzheimer.
I experience an enigmatic catharsis, as I lay in Styx, syntax diluted, arsis’ secluded concentrated by pity, pity my petulant cries, pity my peasant rhyme, pity my palms inches away from my fingertips, clipped my body stripped, dipped into five rivers till I drowned.

...

2010-11-17T20:13:00.001-05:00

There was something so condescending about his soft words, his premature smile that I had to bow down to listen.

the beginning

2010-11-16T03:31:00.001-05:00

Every time I think of the beginning, I note its loneliness, fragility and foreignness. I can never pass past the beginning, but find myself re-territorializing it in my imagination; though it is muddy, yet soft, below my feet. It is mine, but never mine to mould or emancipate; it merely reminds me of my beginning and predicts my ending. I walk with tension, hesitation and a false sense of passing.

a moving thought

2010-11-14T02:00:00.003-05:00

This flickering feeling of vitality was an accident, a trope, a metaphor, a failure. The stirring of hope under the blazing sun moved my thoughts to and fro—-a hammock. But, it was the sight of a funeral procession like a bread crumb on top an ant that reminded me that I, too, will have graffiti drawn on my grave.

closing

2010-10-31T01:56:00.002-04:00

the illusion of rebellion is fraught with reality, thoughts, memories of you and me.

what is it to be whole?

2010-10-29T15:58:00.005-04:00

to don midnight with nothing on your sleeves
but riddles on your lips,
murmured with razor-rage
because pain is worthy of speech
but only in pure, sweet darkness
where there are no shadows

2010-10-27T18:59:00.002-04:00

is a fragile beast
ready to climb down the silent shadows like vines
spread out against
all odds

this thought

2010-10-19T22:11:00.002-04:00

it’s minor, but so alive, this thought:
a thread whistling against the sinking leaves
weaving a cloud for a bit of rain
this thought

this pause

2010-09-30T22:26:00.001-04:00

this pause begins to take shape in my mind— long and warm with damp brown edges — it must’ve fallen in a puddle somewhere beneath your window outside your bedroom. perhaps, this pause is half a dozen bottles sunken in a bathtub full of blank notes. or, a shadow meandering down a velvet highway at midnight seeking revenge. or, a figure revisiting a conjecture over a ruptured bridge overlooking nothing, but an estranged space on a blank screen. or, this pause is existence.

...

2010-09-17T23:37:00.003-04:00

there must be a point to all these obscurities:
i think i glimpse it--it is in the form of a punctuation.

the switch

2010-09-15T20:22:00.002-04:00

sometimes my thoughts are suddenly interrupted by speech, and then i realize it is my own voice speaking a language I sometimes forget i speak.

false demeanour

2010-09-05T02:43:00.002-04:00

sometimes I feel that my heart is so full of weakness, as though it were a droplet suspended in my body by a diaphanous string suddenly set ablaze. a rant, a war, a comma, a whisper, awakened. sweat-escapes and riverbanks flow with censored content conceiving warm colours and a burst of siren lights. exposed. it, i, quiver. this fragility is bleak--an open space with lonely railroad tracks, cool eyes and no music. the heart is burning alive.
i replace my heart with a moon or a suitcase at the door.
it is only a feeling , but this feeling is oh so exhausting.

the obvious, sheltered

2010-08-25T01:08:00.001-04:00

strung between us is the obvious suspended because, as you sit with your chin leaning onto your palms, you change directions sans transitions as though nothing is happening and all is static. it’s a game; a frustrating game and the rules unknown to me. the sun sinks, concealing its rays, and I wonder for a moment if you are not the sun controlling shadows and etching melancholy on bodies with your disappearance. the evening grows cold and the day dies. the familiar obviousness--silently luring above—widens the distance between us, turning us into strangers.

