Thanksgiving was odd and my tummy hurt the whole time. Though it was good of course to see my mom and dad and sister, we didn't get to see each other, sit around with each other nearly enough, and that made me grumpy. I think that's what was making me grumpy. Ryan McSweeney and Jonathan Arp played endless games of scrabble while Andrew Bourne and I looked at every single flag in the world, picking the very best [Isle of Man] in run off competitions [Mozambique, Zaire, Marshall Islands, the state of Lousiana....]
On the way home, I began to feel better, lying back against Jonathan with my glasses off and someone else driving, looking at the circles of light, the rectangles of light all through the dark dripping mist of the thin highway trees. Then the check all gauges light popped on and we realized we were overheating...which is a story not really worth telling. I sit here breathing into my tea so that the steam will wrap up around me, remembering the things Andrew Bourne is supposed to remember.
the four things andrew bourne is supposed to remember: 1) We need to be free...to make love...all day...every day... we must be free. 2) I will answer your question with four questions: where are you...with me? how are you...with me? ...what? the fourth will come later. 3) "1776 Navigation's a bitch." On a t-shirt accompanied by a picture of a dog looking confused. 4) The house that burned down and the trampoline next to it.
vocabulary words we've learned lately: titivate -- v. to dress smartly. ryke -- v. to reach. rykes, ryking, ryked. tommyrot -- n. nonsense. ice fog -- n. pogonip.
The slingshot fight went splendidly. Jonathan and I showed up what we thought was late. We tiptoed up to the big gate with the big sign that said Closed After 5pm and saw no one, but realized it was not locked, and so pushed forward. We walked around the whole park, the whole damn park, looking for figures dashing around with glow sticks, waiting for gummy bears to whizz by our ears, but nothing. We finally come back around to the well lit buildings where we'd started, and watched strangers mill around a bit while we hid behind big pine trees, trying to figure out if they were friends or foes. Finally, we made a mad dash to the pair lurking just outside the gates and, from behind the chain link fence, I whispered Hi! They turned around surprised and said Uh, do you want let in the park? and I said We're in the park!
I sit here covered with welts, big red and purple spots from where I got hit so many times with high-speed gummy bears, and smiling with wine-stained lips from Robert Cataldo's going away party which Jonathan and Jim and I found in the thick of a Friday night in Shockoe Bottom. It was warm inside and all of the boys and girls I have crushes on and never get to see were there, so I drank wine and danced around with those that would dance, and I think people thought I was drunk, but really I was just happy. I whispered about the paradise of a certain squatted sauna in the Netherlands to Robert before I left, and looked at weird bicycle helmets and handlebars with Jonathan on the way home.
I am reminded, I am flooded, sitting here and just getting that feeling of happy moments and lucky lives. I feel bouyant with them, and at the same time there is this pointed concern, quiet in the back of my thoughts. As the occasion was a going away party, and everyone is going away. Who will stay? Stay right here with me. I feel poignantly now that thing Amanda describes... that sense of wanting everyone you love to be right there so you can hold onto them, catch them, when gravity disintegrates and we all begin floating towards the stars.
Jason Laferrara: I have your silk screening goods. They were right here the whole time.
I am officially not depressed anymore! I can think of nothing important to say other than that, and I can think of nothing better to say than go read amanda's and elizabeth's stories because they are wonderful.
I feel, at base, sad. I sleep too long and am always quietly anxious. My posture is no good and, so, my back hurts. I shift through email that is almost always about work or school, which is work, and think of all my far away friends, and even my close by friends, whom I never hear from personably. I am so sad when I realize that Amanda's email, on the one day it mattered most to me, stopped working and spit my correspondance back at me.
I am trying, though, to fight these things. I do not want to be sad, I especially do not want to be sad in front of you, so I turn on good music and make very small, very delicious plates of foods I eat while reading a collection of Cometbus. I miss my mouth and spill milky tea all over me.
It is a beautiful day. Though I went to bed shaking with fear inside of me and slept through uncomfortable dreams, putting up with them because I thought I could deal with them better than the real world and it's possiblities. But when I finally pulled myself out of bed and into the shower, and Jonathan came home and Reema called, I ate a bowl of spaghetti and felt much much better.
I went and jumped on Amanda's bicycle and rode out into the day to prove it, which rewarded me with sunshine and the Special Collections room at the Cabell Library. I flipped through the pages of dissertations and wrote down the names of different secret societies that once existed in Richmond to help people survive and help them escape -- Union Phoenix Society, Union Benevolent Stars, Secret Sons of Love, Rising Sons of Liberty, Young Men's Hope, Independent Daughters of the National Blues.
Want to start a band with me called the Independent Daughters of the National Blues?
why I go to archaeology class even if i'm not getting a grade for it I will skim over the first parts to get to the last part, where in the margins I wrote [it is worthwhile, coming to this class], but really it is all interesting and good to watch the process.
There are three different levels of archaeological theory: low-level deals with the artifacts, middle-level extrapolates behavior from artifacts, high-level extrapolates culture from behavior. There are two different ideologies of archaeology: processualism and post-processualism.
