decoration day

Music: Tom Vek: Leisure Seizure (2011)

Until the first famous president from Texas made it a federal law in 1966, Memorial Day was a holiday observed at various times throughout the year depending, of course, on the state and community. In Texas, Decoration Day was celebrated on the birthday of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis (June 3rd). A statue of Davis sits on the quad here at the University of Texas greeting visitors as part of the marble statue welcome wagon, the infamous "Littlefield Gateway," perched among other notable confederate leaders and, er, George Washington.

(George W. Littlefield was among the first wealthy regents of the University of Texas and a powerful figure in its governance in the early 20th century; a plantation worker and eventually owner, as well as a Civil War veteran, Littlefield sought to make UT a university that preserved the history of the south---in other words, he wanted to make UT the preserver of confederate heritage and southern pride.)

In other parts of the country, such as in South Carolina among African American communities, and especially in the northern states, Decoration Day was celebrated on May 30th to honor fallen Union soldiers. Many in the south refused to recognize the holiday, which is why they did their own decorating on June 3rd. LBJ changed all of that, as did the country, when the angry, white, southern part of it saw the light (the rest had already let the light in).

The shift in name from "Decoration Day" to "Memorial Day" means a lot of rhetorical maneuvering had to have went down--there's a dissertation in that. Regardless, the holiday was originally so-named in reference to the practice of literally decorating the graves of interred soldiers with flowers, trinkets, flags, and so forth. The holiday is a decidedly morbid tradition that harkens to cemetery life in the 19th century. Many of us are far removed from this funerary culture, one in which the cemetery was understood as a park, a place to go with the family and have a picnic, to commune with the dead. Changing the name of the holiday, in many ways, reflects a change in how we think about death (it's no longer part of the living room), as well as how we think about war. Modern warfare combined with various forms of technology---weaponry and communication, which are now mind-bogglingly fused---have erased the traces of bodies. Government officials and those who dedicate their lives to public service are closer to the tradition, and the U.S. government does a lot to make sure the citizenry doesn't forget what the holiday is about (remember the dead soldier).

The strangeness of Memorial Day, to me, is that it has become almost thoughtless. Whether it's the rabid, nationalist-type celebrating god, guns, and glory, or the cynical, anti-war type who had just rather avoid the crazy nationalist-types, it's hard to find a middle-road for remembrance here. Well, I say that it's hard, but it's really not; I think because of our hyper-apocalyptic media cycles, it's simply difficult to imagine a subjectivity in which quiet remembrance at home, alone, without a grill in sight or someone telling you how to think---is possible. It is (I'm writing this, anyhoo.) This afternoon at 3:00 p.m., I will take a moment---as many are starting to do---to really think about our dead soldiers, the profound sacrifices they made, the complexities of war (and it's unfortunate necessity), the mistakes those who wage wars made, how I wish war---as "fun" as it is to some folks---was a thing of the past (how we'd be better off making love, but with protection), and so on. I am fortunate that, while many members of my family have been in wars, and a handful of my friends, none have died. I suppose memorial day is odd to me because (thankfully) I do not have a grave to decorate. But that doesn't mean I don't know someone who does.

And, finally, I want to think about memorial day the way it originally went down: it's about racism and hate, and the people who were motivated to fight in league with these motives or against them. Memorial Day is ultimately a holiday that concerns the horror of slavery. Perhaps this is why the name of the holiday has changed? Perhaps we no longer decorate graves because the practice localizes demoralization memorialization to a specific, geography that too easily evokes "north" and "south?" Perhaps we have changed the name of the holiday, and expanded the dead to include any solider in any war, because we have finally moved beyond hate and racism?

Well, that is perhaps too optimistic. One person's "moving forward" is another person's "historical amnesia," right? Very few of the students walking past the statue of Jefferson Davis will realize his connection to the holiday today. I'm not sure if that's a good thing---that a divided North/South is no longer a defining point of one's identity---or if it's something to lament. But it's something, nonetheless, and an indefinable, vexed, and complicated "something" is usually what holidays centered on death are about anyway. So let's be ambivalent about Memorial Day. And let's be comfortable and undecided about that ambivalence. We have this luxury. The interred soldier does not . . . and, in a complicated, non-clichéd sense, all the more reason to honor him or her.

it's synth-pop friday!

r.i.p. janet the wonder-rescue kitty (unknown, 19XX---may 23, 2011).

Music: The Decemberists: The King is Dead (2011)

I've returned from the vet, having made the decision to put my last foster kitty to sleep. This is the third cat I've put down in as many years, so I do think my career as a rescue foster is over. It's too much; I'm just not cut out for the sad part of fostering.

I came home today to find Janet trapped in the handle of a basket (where I have an electric blanket for the cats). At first it was comical, until I noticed after I freed her she was having convulsions. I rushed her to the vet, where she was quickly diagnosed with hypoglycemic shock. Apparently, her insulin dose was too high (she was diagnosed as diabetic only five weeks ago). I was told it was a "uphill battle" to save her, and even then, she may have brain damage. The uphill battle for the next two days was $1400 (two days in the kitty hospital). I decided the best course was to let her go. A hard decision, but in the end, I think a humane one. The vet techs and doctors agreed, so that was a comfort.

I'll miss this fierce old lady---she came back from the brink of death more than once. She was a fighter. She was also aggressive with her affections, and determined to wake me at the crack of dawn every morning.

Her story is a sad one (I detail it here). But, in the end, she did have some good years while she was with me. And for that I am grateful. Goodbye sweet Janet.

on depression

Music: Bon Iver: self-titled (2011)

A friend and colleague passed along a link to an interesting article in Scientific American about proposed revisions for the DSM-5, slated for publication in 2013. Currently, the manual specifies a two-month waiting period for the diagnosing the aggrieved with clinical depression. Grieving is a fact of life, something all of us have or will endure, and feelings of sadness after the passing of a loved one are generally recognized as "normal" from just about any perspective. The psychological community only deems a sadness persisting more than two months as a possible, clinical depression. The proposed revisions would lift this two-month test, making the treatment of depression possible to grievers almost immediately after the event of their loved-one's death.

The article is interesting and relevant to my personal life at the moment. I have been mourning my granny's death, and then more recently, the death of a dear friend's sister. As I said to a buddy recently smoking a pipe on my patio, "How have I been? Well, sad. I'm in a depression." At my age, I don't have any problem calling a thing what it is; if I'm depressed, I just say so. If I'm happy, I just say so. I name it. I'm depressed. Period. It's not despondency. It's not wanting to get out of bed. It's not the thought of razor blades. It's not having a desire to work or write or research or grade. It's just, so, . . meh.

Perhaps I use the word "depression" too immoderately, which is the core issue of the DSM controversy (for professionals, what's at stake in the revision is pharmaceutical profits---surprise!). Depression, in general, refers to an unwarranted sadness---a sadness that is deemed to be too profound for the exigency, either in depth or duration. Having been in long-term, loving relationships with the clinically depressed, I understand why the DSM defines the condition as it does; I've seen it.

Of course, in psychoanalytic theory depression is not always defined as a pathological condition; for Melanie Klein the "depressive position" is one in which the subject realizes others are autonomous wholes. One worries about harming others in such a position, and by working through depression one comes to a more ethical relationship to others. The lesson Klein teaches us is that depression is not bad, that being depressed my be instructive and goad one toward a more humane disposition toward other people.

Regardless, since I'm very clearly in a space of sadness---and because I'm wont to intellectualize my feelings as a way of working-through---I've been thinking a lot today about the difference between sadness and depression. Obviously the "two month" waiting period for diagnosing the first as really the second is completely arbitrary . . . but I want to say I side with those who resist the revision to the new edition of the DSM, and not on socialist grounds (viz., my objection to pharmaceutical capitalism). Mouring and grieving are inevitable, human experiences and we all must "deal." Enduring one's grief and pain is a good thing, crying is good, it allows one to experience an life that is largely unconscious most of the time. In dreams we encounter our mortality, often in terms of the nightmare. But rarely are we made to confront the raw emotion of death as a senseless inevitability. And I think that confrontation is good and necessary.