the death of a belief, the murder of beliefs

2010-08-16T17:35:00.002-04:00

there comes a time when all of our beliefs and ideologies come to a halt; when our foot, wild and clumsy, slips—an irrevocable act—only to fall onto the brakes, despite our attempt and desire to continue on the road carefully built by our ancestors as their cattle began to die; despite our knowledge of the devastating repercussions of such a slip: we will have no inheritors on this now empty and narrow road; despite the emotional eruptions within that will surely diminish all relationships and the promise of immortal love; the fall is planned.

crossing paths

2010-08-13T01:28:00.000-04:00

i’m reminded of the silence that once spoke peripherally through our slight, subtle glances: glances always drawn like a child peering through a window, unnoticed, cautious, fearful, hiding behind the receding light. this is all pure as honey. from this i create a story that stirs the heart, sends my mind to pulsate with the thought of proximity and silk.
the glances propel a shackled memory: one tied to an open interpretation-- an open corridor where two figures sway endlessly, like lost shadows moving and colliding like a split self seeking to reunite, reassemble an imagined notion.
but, what is invoked is never confirmed.
it is in that brief flash that i lose myself.

...

2010-07-28T11:17:00.001-04:00

but i should not waste my thoughts on the infidelity of hope
on the blurriness of past images
dying counterparts
the sinking of skin

the now, the ever emerging now, is what matters.

There's no denying it, I'm getting old but

guilty

2010-07-18T01:35:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I have to be careful to draw a clear line between patience and inertia. Not to suggest that the two are easily conflated, but at times I’m guilty of doing just that. Many times I wait and wait and wait, to claim an act of patience, when in fact it’s disguised indolence: my refusal to act or to realise the pointlessness of waiting, whether it is of people to change, to finally get that paper published or simply to recognize that I will not receive an answer.

hope

2010-07-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

hope has been etched at the end of every revelation—every diaphanous utterance or the lack of -- against all logic and sanity, I have hope even as time takes flight beneath my feet and I believe myself wiser, hope continues to be the cause of every recurring regret and the deepening of every line

A Reflection on Friendship

2010-07-16T01:22:00.003-04:00

Recently I became someone’s “first foreign friend.” This statement from a former mature student of mine puzzled me. I knew for a fact that I’m not the first foreign person that he has come across, met or had some sort of relationship with (in my case, it was teacher/student relationship). He works for a company that consists of, what to him are foreigners. In addition, I was aware that he went on trips with his colleagues and boss, had barbeques and played golf. Yet, I am his first foreign friend. A bit of context may be necessary: I was teaching English as a Second Language in Calgary and he was a student from Japan that I taught in the evenings.
I, for one, highly value friendship, and believe that one must become friends before becoming lovers. But, what makes one a friend?
As I was reading an article by Todd May, “Friendship in an Age of Economics,” I began to reflect on my friendships. He argues that in today’s society we are encouraged to lead two types of relationships: consumer and entrepreneurial. He draws on Aristotle’s friendship taxonomy, who believes there are three types of friendships—those based on pleasure, on usefulness, and finally true friendship.
This “true friendship,” is non-economical and surpasses personal gain or pleasure. May writes:

Friendships worthy of the name are different. Their rhythm lies not in what they bring to us, but rather in what we immerse ourselves in. To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life. It is, while not neglecting my own life, to take pleasure in another’s pleasure, and to share their pain as partly my own.

I find myself agreeing with May, true friendship occurs when you not only values the other person, but can see and feel through his/her lens. When you choose to understand and respect someone, even if you happen to disagree. Friendship is also a process, and could emerge from an entrepreneurial relationship or one originally based on self-interest. It does not suddenly happen overnight. May further writes: “[a]nd while the time we spend with our friends and the favors we do for them are often reciprocated in an informal way, we do not spend that time or offer those favors in view of the reciprocation that might ensue.”
While friendships should be as natural as a rhythm, it does require an effort to maintain. Nor do they always flow as a stream, but may progress into a flood or regress to a trickle. But it is in those moments that true friendships are tested. And furthermore, they are often threatened by a lack of “reciprocation.” This act does not have to take a physical form, but it could be mere appreciation. And sometimes, true friendship does not always survive, but that doesn’t diminish the relationship. Without reciprocation the relationship can become enervating.
While I’m not entirely sure why that former student considers me his friend, but I am sure of, is that friendship defies a clear definition. I’m grateful to be considered a friend and hope to embody such a role. It’s only fitting to end with a wonderful quotation from Aristotle: "What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies." But, what is a soul?