Processualism tries to make evolutionary generalizations, and tries to find universal laws. It is explicitly scientific, and attempts to be both objective and ethnically neutral. It views culture as a human extrasomatic [ ! OED assistance please ] adaptation (this, though, note, is commonly accepted at this point -- we anthropologists refer to it as biocultural adaptation). It takes a systemic perspective, that is, it views human behavior and the evidence we find of it as falling into a larger system of such. And, finally, it views archaeology as an etic phenomena -- etic is the outsider, the non-participant, the observer, and as such can never know the emic, the native, the do-er, the be-er. This is a strong statement; to say we as studiers of the past can never really know what the participants of the past were actually like, what they actually felt.
Post-processualism rejects just about all of that. It says that, among other things, 1) it is impossible to be objective, but rather one can only hope to know and admitt one's own biases, 2) there is no system [there is no system!] and 3) who cares about the etic? anyone can understand the etic -- the point of archaeology should precisely be trying to get to the emic, that is the art of the thing.
But all of this is not the most interesting thing. We are almost there.
There are five main approaches to archaeology now: interpretive, marxist, feminist, human agency, and hermeneutic. Hermeneutic. That is what I am getting at. Hermeneuts argue that the past is the present and the present is the past. That is to say, the past produces us, who in turn produce the past. Because the past does not exist, motherfuckers. We construct the past, our present determines how it is constructed, and how it is constructed is determined by our past.
My professor, my beautiful professor, points her red laser beam at the projected word hermeneutic and says, "Yeah, I'm with those guys." See? See, this is why I'm an anthropologist.
You read the news today? At least 700 strong, some say over a thousand. Yeah. Hell yeah. I spoke poetry and people said they almost cried, or even did cry. My folks said This was a great family outing and I said Yeah, we oughta do it more often. My kid sister even spoke and she was great, better than all her friends combined. I feel better. A bit alleviated. Time now to ignore the world and write about imaginary things.
amanda is right. googlism is the funniest shit ever.
the favorite things that I am: muna is all about building bridges of goodwill for world peace and understanding in the minds of our youth muna is designed for school students usually in the 3 or 4 senior classes of secondary schools muna is a wonderful pony muna is associated with the cpp/npa such dialogues are really a waste of time muna is a legitimate political party registered with the commission on elections muna is going to organize for the first time a mock un international court of justice muna is divided into village territories muna is only around the corner muna is yet to be rediscovered by the outside world for its great attraction for present day visitors muna is well versed in the dialogue between the eye and the mind muna is the club for you muna is a contemplative but powerful deity muna is a monthly magazine school children love to keep in their bookshelves to tell their friends stories they read in it muna is widely known as an innovative and multi muna is searching for his samurai father muna is in a difficult situation muna is allegedly a mere front of the communist party of the philippines muna is able to keep up with international news muna is back for school and is crashing her for a few days because her broke ass can't pay her bills until she
the first five things jonathan happens to be: jonathan is a hot tramp jonathan is a hunk jonathan is a dork jonathan is worried jonathan is a christian organization
the last five things jonathan happens to be: jonathan is not a swot jonathan is finally believing what i've told him all along jonathan is currently working on a series of procedural videos on topics like "external wiring for pacemakers" and "how to tap knee fluid" which the site will jonathan is a manager at the cbi and is responsible for a number of research projects related to the valuation of intangibles jonathan is twenty
I fill the house with smoke. I fry green tomatoes and purple eggplant and like the eggplant better. I eye the windows furtively; if I open them to let the smoke out, the cold wet outside will rush in.
It is not that I feel my everything little thing is worthwhile and needs writing down. It is just that I am procrastinating.
After hours and hours of diligence even in cold rain, of researching and thinking, I jump up and dance to the Black Eyed Peas until I am warm again, water my poor plants, read about polyamory, and jump up and kiss Jonathan when he gets home from work. We watch fuzzy black and white images on the weird new tv of thousands north koreans marching and dancing and jumping with candles all at the same time in the same way.
I have now officially written everyone I know emails, desperate pleas for communication not so much because I am just stuck in front of this damn computer doing work work work all the fucking time, but I'd like to think it has more to do with my enduring and persistent love for them all. But no one ever writes. Not ever. Unless they have lost something and think I might have it.
I hate doing things I do not want to do. And I am in the thick of it. Even delicious expensive food cannot make me happy. The only thing that can sometimes alleviate the irksome burden of it all is Jonathan Arp, who is good at reminding me of how silly it all is, how good I actually have it if this is the sum of my woes.
But still... a poem called Everything by someone named Zakariyya Muhammad:
What wind, then, didn't break my hands? What gust didn't fly off with my shirt? Under what millstone wasn't I a grain?
There was no Halloween. At least not for me. The slingshot fight that was supposed to be the eve of was rained out, though I will say Eric Miller and I excitedly talked of rescheduling it, perhaps to be more than just one occasion. On actual Halloween, I found myself with people like me, who winced at the idea of parties and who instead stayed home and watched good movies. And this is when I realized that all my halloween friends are gone -- all of those people who would dress up and dress me up and make me drink vodka and walk around all night being crazy and cold are gone.
Though I did hang out with Nicholas because a tree fell on his house, and Amanda called from fucking Paris. I showed Andrew Bourne the brazilian graffiti that is the most interesting thing I'm reading lately, and Adrian came over all drunk and happy, and we all drew pictures together for quite a while until Ryan McSweeney knocked at midnight.
And today, of all things, I wrote for quite a long. A story I am not so sure is good. But regardless, I felt good. I ate a bowl of broccoli and a bowl of oatmeal and did all the dishes, bouncing my head to hip hop I don't know the name of until my fingers were raisins.