If we were only made to confront the fragility of life and the senselessness of death more often, perhaps Klein was right: we'd be more ethical people. We certainly wouldn't get so mad when that bad driver cuts us off on I-35.

Eh, I guess it comes down to the felt certitude that I don't want to die, and I don't want you to die either. That we both will go that way is reason enough to get depressed. But, depression is not always a bad thing. Yes, depression is frequently so miserable that it is a bad thing, and I very much want the depths of the clinical disorder cured. But I think what I mean to say is that sadness, in general, is a humanizing affect that we should not banish. There is even enjoyment in sadness, a kind of enjoyment that makes us be better toward one another.

I've noticed these past few weeks I've been the most moral, best version of myself in the wake of death; there's a reason for that. I'd like to be the grieving me toward others all the time, but without, you know, the grief.

sleeping troubles

Music: Bon Iver: [self-titled] (2011)

I have troubles. Among them, sleeping troubles. I never had these troubles until graduate school, and they have worsened over the years. It's often like my psyche is a hard drive that refuses to "spin down," and with little or no control of images from the day, conversations and so forth, as they circulate. I've worked with my doctor to find an alternative to my favorite sleep aid (bourbon), and we've tried a number of things.

Mostly, though, the best remedy is to live a less stressed life and to exercise. I have achieved at least one of these (the exercise). Who knew professorship was so stressful? Well, my professors I suppose. But I wasn't told that. My nighttime anxieties have lessened significantly since tenure, as there is a sense of security in that, now in these increasingly dire economic times. Right now benedryl is my "aid" of choice. I have also found that when school is not in session, I can usually get to sleep without having any aid. That tells me something about "school" . . . .

To help me with sleeping, I make sure my bed is also one of the most comfortable places to be. Some years ago I bought a king size memory foam mattress, which I love (after I got used to it). I have a few sets of very expensive bedclothes, and a weighty but still not too hot cover. I have a bazillion pillows. It's all very comfy, and I reasoned, if I'm going to splurge on something, the bed is not a bad place to do so.

One of the biggest issues I have with sleeping is not getting to sleep, but staying there. I'm usually in my deepest, most satisfying sleep in the later morning hours between four and seven or so. I usually try to get up around 8:00 a.m., however, since school has been out I've been rising at nine. Unfortunately, early morning is where the troubles often begin.

Today I had planned to "sleep in" as long as I wished. The first trouble is that my bladder would not comply. About five a.m. I took care of bidness, and hopped back into bed. As soon as I got back to sleep, Janet the rescue kitty decided it was time for me to get up and started meowing, loudly. I threw a pillow at her. Unphased, Janet continued, ever-louder, until I had to get up to investigate. She usually wants water, so I went to fill her water bowl only to discover it was full. I told her to shut up and got back in bed.

My neighbor two doors down, whom I adore, recently adopted a dog, Andy, whom I hate with the passion of a thousand young stars. About seven or so my neighbor releases the Cracken Andy into the front yard to do his business, which, alas, is not peeing but barking. Right outside my bedroom window. A high pitched, little-shit-of-a-dog bark. I'm wide awake.

The effing dog finally shuts up, and I go back to sleep. Here comes Janet again, meowing . . . . She shuts up, but the my other cat Psappho pushes a food bowl off the counter and it crashes into the tile floor.

Fuck it. I'm up. It's 8:00 a.m. I give up. Might as well just dance:

it's synth-pop friday!

what's a regent, exactly?

Music: Bon Iver: [self titled] (2011)

Most of the readers of Rosechron are my friends, and then interested academic types, as many of the things I discuss here have an academic character. I'm not afraid to share my ignorance or my learning process, and this post is in that vein: I don't quite understand what a Board of Regents is, or what it actually does, in respect to the governance of a university.

How can I be a tenured professor and not know what a board of regents does?

Well, it happens. As a junior you are encouraged to put your head down and do your work and teach. The service-hydra doesn't emerge until after you are "vested." And then you look up and start to notice this massive machine whirring . . . administrators, complicators . . . er, governors.

Part of my ignorance has to do with the wide variability of such a critter state-to-state: in some states, regents have an advisorly role; in some states, regents have a lot of power over university governance. In some private school sectors, the regency takes on a fundraising role. And here in Texas, there are multiple regencies. It's all very confusing to the younger academic who does not have the historical background.

As a "side hobby," I've decided that this summer I will dedicate a little free time to exploring the nature of university governance and how the system works. My interest is sparked, obviously, by the recent political events regarding Governor Good Hair, the appointment of regents to the A&M and UT systems, and the so-called "flagship wars" occurring here in Texas. The newspapers have been running story after story about Perry's appointees to these regencies, their ties to a conservative political think-tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the neoliberal policies this foundation champions. Reading all of these stories, it occurred to me I just don't understand what the Board of Regents is or what it actually does.

Here's the thing: I don't think 85% of my colleagues, if that, knows this stuff either. Like any contemporary system, each of its parts does its little job, not having a full grasp of the whole.

I had thought for years, since the Texas boards consist of various appointees mostly from the big bidness world (including "big oil"), that the regency was largely a fundraising and advisorly committee, as well as the brains behind financing the whole shebang---the chancellor is the CEO, etc. It's clear, however, the Board of Regents of both the A&M and UT system play a much larger role than I had assumed. I know that, at the inception of the state university system, they ran the whole show. I also thought that, over the century, they became something like Blavatsky's Secret Chiefs---advising from a distance. I know they've got the power to fire the university president, and they've done so in the past. But I'm still a bit fuzzy about the power structure and how this all works.

I had planned to blog tonight about the recent events here at the University of Texas; the story dropped today that at the same time the regents were endorsing the chancellor's recent statements regarding the autonomy of the university, at least one regent was on a micromanaging bent behind the scenes. But as I started writing the post it occurred to me I cannot say anything truly informative unless I was informed myself---unless I knew what the true nature of the regency was, their power, and their role. Talking to my friend Rosa tonight on the phone, it became clear I'm too ignorant to actually say something substantive at all.

So, stay tuned. When I learn, I'll pass it on.

. . . and the gnashing of teeph.

Music: The Echelon Effect: Seasons ¼ (2011)

While I am on the topic of the educational apocalypse in Texas, a one-two punch in leading national educational policy pulse-reading rags came out in the New York Times and Inside Higher Ed (and, of course, Jamie pointed us to the damning critique of educational administrators in The Nation last week). Many of the problems in higher education that these pieces discuss have been discussed for years. I can only assume these issues are getting more popular attention because of spectacular state budget slashing (For example, formula One racing is getting 25 million a year from Texas taxpayers, while the senate and house dither over whether they cut the university budget by 16% or 20% percent). The basic exigency here is simply that few if any educated adults think that education is bad. Cutting education budgets is akin to Sophie's choice or self-amputation, so it makes sense that we are seeing more and more popular assessments of higher education. Call it a public hand-wringing of national import.

I think we can also make the case that these popular stories are part of a larger mourning process. Some of the authors disagree about whether there was a "golden age" of education (I'm inclined to agree with those who say there never was a "good time"), but they are united in their melancholy tones and admissions: the university has been corporatized. It's done. The way the work of mourning gets done, however, is interesting.

The Times Op-Ed "Your So-Called Education" argues that public education has been dumbed-down, and this is the result of a shift from an apprentice to a factory model (my analogy, not theirs). Students are reading and writing less in their classes, and outcome assessment is geared toward customer service. Because students feel more empowered and because educational faculty and administrators have increasingly less authority over the classroom, the implication is that, before long, all universities will operate like the University of Phoenix.

To improve the poor quality of a college education, the authors argue, we need to re-empower administrators and instructors. Resources aside, empowering both requires educators to rely less on teaching evaluations, which they argue create "perverse" incentives to dumb-down content and inflate grades. Give power back to the faculty, and learn to assess in ways that are geared toward education, not satisfaction.