a damp conjecture

2010-07-14T12:15:00.000-04:00

a pot of words and each is unveiled
the subtext uncovered
but, i speculate a misreading
your face closing in on the heat
stirring and re-reading
each letter boiling, no longer pulsating
you deconstruct what is not said:
a deadly clash between reality
and a starving imagination

2010-07-14T00:45:00.000-04:00

I keep oscillating between diverging ideas, devoting my time to seeking truth, but what is more elusive than truth?

But, perhaps, that is the beauty of knowledge.

a note

2010-07-07T00:39:00.000-04:00

i
spilled letters on your concrete balcony
on the 6th floor
with a light bulb sputtering above my head
streets shimmering with shadows
the road coming to an abrupt end
i scattered my words to share a self, a self self-moulded.
i contemplated brevity, honesty, solitude and love
but
my mind-- always a sinking ship--
i barely remember the colour of your eyes
whose obsession was of death
who won the war and
who wore a straitjacket
and
above all
I’m need of a response

history

2010-07-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

consists of bodies--faces down--beneath a floating map in black water

Historians

revise gasps and mark graves with graffiti.

taken aback

2010-06-20T00:47:00.003-04:00

our glances--like a stranger’s cigar-smoke in a distance rising to the warm azure sky--disperse
and a procession creases your forehead.

memories

2010-06-14T22:57:00.004-04:00

have you ever swam to the bottom of a memory?
an unravelling song of sadness and sinking scripts amid seaweed
a scene of a hand slipping, struggling to find some solace
stones sliding down the spines of secret lovers
a cleansing of wounds washed ashore
summer brush-strokes on a wooden canoe under sparkling stars
a smiling figure swaying silently -– someone, somewhere that meant something
silver silhouettes sympathizing with dying souls

But, perhaps some memories are bottomless:
sudden flashes with no end

bystander

2010-06-08T22:35:00.002-04:00

I watch a battle between a dream—unlit—sinking
and reality—narrow—bleeding :
Intimacy is always at the edge of an ache, a crack, a rupture
ready to leap over the edge of a rupturing crack

a ripple

2010-06-03T23:26:00.002-04:00

This is the thing about old wounds — they are threads of bursting rivers winding and spiralling between the palms of a stranger whose persistent whispers form tidal waves.

to travel per chance to live

2010-05-29T21:20:00.002-04:00

i yearn to travel with purposelessness to a feathery-clad heaven
and sleep on palm trees that bare freedom -- meandering
around the tips--
i carry the evening sky in a bottle, strawberry-flavoured
sweet as a shimmering romance on sparkling springs
echoing beethoven’s schicksal

a line

2010-05-23T18:35:00.001-04:00

Let’s make it a bit more complicated, shall we: your soul, a pavement -- open, bare, concrete; my soul, a cloud —- translucent, light, intangible.

...

2010-05-20T23:27:00.007-04:00

i have concluded that the centre of my life is not whole, but a self-disguised universe full of blurry stars and a hand-woven moon. this "centre" lies in the corner of the sleeping house of sleepy souls and sleepless nights. within in it, i’m nearly opened and as lucid as an opaque glass filled with fog.

at night

2010-05-08T03:53:00.001-04:00

i have a pristine mind with memories growing like fungi, mossy. my cerebral twigs slightly detached, but stacked up on top of one another, like stairs. thoughts, like green leaves, spread out, until tinted with ashen gold.

questions

2010-05-07T01:08:00.002-04:00

there are questions waiting, ready to jump off my tongue whenever you pass by. your warm smile, distant: a fairy tale. what makes you happy? do you think of the endless starry sky at night? will you bare your soul to me? what language do you own? do you shudder at some thoughts? what thoughts? do you ever plunge into nostalgia? what do you call home? a home? what makes you smile?
but there are some inconsistencies you see, or perhaps you don't. i hope you don’t mind, but i touched your heart, despite my hesitations and fears, as i’ve always wanted to, with some mumbling and fumbling in the dark, but it was ice cold.

elongated sigh

2010-05-06T00:13:00.001-04:00

inexplicable internal wounds sigh
after sigh after sigh after sigh after
birth
marks slight turbulence of half erected clichés—perhaps my worst sin—rise like barbed wires along the spine
less worships of half-emptied mutterings

emotional wreckage

2010-05-04T20:32:00.001-04:00

mind befuddled by strange sightings of a heart colliding with sharp tongues applauding pale limps collapsing beneath a zooming train

doubt

2010-04-30T19:28:00.003-04:00

Searching for the most condign word to describe my current sentiment, but I'm left without a semblance of a word or an imagined understanding. Consternation, perhaps. Loss, possibly. No word seems to suffice. This feeling comes and goes, like J Alfred Prufrock's women that "talk of Michelangelo."
Maybe it is doubt. Must be.
A glimmer of doubt, and I am emptied.

a thought

2010-04-27T01:28:00.000-04:00

i stumbled across a thought. it was as light as a fingerprint that travelled the dust-infested leaves of Paradise Lost only to collapse in depth, deeper than the sleep of death. it has become an obsession of mine to play that thought like a piano note that blossoms in medias res . nothing is but what this thoughts is. i wanted to possess it, but it seems to have possessed me.

silent films

2010-04-18T13:13:00.002-04:00

I’ve recently decided to use silent films in class, and I have to say, I’ve fallen in love with silent films, especially those directed by Fritz Lang. I’ve found that silent films speak to a much wider audience than any modern film can, which is most fitting when teaching EFL/ESL as these films will communicate to them beyond the sign. I plan to show them a scene from a silent film once a week, and will ask them to either summarize what they feel took place or write dialogue for the characters--to fill in the spaces, so to speak.

an abandoned thought

2010-04-15T01:27:00.001-04:00

i’ve taken account of everything, so careful not to offend, not to tread the wrong ground. the edits, cuts, bruises and notes strained with brown tea -- staining a vacant lot-- sit in the cool darkness of your shadow. this is not because of your fragility but my own.

peripatetic observation

2010-04-12T23:42:00.003-04:00

as I was rushing to catch the train, while putting on my gloves, an inebriated stranger said to me, “you walk the walk of love.” i ignored him as I searched for my transit ticket in order to validate it in time. then, i began to think of his ambulatory remark. what does it mean to walk the walk of love? does the season play a role? the bees buzzing or the snow skipping? how about the time of day? the sun soaring or the skyline submerging? or is it solely in the eyes of the observer, distant, speculative and under the influence of, um, some song in his head.
though i don’t think it was/is my style of walking, if anything i walk the walk of feigned urgency: always in a hurry to get nowhere.

Alzheimer

2010-04-09T02:21:00.002-04:00

there’s a rope, motionless, tight as a snake, under the blanketed tree, though it’s spring

there’s a thought, skipping over seasons, keen to make you smile, though you are misty

there’s a light, sputtering, beneath your eyelids, that I’ve worshipped, though only in my sleep

there’s a scar, flawless, sharp, beating against my flesh, though the story is a fable I can’t remember

2010-04-06T01:58:00.002-04:00

sometimes we must endure our own haunting silence, when words are held captive by waves that carry the carved notes of someone’s passing, now deteriorating in the shimmering waters, letters dissipate and clarity collapses against the pale, concrete walls without windows.

in a hurry

2010-04-04T03:46:00.001-04:00

we’re always in an absurd hurry that we don’t take notice of love: pale, luminous and free, dipping into the glistening black water