This suggestion seems to me both correct and naive. The ideology of neoliberalism, you'll recall, functions by reducing all value to the number, all quality to calculation. This is, of course, at odds with teaching, which often trucks in affect and bodily intangibles (such as the role, for example, of excitement or curiosity about ideas). Now, the authors of the op-ed are right in calling for a change in how we assess---that, say, relying more on peer reviews of teaching and less on student satisfaction surveys better captures curiosity and excitement (presumably in narrative). But this, seems to me, is impossible to enact when states are everywhere imposing new measures of accountability that do precisely the opposite. Here in Texas, for example, the push is reduce the state-sanctioned value of every professor in terms of the number of students s/he teaches (see the story here). In fact, word on the beat is that the A&M chancellor resigned last week because of this assessment fiasco (apparently his attempt to weight professor ratings by accommodating more complex measures was met with disapproval). The assessment of faculty is no longer a simple, self-directed matter; it is political factor and will continue to remain so unless we public university employees push for what may be inevitable privatization (which Penn State is apparently doing).

Inside Higher Ed's piece, "In For Nasty Weather: Life for College Professors is No Longer What it Once Was," is much more pessimistic. This peace focuses on the job or role of the professor and how it has changed over the last thirty years or so. The author does an excellent job explaining the systemic problem of higher education, rightfully detailing how neoliberalism is the ideology behind it and showing multiple strands of causality: the rise of adjuncts and the general decline of the tenured professoriate; the increasingly pervasive, cultural suspicion of "academic elites"; the replacement of a model of expertise with the service model; and "brain drain." This essay advances an interesting counterpart to the NYT op-ed: if the quality of education is growing poorer because it's being "dumbed-down" in the service of the market, then the professoriate is, well, we're "dumbing-down" too. The suggestion is that our most brilliant and gifted young minds are simply choosing to not become an educator because they are, well, because they are smart. The result is an army of adjuncts apparently too dumb to realize they are being explointed.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with the implications of this essay (who doesn't know an adjunct who is brilliant and awesome?), but in general I think the author catches the complexity of the situation.

I must move on to grading, which is a part of my job that, I confess, I would be thrilled to outsource! I have two reactions to these and related essays. First: they don't discuss why those of us who are educators are educators. We like it. There is something addictive about research, about ideas, and about getting students excited about learning. Somehow this "magical" part of our job doesn't get discussed. If the question asked by some of these pulse-readers is, "why would anyone in their right-mind go into education?" the answer has something to do with words like "passion" or "romantic" or "addiction." Neoliberalism has colonized the academy like the bodysnatcher aliens, to be sure, but have we become interchangeable clones? No. So while I agree with the apocalyptic mood, I wish these essays also admitted there is a little joy in this chosen profession.

Second: these essays, and others like them over the years, annoy me because they ignore service-course driven fields, like communication or rhetoric and composition. They begin from assumptions that are not true of most fields that were born in the land-grant university era. I find just about every assertion about faculty---that they can't be bothered to teach ugrads, or that they have no face time with ugrads, or that we teach irrelevant stuff, etc.----patently false when communication studies is taken into account.

It may be helpful for this national dialogue for someone from communication studies and/or composition studies to craft a short essay targeted to NYT or IHE that singles out communication studies as a "style" of education or what have you that is uniquely poised to meet some of our contemporary challenges. I'm not saying how we do it is perfect, but I do think our land grant based origins creates a completely different attitude toward students that our field has had from its inception. I need to think more through it, but in the three departments I've been a member of, I have simply never had the sense that we are not in regular contact with ugrads; quite the opposite. Nor is my department (or college) overrun with adjuncts.

What do we do, then, that's so different from departments of anthropology or physics? And how can we recommend that up? I couldn't take the lead on such a piece because I am ignorant of most administrative issues in higher ed; but I'd be willing to help.

falling hammers

Music: Ray Wylie Hubbard: A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is No C) (2010)

Political showman and state senator Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio successfully had his "conceal-and-carry" bill appended to a higher education budget bill, which passed today. It appears this bill is a done deal. Another bill passed that forgoes parental permission for paddling in public schools, too. The ominous parallels. Ominous. Parallels.

As I reported in February, in keeping with the observations of Barry Brummett, the proposed legislation has been misreported---and in part because of Wentworth's own rhetoric. The conceal-and-carry permissions only extend to those Texas citizens who already have a conceal-and-carry license, which are not available to most undergraduates (who are not old enough). Still, Wentworth is portraying this a bill to help students arm themselves against the next crazed rampage. Nope. Most of the students who will be able to legally pack heat would be graduate students. Yes, this begs the question, but I isn't gonna ask that one.

These bills were just a part of a larger storm of educational politics in Texas. UT President Bill Powers gave an interesting speech on Monday that announced things will need to change at UT, while holding steadfast to "flagship" policy written into the Texas constitution. Unquestionably Powers' speech was designed toward two ends: (1) to "rally" the base---powerful alums and faculty and such---and let them know there's a "war goin' on" and to let "us" know that he will not let Texas politics dismantle the "first class" status of UT; and (2) to deploy the politically savvy suggestion that UT is already down with a program of reform, as if to take the wind out of the sails of the more anti-intellectual crowd (four of whom were appointed by Perry to the regency recently). The rhetoric of the university administration is usually fairly restrained, so I find the UT president's recent verbosity something to take note of.

Although I would stop short of saying UT educational politics is transparent, the fact is that the system's numbers are fairly, well, transparent. Salaries of every state employee are freely available, and budgetary numbers are not difficult to find. Some years ago, preparing for the worst, the UT administration started trimming and cutting and making a war chest. Anticipating cuts, 15% of the budget has been trimmed in anticipation of what the legislature will do (and this based on a "heads-up" Perry issued some years ago in a series of memos). Currently this anticipation is in keeping with the senate bill, which hovers around %16.1 . . . but the worry is the house bill, which is suggesting around 20%. Word on the beat is that legislators will not settle on a budget by the May 20th deadline, and thus will hurl into a special session—incurring more nail biting. Educational policy wonks are saying the delay may be good for UT, in the end, as it will give time for people to get upset about their kid's educational cut-backs and inspire phone-calls and such.

I'm not sure, however, what to make of all this hubbub. Given the rather dire things that are happening to friends across the country (my field, Communication Studies, is solidly a land-grant/state school kind of department), it's easy to imagine all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios. When I started this gig in higher education, I came to the conclusion that apocalyptic rhetoric was grafted into the university as such; I've never not known of coming doom as an educator. When I started graduate school, my department was in danger of dissolution---the dark mood started then. I confess I just wrote it off as part of the culture; it's certainly a part of disciplinarity.

But, having now become a "partner" in this particular academic firm, I'm taking the time to look up from my work and get a lay of the land---I'm trying to get a sense of the bigger picture in academe. As an assistant professor, my job was to keep my head down, to teach and to research. As I did this job longer, my responsibilities increased: now I'm trying to help others become teacher-scholars, and so the investment is more, well, more invested. And when you start worrying about the welfare of your students, you start thinking about the institutional environment and structures. I'm still not so jaded as to discourage students from going to graduate school. I still believe "service fields" like Communication Studies and Rhetoric and Composition will always have a place at the educational table because we teach basic literacies---literacies that are vital for civil society. I am, however, almost prepared to join Team Chicken-Little.

If Texas is seen as a symptom---and for all sorts of reasons, this state often is---then the current battles between the university system and the legislature and politicians should be troubling. For me, the trouble is not that the university has moved over to the business model; that one is a done deal. It's lamentable, but unless you work for Hampshire College, it's done-gone happened. The trouble is what kind of model is being pushed through, "accountability" and "outcome based" stuff, measuring teaching effectiveness in terms of degrees granted and how much money professors bring in to the institution, trying to double enrollments by requiring online courses, and so forth.

Today I had a former student---from 2006---visiting me during office hours to ask if I would write her a letter of recommendation for law school. She works for a non-profit, non-partisan child-advocacy lobbying group working to help disadvantaged youth. She said she decided to go to law school because she wants to work on policy, and right now she doesn't have the credentials. She said our class together was inspirational, and that's why she thought of me as a potential letter writer. The basic problem with the bottom-line models advocated by non-educator politicians is this: how do you quantify this kind of passion? My class didn't motivate this young person to pursue a life of public service. I know this. But the class did encourage her to think about issues in ways that connect to values, public-belonging, and . . . well, nothing that can be quantified.

More importantly: this former student thought it was important to drive three hours to have a face-to-face meeting, in "real space." She could have just emailed the request. That she did not tells us something about education. Online is fine, but only as a supplement. When we eliminate bodies-in-space from education entirely, we're not educating the whole.

arboreal

Music: Twilight Singers: Dynamite Steps (2011)

Jeanette was eighteen at the time of this photograph. She was the fifth of six children; she was born in 1920 to pick cotton but figured out her own path, away from the sun---but never far from cotton; when she didn’t sow and pick it, she sewed it. The photograph is from 1938, a year before she would marry my grandfather and, I think, not long after she moved from Centerville to Atlanta, Georgia. The image bespeaks hope, perhaps rebellion.

Centerville was, and in some sense remains, a rural place. Barbed wire still lines the fields, even though the farms have shrunk and given way to a Waffle House and a McDonalds and a post office. Just three miles down Zoar Church Road, where my grandmother lived a life, Rockbridge Baptist Church still stands on highway 124, still with both sanctuaries. The old sanctuary had pinewood paneled walls and has this painting hanging over the altar. The new building was erected when granny took me there, in my preteens. I don’t know what it looks like now, twenty years since I sat in its pews. I do know that no one I know still goes there. The church went charismatic; pews were apparently removed for floor mats, for the laying on of hands. That’s when granny left, when the values laid deep resisted the hypnotic pulpit. Still, I remember the raised palms and nascent tongues---it was, as it always has been, only a matter of time.

My grandmother was a teenage punk. It’s the hat, and the lipstick.

The plummeting neckline on the summer dress is not Centerville. The vectors slant back, to the left, a Western conceit that connotes “looking back.” She’s looking back to the small, unincorporated town where she was born and raised, with the best smile she can muster for the camera (granny smiled a lot, often laughed, but getting her to do this “natural” gesture for the camera was always a challenge). She moved to Atlanta to start a new life as a seamstress in a factory. My family doesn’t know much about the two years she was there; she married Bob in 1939, we reckon they met in high school, but the details are fuzzy. By 1940 she was back in Centerville and starting a family, had my aunt Hilda, and then Bob was conscripted and off to war (pilot, crane operator, fought in Germany). When Bob came back he wasn’t the same. Over the next thirty years he would drink himself to death, at the year of my birth.

I never knew my grandfather. Over the years I’ve had snippets of stories, but mostly, he is (deliberately) not discussed. Last year for Christmas my mother gifted me a scrapbook she made about my grandfather, filling in some of the history I do not have. Mostly it consists of photographs. And there are some letters, handwritten notes he penned my grandmother from overseas, and they are lovely and dear and hard to square with contemporary life; these are letters written with the subtext of possible, unpredictable death over the second World War. My mother also gave me some postcards---not included in the scrapbook, as they depict naked women. And a few notes with dirty limericks he penned.

It’s easy to romanticize this old photograph of my 18-year-old grandmother, looking back on a farming life, now living in the “big city,” the lipstick proclaiming a certain independence, that neckline gesturing a certain confidence, that smile a resolute strength. It’s easy because my granny was the unknowing mother, a woman who raised me but who did not have the obligation of molding me (even though, we know, she did; I spent more time with her than I did with my mother in some important and formative years). As most of our grandparents do not do, she never passed judgment---she didn’t complain about the length of my hair, or tell me I was straying from the righteous path. She took me to church, every Sunday. She fed me buttermilk biscuits. And she taught me how to catch possums in a trap (and then let them go).

So much of my young life was spent on Zoar Church road, on granny’s porch; across the street I talked to the cows and, sometimes, even petted them through the barbed wire fence. Sometimes I walked through the small cemetery on the other side of the road; the church kept the gravel fresh. Small, pea-sized gravel, not the big chunks that made for driveways (I think that was on purpose).

I phoned and talked to my mother today, as we do every Sunday. It goes without saying---although I need to say it---that this was a harder Mother’s Day than I remember. Granny died last week. She was dying for a long time, stroke after stroke, eyes cloudy and ever cloudy, and I had mourned her death many years ago, when I first beheld her vacant eyes, in the home, where old people are sent to die. God, I hated that place.

Nursing homes are hospices; they smell of death and rotting flesh and callused caring; they sound of moans and cursing mouths routed from brains whose censors have rotted away.

But, in her death, I don’t hate---her place or mine or my mother’s or anyone’s. I’m in a sad place, a mournful one to be sure. Granny was a parent, and losing a parent is always hard, for everyone. I know. But, she was my granny, my confidant and for so many years my constant, my Waffle House dining companion and my gardening coach. And so now she’s gone, and today is an echo of so many years, of memories flitting in my head of a time of waiting, of waiting to grow up. Being a grown-up is a reckoning with death. It’s easy to understand, in the wake, why we are prone to romanticize the small stuff, or revise history, or justify the casserole (I’m sorry, one-dish meals still suck).

I miss you granny---I miss you Jeanette. I miss your laughter. I miss your “You be good now.” I miss our bi-annual trips to the Waffle House when I came home. I even miss your stubborn refusal to die.

it's synth-dustrial friday!

the problem with lex talionis

Music: Pearl Jam: Ten (1991)

Sitting outside at a café in my old, high-school days haunt, Little Five Points, I can barely hear the piped in Pearl Jam, no doubt a celebration of its twentieth year. “You can move with that thing,” says a homeless man to me passing by. I don’t know what he’s referring to, perhaps the laptop?

Inside the café grabbing my drink, television screens blared the “Ding Dong” song, This American House has landed on Osama, curling his toes and sending him into the deep green sea---apparently an insult to militant Muslims everywhere and a measure to prevent the inevitable Afghani musical to come, Wicked II: Osama Bugaloo.

I awoke this morning to an invitation to a happy hour, apparently organized by graduate students: “This is a Big Fucking Deal Happy Hour,” with the advisory, “obviously, we need a drink, and a debriefing. In that order. Come to hole and we can chat boots in the ass--the american way, as well as implications for our work.” Huh. A debriefing and discussion is definitely in order, but I don’t know if a celebration is to be had. I cannot attend anyway, emerging from mourning with my family here many states away.

I have always had a problem with “an eye for an eye,” which equates to what I would call “dirty justice,” otherwise known as “hard ball.” When I head the news that Bin Laden was given a “sea burial”---which means, of course, he was rather unceremoniously dumped in the ocean---I thought it was so odd, given that Saddam was brought to justice and afforded every international right available to him. The gesture made with Hussein was no doubt costly and highly controversial, but it at least communicated to the world that the West was not above the law---the rule of law, which amounts to the promise of one’s word. The rule of law is perhaps the most noble achievement of human kind, and stands in civil distinction from lex talionis.

The assassination of Osama itself is a thorny issue, and I’ll need to think more about it. The celebration of the assassination, however, is morally problematic. Such a celebration plays into the rhetoric of monstrosity, a patterned discourse rooted in a soul-deep habit of scapegoatism that functions by projecting personal weakness and misdeeds onto some monstrous other for absolution. The ticker-lines that read, “Osama is Dead; Justice is Done” is not the justice of the rule of law, but the justice of “an eye for an eye,” the justice of righteousness and vengeance, not the justice of the rule of law. No one that I know would defend what Bin Laden has done, or his beliefs, or his actions. Nevertheless, he was a human being, not a supernatural monster, and by treating him like a monster we are no better that haters who kill other human beings by stripping them of their humanity.

I don’t mean to be self-righteous here. I am sad. I am sad to see the celebration of assassination. I would have been a happier man had Osama been apprehended and brought to justice, the justice of the rule of law. We should not celebrate vengeance. “Victory, not Vengeance,” is the motto of a synth-pop band I like; I think that would have been motto for today (and, you can dance to it).

a hard life and a good life

EULOGY FOR OPAL JEANETTE GRESHAM

SATURDAY, APRIL 30th, 2011

My name is Joshua Gunn, I am the youngest of Jeanette’s three grandchildren. As my cousins Kelly and Kathy will tell you, we grandkids were especially close to granny. And it’s not like she would have let us be distant, because she insisted on this closeness in her typical, unyielding way. Some of you will smile when I say that Jeanette could be a stubborn woman. But she was also stubborn in her loving; she loved us with a relentless consistency.

I wanted to say a few things about my grandmother---a few things about your sister, your mother, your aunt, your friend---I wanted to say a few things about Jeanette so that we can let her body go, so that her body can finally meet mercy in rest.

Jeanette lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Jeanette was the fifth of six children born to Nathaniel Sephas Freeman and Ila Maude Campbell on December 3, 1920. She was raised in---and lived most of her life in---Centerville, Georgia, just a stretch down 124 from here. Before Jeanette came there were her sisters Illa Mae, Easter Lois, Lucy Belle, and Susie Marie, and after her, of course, was born the trickster of the family, Nathanial Morris.

Uncle Morris: did you know for most of my life I thought you were my uncle Marce, spelled M-A-R-C-E? That’s Granny’s way of saying Morris!

Your sister lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Along with her brother and sisters, Jeanette picked cotton as a youngster in the hot Georgia sun. The family was poor and worked hard for everything they had. They farmed their own food. I remember Granny telling me, on many occasions when I was much younger and precocious, I remember Granny telling me that on her most memorable Christmas she got an orange and some pencils, and that she was thankful. I thought she was making that up so that I wouldn’t keep begging her for toys. I know now, however, the lesson of gratitude she was trying to teach me with her story.

Jeanette said that, as kids, they had no idea about the great depression of the 30s. For them, nothing changed: they were not wont of food because they grew it. They still got their pencils and fruit every year from Santa Claus.

At eighteen she moved to the big city took a job at a factory, where she became a seamstress. She worked tirelessly for decades ever since, usually in hot factories sewing clothes. She worked long beyond retirement age, and even worked part time after her retirement. It may seem strange, but Jeanette loved to work and was happy to have work. She was proud to work. She was proud to be a woman working, even during a time in our country when it was not fashionable to be an independent woman.

Your aunt lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

On September 2nd, 1939 Jeanette married Robert Gresham. With war looming, they got right to work and had Hilda Ann in 1940. Shortly thereafter, Bob was off to the European theatre to help beat back the forces of fascism. Upon his return, Jeanette carried and gave birth to my mother, Nina Jane, in 1946.

Your mother lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Everyone here will carry with them their own cherished memories of Jeannette, and I will admit most of what I know about Granny happened after 1973. So I’ll let those of y’all who were around in the fifties, sixties, and seventies tell that part of her story.

Here’s what I will remember about Jeanette:

She liked peanut butter and diet coke and chocolate and black coffee. She liked the pianist Floyd Cramer and her favorite Christmas Song was “O’ Holy Night,” especially if it was played by Liberache.

She adored the ceramic art that my cousin Kathy made for her. She relished the sweets Kelly made for her.

She was prideful about her “wheels”; she kept her cars in good shape, and associated her sense of independence with the open road, even if it was just three miles and back from Rockbridge Baptist Church.

She talked to her daughters almost every day on the telephone.

She liked soap operas. She liked them a lot. I remember when she looked after me we watched those damn soaps—and nothing, I tell you NOTHING, is more boring to a seven year old than the slow and plodding pace of General Hospital. The only reason I watched them with her is because, well, I was with her. I enjoyed her enjoyment.

Granny made the most amazing buttermilk biscuits. Over the course of many years I have tried to replicate her recipe. I cannot. I wish could. I’ve come pretty close, though, and I’ll tell you the secret ingredient: it’s not love, although I know that’s what I’m supposed to say. It’s not love, people, it’s CRISCO. Lots and lots of CRISCO. Slopping handfuls of CRISCO!

I’ll remember sitting on the carport with Granny as she told stories and talked to visitors sitting in those uncomfortable metal chairs.

I remember that if Granny ever got tickled about something, she’d laugh until she infected everyone else with laughter so that no one could breathe.

I remember Granny taking a switch to my behind.

I remember the long ritual of saying goodbye to Granny. I would pile in the car with my mom, and we’d wave goodbye and mom would crank the car. And then Granny would say something, and so mom would roll down her window. And then my mom and Granny would talk some more and say goodbye. Then, as soon as mom put the car in reverse, Granny would ask a question. Mom would stop and there would be more talking. The almost-going-then-not-going goodbye ritual could take upward of twenty minutes! But you knew it was over when Jeanette said her familiar, parting shot: “You be good, now.”

Your friend lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

I have to say this is the first eulogy I have ever given and, it’s likely Terry is reading this for me because I couldn’t keep it together.

I wish with all my heart that this will be my last eulogy, but, as we all know, that is not likely. And ultimately, this truth is what makes all of our lives hard.

Yesterday I learned there would not be a preacher or a homily at the service today, in part, because Jeannette’s cherished preachers have also passed on, but mostly to keep things short, as she would have wanted. Even so, as y’all know, it must be said that Jeannette was a deeply religious person who believed Jesus Christ was her lord and savior. In honor of Jeanette’s profound and life-long faith, I thought it would be important to close my remarks with a meditation on deity.

No matter what your religious beliefs are, I think most of us can agree that our faiths comfort us for three reasons. First, our religions teach us that to live---to be human---is to suffer. To reckon with suffering is to know what it is to live. Second, our religions teach us that there is joy in suffering, that there are moments of happiness which we need to recognize. Religion teaches us to recognize joy. And finally, religions teach us that we are not alone in our joy and suffering. We have each other, and our having each other is the most important thing about this hard life. This is to say, recognizing our togetherness is love. Love unites us here.

We should be reminded of the song of the degrees of David---psalm 133 from the Hebrew Bible:

Behold, how good and how delightful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is as the precious oil upon the head, which descends upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, which descends upon the hem of his garments! It is as the dew of Hermon, which descends upon the mountains of Zion!

There is, strangely, a gift in death. The gift of death is a reminder of how good it is for us to dwell together today in unity over our love for Jeanette, and over our love for each other.

I said our religions give us affirmation that to live is to suffer, our religions teach us where to look for joy, and finally, that our religions remind us that we have each other, that we are not alone. We might summarize all of these teachings into one spiritual imperative: our different faiths teach us to recognize the gift of death.

As some of you know, I make my living as a scholar. My nose is often in books, and this week I have been reading the Christian Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for school. We came across a passage on Wednesday that seemed prescient, and I want to share that with you:

My death comes from an instant upon which I can in no way exercise my power. . . . Death is a mystery that approaches me as a mystery; its secrecy determines it—it approaches without being able to be assumed. . . . The last part of the route will be crossed without me; the time of death flows upstream . . . .

By “upstream,” of course, Levinas means the place of deity, the bosom of God.

I know Levinas’s remarks are not clear, and I think, when speaking of death, the author means to be a bit murky on purpose. Death is anything but clear, and that’s why, of course, we are all here---to try and see more clearly what Jeanette’s passing means for us.

What this philosopher is saying is that no one can witness her own death. No one can invite it or control it. We can expect death, we can plan for it, that much is certain. But we cannot die by our own efforts. “My death comes from an instant upon which I can in no way exercise my power.”

This means that a death must be witnessed, by we the living, that those with breathing lungs and open eyes and open ears and pumping hearts have to see her dying for her. This kind of witnessing is what it means to love, to watch someone pass on to a place of peace.

My grandmother did not witness her own death. That is our job. And in our witnessing, in our mourning, we love her beyond her death. In our promise to witness her dying, as well as the passing of others who go before us, we can make good on the eternal promise of love, we make certain that there is love without end, and we ensure that there is love beyond death.

My grandmother lived a hard life. She lived a good life. Her hard, good life on this planet has now come to a quiet close.

Opal Jeanette Gresham is now---as she always has been---with God.

She is now, as she has always been, with us.

We give her body to the earth. But you can know with certainty that her life continues in a different way because what we are doing right now. We too often think of deity as somewhere up there, in the sky, or in some other place. But I want us also to recognize that our witnessing and our mourning is also a part of deity. That is to say, God is our love right now, in this moment, in this place. Jeanette is here because God is here, because we are here. Because God is love.

Rest in Peace, Opal Jeanette Gresham

December 3, 1920 - April 28, 2011

a mexican laugh in my neighborhood on easter

Music: Mamiffer: Mare Decendrii (2011)

Above the roar of air conditioning warts lining the alley just outside my patio gate, a high-pitched but masculine voice pierces through the humid air. It repeats, like a machine. The voice begins with a many-seconded scream, and ends in that recognizable "ja-ja-ja-ja" that cues the familiar recognition of "the Mexican laugh," today as much of a generic cry in Texas as it is an expression of joy. Hearing it as I sit at the back of my home smoking a pipe, the cry makes me laugh. (A lone dog also barks in the distance.) But the Mexican laugh didn't stop; it kept repeating, almost as if someone was practicing. Although I live in Texas---and in a Hispanic neighborhood, too---such a sustained, celebratory jubilance at 9:00 p.m. on an Easter Sunday seems unusual. Why is this person laughing/crying in this culturally specific manner over and over?

One can't know. But the shear force of its incessant repetition soon dispelled the sense of mirth; going on and on as it does, it's strange, the familiar cadence of the "ja-ja-ja" becoming, of course, uncanny.

This listening experience is not altogether surprising; the dreamlike quality of what (I presume) is waking life tonight mirrors my memories of dreaming this weekend. The last two nights have been fitful and plagued with strange dreams. I have tended to think of my dreams as affect in search of meaning (as Freud tells us to), and frequently what I feel in waking life is homologous to what I feel in a dream (only moreso). There has been a mismatch, as of late, and that's what I don't quite get, like this man laughing over and over and over in a patterned mirth without end.

Early Saturday morning I dreamed I was uncontrollably stabbing my foot with two and three-inch shards of broken glass. Papa Freud would be proud, as the dream featured my mother, who had to witness the ped-mutilation in the dream. In time, I'm sure I will retroactively affix the proper meaning to this odd dreaming, but I am at a loss for understanding whatever affect it is that this dream-image is giving expression to. I suspect Freud might say that the dream gives expressions to the aggression I might have for mum: I have a bunion that will need to be removed, and that has been giving me some pain for many months. Bunions "run" in my mother's family; I remember last Christmas I was complaining of mine to my parents, whereupon my mother removed her shoe and shoed---showed---me her horribly deformed feet and explained my genetic plight. But such sourcing is all too easy.

I remember reading in Schopenhauer's work---I don't remember where---that humans are singular in their expressed reservations and disappointment over having parents at all. We would will our autonomy as if gods, born without parents, or something like this. Only-children are perhaps plagued with such silly sentiments the most---but only in dreams. In waking life, we only-children pretty much report everything to our parents . . . it yields a sense of continuity, and loving.

I talked with my mom this afternoon, as I have done for almost every Sunday since I left home in 1992. It's weird to think I would harbor aggression toward her, as the dream seems to indicate. But Melanie Klein has taught me otherwise, that even an adult ego is powerless to quell the acting-out of the inner-toddler in dreams.

Hmm. The challenge of any toddler is walking by him- or herself. I think of Lacan's discussion of the automaton and tuche in Aristotle's ruminations on "chance." Perhaps therewith is the answer to bleeding feet? Perhaps this is the disturbing spot in the repeating Mexican laugh, the place or hole through which I am made to realize there is an emptiness, a little unscripted place experienced as pain or atonal music?

Easter. When they rolled away the stone the tomb was empty. That doesn't necessarily mean he walked out. It may mean he simply wasn't there.

it's synth-pop friday!

the uncanny funny of flight attendants

Music: Lucinda Williams: Blessed (2011)

I thought to remember to tell you something in the airport bathroom---and it's not what you think.

I have a talent for finding a special something, like a truffle snorting pig, but that something is not necessarily good or (apparently) rare. That something, of course, is the unyielding, hands-free sink fixture. It never fails that on every trip, after I have doused my open hands with soap, the most proximate faucet simply will not give. I can always find the cold, dry airport udder.

Cold. Dry. Airport. Udder. I have happened upon a new album title for Radiohead. Better than plastic trees or Limb Royalty. Udder, boys. It's the udder.

Like you, I also have a talent for finding shopping buggies with wobbly wheels and, of course, I own a clothes dryer that has a secret portal for single sock interdimensional transport. I suspect this portal is something like the mausoleum time-warp in Phantasm, in which the Tall Man, with the aid of little people in Satan-worshipping robes, ships off corpses to feed the masses of little-people in Satan-worshipping robes starving for the dead, cold flesh of humans somewhere in an alternative dimension. Except my dryer's portal sends single socks to the interdimensional lands of "Under the Bed or Couch." It's a strange place populated by peanuts and pennies, too.

++++++++++++++++

I'm on an airplane. Therefore, I am important. Volito Ergo Assholus.

Sometimes I wish you were with me, so your hand was closer and I could maybe hold it in the event of an unwelcome reminder of my mortality.

I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability, not just mine, you know, but vulnerability in general as the default state of subjection. It was Nate's paper, I guess, which I heard on Friday. He said violence was inevitable, and that it represented the extreme of the vulnerable, the force of an actant pushing up vulnerability to the point you could swallow your own, like a substance (or an eruption); in violence, you are made to eat your vulnerability, you know, take it in when you know you don't want to. And in our imaginary, the popular one, violence is so closely associated with planes and that routine, ritual humiliation of disrobing to get through and get on.

I dislike the turbulence of plane riding very much; it is a kind of unwelcome violence too. But for the kindness of strangers also feeding on their own vulnerabilities, flying would be a form of virtual self-immolation.

Not too long ago, a young and handsome flight attendant, I’d guess in his late twenties (and surprisingly straight-acting) hailed our attention for the safety demonstration. Short, dark, spiked hair, clean-shaven, silver wedding ring. He mouthed the canned recording of a tinny female voice explaining the floatation properties of our seat-cushions. He exaggerated; his furrow was feverish as he raised his eyebrows to the cadence of the canned voice.

(Here he comes now smiling and kidding with passengers, pushing the only excitement on a plane I care for: the beverage cart.)

The miming was funny at first. Then, it became slightly disturbing. Then, because he didn't laugh and was intent on a dead-pan delivery, by the time he mimed and mouthed taking care of yourself before children in the event of oxygen loss, it (not he, but "it") got downright uncanny---as if our steward were an animatronic extra at Disney World and we were about to pass him by in a boat on blue water.

What accounts for the uncanny funny of the flight attendant, of course, is the still-conscious memory of flying out of State College and the death-defying turbulence of 10,000 feet. I was sitting next to a terrorism counter-intelligence agent (a fascinating fellow traveler headed for St. Louis), a very nice and smart guy with a tattoo of a dragon and a coy on his back, as well as the words "God, Family, Country, and Love" in Chinese characters. He showed me these on his iPhone instead of taking off his shirt (which would have been weird on a plane). When it was clear we were on an air bullet that rivaled the safety of Six Flags, sudden belly drops and subtle little whiplashes, I looked him in the face and said, "I'm sorry, we must medicate." I reached in my backpack produced two small bottles of Jack and offered him one. He laughed. The anxiety meds went down, patting the glottis with a sweet and burning kiss. It was almost fun, except anxiety was befogging the cabin with black vapors . . . . The turbulence lasted a good twenty minutes and I almost reached for the "motion discomfort bag" (which reminds me of the other end---perhaps a bad euphemism for that other euphemism, "sickness bag"). But about the moment I was ready to cry and share my internal discomfort with the external world, the ride was perturbed enough and achieved that comforting altitude of "chill."

What also accounts for the uncanny funny is the mismatch of body and speech: the voice seemingly exiting his lips is not homologically sound---it's also not a homological sound. The "vocalic body" conjured in the psyche by the female voice is some uptight white chick with pursed lips, a French manicure, and neatly cropped hair. But the body in front of me is from some Midwestern dude with a refreshing sense of humor.

But I also think the strange familiarity is more than that; it's the fiery chill of prophecy, which we humans have tended to associate with divinity. An oracle, for example, is the mouthpiece of God, animated by some divine message. The first automaton was God's prosaic or poetic puppet. Thea. Mania. . . . . Y'all!

One feature of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica that impressed me was the way in which the oracle spoke in the final season: gibberish. She didn't say "know thyself," but rather, just repeated seemingly affectless non-sense while floating in a fancy bathtub with tentacles going everywhere. The question one continued to ask as a spectator---just like we asked about the goodly doctor's sanity---was whether or not the gibberish contained a secret code, or if it was just, simply, phonetic (or phatic) excess. The whole show mined that tension between the accepted atheism of science fiction and the yearning for Big Daddy caused by the nihilism Nietzsche prophesied; if we dismiss the expertise of the global climatologist as, simply, "opinion," then whither authority? Or rather, I think Battlestar dared to rethink nihilism: in the demise of scientific authority---the failures of science represented here by falling-apart machines and cyber gone human---was that old-time authority making it's triumphant return?

Ugh. George W. Bush. You haunt. I really liked the idea of the multitude filling the void left by the Shrinkage of the Sovereign in the cold, ever-expanding wading pool of Empire. But really, the Big Dick Ain't Dead. Case in point: castration of the sky-screwing hemi-peni of capital didn't evoke the cry, but Jack Nicolson: "You want a sovereign? I got your sovereign right heeeeeeeeerrrrrreeeee . . . . "

But I digress (as blart). So, I want to say the steward's uncanny performance at the beginning of this flight was not just a function of the mismatch, but a tacit realization he is animated by symbolic excess. (In the corner of my left eye, I spy the man in the seat next to me is trying to read this . . . I can tell he is flummoxed; not the CIA guy, this time, as I'm on flight number two.) After all, part of the safety speech parody spoke to the widely shared realization such scripted preparedness was actually more of a prod for the good behavior that follows illusions of safety than the much more unlikely scenario that certain death was not really certain "in the event" of an emergency. That is to say, the miming was increasingly creepy because the control connoted by his humor was, in effect, an admission of human vulnerability, or the frailty of our living bodies and the ways in which self-sameness is a product of a language that gives us agency. Our sense of agency is not, in other words, our own.

Boredom leads to unexpected insights, and all too often these are both horrible and life altering. I know I'm not the only one who thinks, sitting on a plane, "what if this thing (think?) crashes? Who is going to take care of my dog? Who will get my music collection? Oh god: someone will probably go through the drawer next to the bed . . . ."

+++++++++++++++++++++++

I attended the n-teenth "Burke Lecture" at the Pennsylvania State University by a political scientist this weekend. His lecture was very, very good. He rightly suggested that political scientists were so caught up in the rational choice model of (electoral) judgment that they were having trouble contending with emotions, and in particular, the emotion of anger. He very carefully spelled out what he understood as the role of anger in the history of rhetoric. He situated the counterpoint of anger in "trust." He ended his talk by arguing for the due consideration the reasons or causes behind political anger, and that we should not automatically write-off the anger of the Tea Partiers because, in the end, their anger could be productive and was based on legitimate concerns.

This was a provocative talk. It was, I repeat, very well done. And, of course, many people had questions. Some folks worried about how some anger was more legitimate than other anger (e.g., black anger was deemed primitive and inadmissible, while white anger is justified, etc.). My question was why he chose the counterpoint of "trust" instead of love? I reasoned that the conception of trust was inextricably wed to contract-Arian thinking, which was tied to the "interests-based" logic of political science that he said he was trying to get away from. I didn't elaborate too much, because what I had in mind was Derrida's critique of the social contract, and how political trust was always the consequence or product of excluding some third party (women, slaves, etc.). It seemed to me, nevertheless, that "trust" snuck the interest-based norm back in the back door.

His response was predictable, but reasonable. He said he did not want to go to "love" because of its many unwieldy connotations. (Of course, I wrote an essay on this, which I promptly sent him after the talk, because everyone wants recognition from Yale.) He noted he thought the question was a deep one. He also said that, from a pragmatic standpoint, because using the word "love" would cue certain connotations, he worried love might function as a kind of salve or drug, letting people off the hook from doing the hard work of understanding someone's (political) anger. And understanding anger, he argued, is what he wants to argue for.

I thought he tended to slide from description to prescription when convenient, and it was curious to me this was the move made when posed with a question about love. Lots to say here.

Regardless, I was impressed with this answer because I hadn't thought about the ways in which the language of love tempts the lazy. That's true. But his answer also seemed to me to provide yet another reason for taking-up the study of love; how is it that love has become divorced from any conception of labor or work? The easy answer, of course, is that equivocation is to blame, the shear barrenness of our affective vocabulary---like an airport bathroom faucet that refuses to yield water. Udder paucity, with soap---the signature of clean intention---on one's hands.

Still: what if we took the phrase "labor of love" to mean differently? What if we just collapsed the nouns here, and simply asserted that love is a form of labor? Not repose, but something opposite? After all, this scholar was asserting that anger bespoke a form of cognition worthy of consideration? Why isn't love worthy of the same? Why is it permissible to consider anger as labor and love as something akin to rest or repose?

I cannot get away from the utility of thinking about love as Lacan seems to do, of understanding love as the name for a certain form of recognition. What else is anger but a demand for love? Trust is a consequence, or better, it's a subsequence to the illusion of some kind of recognition. To assert that "trust" is a kind of quilting point in the field of anger necessarily leaves someone out or behind.

I'm listening to Lucinda Williams' new album as I write this; the first song is something like resigned anger; but every song after it is about it's counterpart or negation. It's love, not trust. Both are about faith, but one of those things doesn't exclude.

Or maybe it does. That may be my hang-up . . . my problem.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am still thinking about what Nate said about vulnerability in the fecund conference Jeremy put together on the topic of "violence."

This flight is nearing the status of descent. I'm ready to come down, but I know reflection will give way to the pragmatic and the car radio and learning how to give my freshly diagnosed diabetic cat an insulin shot before I court the Sandman. I know what next week holds, and blogging is not in its future. Synth pop, perhaps, but not blogging . . . .

In a couple of weeks I'll be rereading Levinas and reengaging the ethics of hospitality. Derrida, actually, has framed Levinas for me more than Levinas himself, and I'm thinking about recent life events in relation to hospitality, so-called "boundaries," and the problem of judgment. I won't rehearse that stuff here, except to say that hospitality, when you shift the scene of "home" to the body itself---our eyes and ears and mouths and vaginas and anuses becoming the doors to the wor(l)d---interpersonal encounter becomes a curious scene of invitation. The scene of justice becomes the orifice. It's temping to analogize the home invasion to rape, but, you know, the hole of absolute hospitality is really the ear: it has no door; there is, as it were, no possibility of forced entry. For the non-deaf, at least, the voice comes on in, ready or not.

"But, ear plugs can be doors," you say. Funny that: you can still feel sound, even when that door is all plugged up. Hearing is closer to touching than the eyes.

I know, though, yes yes. The eyes are always there, in the way, seeing things. Still, recognition is having been heard, not seen as we tend to assume. Or rather, recognition is the affirmation of having heard, since hearing happens. Which is to say, recognition is listening proper, an act of love as an assent toward meaning. The one-up here is phasic: working toward sight and lip reading, mOther responds to the cries and assigns meaning there, first. Uncoordinated facial figurations have nothing on the piercing cry of a babe cutting teeth.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I landed, and I'm writing this an hour later from the in-flight ruminations. I want to tell you how my travels ended, and then try to make it to bed. I'm anxious to "see" what I dream tonight, if perhaps my inner staging will pick up where it left off yesterday morning: I wrote a play in Russian language about sailing and the radio, but when performing my part got lost in the speaking script (all the backdrop of Russian early music, choral).

After landing in Aus-Vegas, we sat on the tarmac for a half-hour before the plane could pull into gate 3. After the delay, I sat at the baggage return for another forty minutes. My bag was the next to last to come down the shoot, all the passengers on my flight having claimed their bags and left. As my bag was about to tumble onto the carousel, a zipper got lodged in the conveyor, the small gap between the revolving metal scales of the carousel and the conveyor belt of the spit-shoot. Standing on the ledge, I could not get the luggage to budge. I had to find an attendant, have her shut off the carousel (to the sound of annoying and loud alarms), and both of us yanked and rolled and jiggled my luggage until it came loose---without the zipper.

As I lugged the embattled bag to the parking-lot shuttle-stop, I reasoned it was time to buy a new bag. When I got home, I figured I would have to open the bag with a pair of pliers. But when I got here, I thought my dirty clothes, and the pliers maneuver, could wait until the morning. It's not the kind of package opening one longs for at midnight.

For the moment, I figured posting on the blog and a cigar would be the better way to yank this Monday open. Hello Monday. I will work in you today. But now, goodnight.

it's synth-pop friday!

weirdest week ever

Music: Beth Orton: Daybreaker (2002)

I'm burning my candle at both ends, as they say, and literally overwhelmed with work. I've been working till midnight three days in a row, and looks like I will be doing so through Saturday. I hope to join some friends for camping late Saturday afternoon.

I do not have the time to blog afresh, but I just gotta share this; it's password protected for reasons that will become clear quickly. What follows was originally written to some best buds who all did time, or are from, Minnesota:

Today was the most curious day, perhaps of my career.

I had a (-nother) stalker. Fourth of my career, but this one was different.

It's the kind of story I want to share, but which I cannot share publicly. I'm emailing you as pals who happen to be academics that are familiar with the Midwest. I'm sure an FOIA request could snatch this, but . . . I don't think there's much to worry about with what's coming.

For years, I have been saying that I'm noticing an increase in students with mental health issues, and that we need to be trained to better manage or cope with them as educators. This story falls, however, into the extreme category.

Almost two weeks ago I flew into Fargo, North Dakota to give a talk at North Dakota State University for the English Department. The talk was about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his infamous National Press Club speech in April, 2008. More about that some other time. The gist is that I had quite a fun time, met some great folks, and enjoyed seeing the snow. I arrived on Friday, dined with a dozen or so graduate students on Friday night, had drinks with half of them after dinner. (The grad student group is actually who brought me in, not the dept.) I gave my talk on Saturday, dined with faculty Saturday night, and joined the graduate students at a pool hall after that. I was in bed both nights by midnight.

This past Thursday I got a strange phone call at 7:30 a.m. I was still in bed (I have a later teaching schedule, and am not a morning person, so I get up at 8 or 8:30-ish these days). Awakened by my 1950s era phones--which are super loud---I went downstairs to play back the answering machine message (thinking that, perhaps, my grandmother had passed or something; she's very ill). Nope. It was a bizarre message from someone who said she was "Katie" and was looking for "Brian." Much of what she said didn't make sense. She said "Katie" was on a bus and should be in Austin by 9:45 (didn't specify morning or evening).

Alarmed, I phoned back and got the voice mail for a student I had met at North Dakota. The number came up on my caller ID as "Brainard, MN."

I emailed the chair of the English dept. at NDSU and explained the strange message. He confirmed that the phone number was from one of their students and that he would get to the bottom of it; with a few exchanges it was made clear I didn't want her to phone and she should not share my unlisted number with anyone.

Thursday I was a little creeped out, but by Friday I had all but forgotten it. As my friend Michael LeVan observed some years ago, I am a "weird shit magnet." Increasingly this stuff doesn't trouble me. I mean, in the past couple of years a woman who was convinced she was possessed by demons contacted me, a man who thought the government was implanting his brain with a chip called me, and so forth. Over the years this sort of stuff has become more amusing than troubling . . . .

On Sunday I was hosting a party for my neighbor, who is moving away this week. I was DJ-ing the thing with my computer, and I received an email from a colleague who noted some concern (the beep from the "you've got mail" on Eudora went out on the PA system, even). Standing there at my DJ rig, I read the message: my colleague said she was working at the office on Sunday, and a strange woman was hovering around the office. She said the woman said that she was a friend of mine, and I was to meet her at my office. I told my colleague of the answering message on Thursday, and immediately forwarded stuff to my chair and the chair at NDSU. My colleague then sent a more detailed message about the encounter, which was very strange (basically, my colleague discerned she was not "right in the head").

Then, I received a bizarre voice mail message to my office phone (school voice mail comes via email to me). That message can be heard here. After hearing it, you'll agree with me it is very weird.

This morning when I got up, I called the office to say that I would not be coming in, and to give them a warning that this strange person was in the office yesterday. "Oh, we've already talked to her," I was told. Apparently the woman was waiting when the staff arrived. She explained she was a prospective student and wanted to meet me. They told her when I was in and teaching, not knowing that she was . . . um, a little nutty. Pulling all the info together, it became clear that this woman had hopped a bus from Fargo three days earlier and came down interested in some sort of romantic encounter . . . but was playing it off differently to staff. She was completely "sane" to the office staff, they thought she was quite pleasant, but the messages she was leaving me were not. She left me another voicemail, again, calling herself "Katie" (which is not her real name) and calling me "Brian" (which is, you know, not my real name).

She had clearly slept in our building overnight. She had a suitcase on wheels. The office staff reported she smelled pretty bad and needed to bathe. This is a rotund lady, 47 years of age, single, taking care of her parents who are in their 80s. I remember from talking with her in Fargo that she could not drive, as she had bad eyesight or something like that, and that she commuted via bus to Brainard.

The office staff let her use a computer and then she left the office. She is extremely friendly, non-threatening, etc.

When I called this morning and we put it all together, we hatched a scheme: I am now out of town. I have canceled my class for tomorrow, and my graduate class on Wednesday has been moved to a different room. The office staff didn't realize what was going on and told her where I was teaching and so forth, so we had to do something. She was using the computer in the front office to check her email, and even sent me an email asking if she could attend my class on Wednesday. I replied (after talking with the office staff) that I was out of town.

I called campus police. My first instinct was to call mental health services, but because she is not a student, they can't touch this. So, phoned the police; a case was opened. Thing was, they couldn't find the lady. The office staff predicted she would be back, however, to check email.

Meanwhile, the chair at NDSU told me the woman's father called looking for her. He said she had been missing for about a week. He was relieved to know where she was. He explained she was bipolar, but "harmless." The father also said that the daughter had something of a history of pursing men who did not want to be pursued, so this was not the "first time." If I saw her, the father wanted me to state firmly I was not interested in a romantic relationship and to encourage her to come back home. She was not answering his calls to her.

We figured out that her cell probably ran out of power; the call I've shared with you was obviously made from someone else's phone she borrowed (which you can hear at the end of her call). So weird.

Well, sure enough, mid-afternoon, she reappeared in the front office. She was told that I was traveling and not in Austin, whereupon she appeared upset and "started to bolt." The office staff told her I said I would reply to her on email, and that she might check that. So she sat down to do that, whereupon campus police were called. They came and talked to her in the conference room. Then, they escorted her out of the building. Technically, she is trespassing and so they could give her a warning for this.

I spoke with the officer handling the case on the phone about an hour after their meeting with her. The officer couldn't give me (for legal reasons, I guess) much detail. He said that she was a grown, 47 year old woman and there was not much they could do. I asked if she was planning to go home. The officer said she explained she only had a "one-way" ticket on the bus, as she didn't know how long she was staying. I asked if I should worry she would come to my home. "That's a distinct possibility," said the officer. He encouraged me to call Austin police and open a case to be safe.

Not long after convo I received a message from the chair at NDSU saying that he had spoke to the woman's mother, and that she was soon to board a bus back to Minnesota. So, I'm hoping that's the case. I've had the curtains drawn all day and have been pretending to be "away." At this hour, I think it's not likely she's going to show up at my home--and that she's on a bus. I did not file a report with Austin police and won't do so, unless I think she's still in town. We won't know until tomorrow. I'm assured she is harmless, and frankly I do believe that.

This is more sad than scary. Still: what does one do?

As y'all know, there's something about my own "weird" personality and approachability that sets crazies off. I'm not sure how to explain this, exactly. I do remember when leaving Fargo I told this person how much I enjoyed meeting her and wished her well in her studies. I probably made eye contact, as I try to do when trying to express appreciation/sincerity. I do not want to change that about myself; I want to be myself around new people. "You're too nice," says one of the office staff.

But really: can one go around being suspicious of the sanity of everyone he meets? No.

What a weird experience this has been. I don't know exactly how to make sense of it, except to say I'm both amused in an odd way (after all, I wrote all of this) and also troubled. And I just needed to write it all out and share it with you. As folks who passed through or are in Minnesota, I figured you would listen. I don't expect a response, just needed to share my weird day/weekend with you.

What to say? I don't know. I do know I'm still so keyed up I'm going to need an Ambien tonight. I'm just feeling the need to blather and get it out.

Thanks for lis/reading.

it's synth-pop friday!