yester/today

Yesterday (...today?) didn't go so good.

I was nervous during class, so I didn't do as good of a job as I feel like I normally do. I was snappish with the kids.

While cleaning up at 8:30, the janitor told me that Obama had won the election.

While biking over to my friends' place, the people whooping in the streets and the fireworks going off served as a resounding confirmation.

We spent a long time in front of the TV and then in the bar.

Now I'm at home, in the armchair, about to get up and make some Sleepy Time tea. I feel strangely melancholy. Just drained, maybe?

I need to remember that I can't do everything right all of the time.
Tomorrow is a new day.
It's time to get to work.

Frustration

Why hasn't Obama's speech on trade received more media coverage?

Why isn't this the #1 most e-mailed story on the NY Times? Why isn't it the leading story in all media outlets, period?

Why is this world once in which Obama "has to prove to Americans that, despite his exotic background and multicultural looks, he shares or at least respects their values and understands why they would be upset about his associations with the Rev. Wright and an ex-Weatherman"?


Why did it snow today? Why is the house freezing cold? I made a list yesterday of all the things I am frustrated about, in an attempt to expell negative energy, but it turned out so long that I just gave up.

At reader's request more poetry (from same volume from previous entry, pg. 456, 150, 130, 112-113, 106-107):

Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
RAYMOND CARVER

The Cure
Not the laying-on of hands, healing bones and hearts.
Not flowers, protease inhibitors, pills for the pain.
Not a prayer for the dying, for you, for us, not crying, not yet.

Tonight only the clock, each concentrated second one tiny grain
in a thousand thousand parts
of rain
NICK DRAKE (the singer-songwriter? dunno)

And the Days Are Not Full Enough
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
EZRA POUND

The Leaden-Eyed
Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.
VACHEL LINDSAY

Apologia
My life is too dull and too careful--
even I can see that:
the orderly bedside table,
the spoilt cat.

Surely I should have been bolder.
What could biographers say?
She got up, ate toast and went shopping
day after day?

Whiskey and gin are alarming,
Ecstasy makes you drop dead.
Toy boys make inroads on cash
and your half of the bed.

Emily Dickinson, help me.
Stevie, look up from your Aunt.
Some people can stand excitement,
some people can't.
CONNIE BENSLEY

Things
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these minature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
FLEUR ADCOCK (I'm especially feelin' this one right now)

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
THEODORE ROETHKE [excerpt]

Politicians as Literary Texts: An Attempt at Interpretation

Can I apply the techniques of interpreting literature to examining life? Is it appropriate to go about struggling to understand the motives and actions of human beings in the same way we might approach a novel? I think so. In fact I think it's the best idea I've heard in ages. If I "read" other human beings the way I do books, that would explain, say, my dislike for Hilary Clinton. She tries to disguise the nature of her fictionality, when any good, sensible, "well-trained" reader would know that any good text is inherently aware (and may even comment directly) on its own status as a work of fiction. She tries to present herself as a basic essence. The very idea that this kind of reduction can be applied to ANYTHING in this world, let alone something as complex as a human being (especially the human being who presents herself to us as Hillary Clinton)--to me, this concept is an absolute travesty and misses what is integral to the act of reading and indeed to life itself. In all fairness, to an extent Obama does so as well. HOWEVER, as I go on to argue, he acknowledges the possibilities of misreadings and ambiguity, very important qualities in any well-written work of fiction!

In contrast, Hillary presents herself within an over-arching framework with an emphasis on locating ‘meaning’. The 'Hillary-text' moves solely within the world of knowledge, concerning herself with unification, trying make everything seem clear and understandable ("sleep deprivation" as the excuse for the Bosnian debacle, for example), and in doing so, she reduces everything to atoms. There's no beauty in it, no signs of willful creativity or joyous energy (even her lies lack subversive energy); for me, everything about her and her campaign presents her as a corpse that can be dissected. Additionally, her reiterated emphasis on her 'experience' brands her as a closeted positivist (which, HELLO? is sooo 18th CENTURY). The concept that anything that cannot be verified by direct experience is therefore without value and thus intrinsically meaningless is A VERY PROBLEMATIC NOTION. My bestest thesis friend of late Blanchot would not like Hilary: he saw positivism as a form of modern nihilism, as the positivist does not believe in values or morals or ethics or any of those tricky ineffable things that can't be verified in the the form of facts or sensory experiences, and thus they do not exist. If that isn't an accurate diagnosis of the fundamental creepiness that is the Clinton idea of morality...

For all these reasons, the political community of Hilary Clinton is fundamentally apolitical, and this is why she should not be the Democratic nominee. She wants to gather us into a totalizing community in the manner of bees and termites, viewing us voters in terms of our utility value. We're like pound coins for her to put in a slot: there are certain things that a pound coin can do for her, but essentially they're all the same and exchangeable. Hillary does not deal with the community of human beings beyond the question of its organization; she concerns herself with the language of community only in order to accumulate and exert power. My problem with Hilary lies with her fundamental attitude of theorizing the world, of taking it as something that can be mastered by her explanations and in turn presenting herself as a constructed totality. This is reflected in her constant referral back to the matter of her 'experience,' as if only 'hard facts' of her existence (and Obama's) can determine quality. If we are to speak of the concept of a political community under Hillary, it is a political community defined in terms of production, work and action. Under her, the very existence of community is taken for granted, and instead of rebuilding the American community (the very thing it so badly needs right now), her primary concern is how she is destined to lead it. All rigid structure, no creativity. I resent the gross oversimplification of the theory that humans 'bond' and form communities through the anonymous administrative machinery that the Hillary-text embodies. It is misleading to believe that a human community forms through shared knowledge, religion, history, custums, experience, laws, or political institutions. Rather, (and this is probably me remembering Benedict Anderson from Diego's class completely wrong), community is constructed through language.

In contrast, the 'Obama-text' does not give way to such an easily transferable meaning (despite his best efforts at times to reduce himself as such). Instead, what everyone keeps noting about Obama is his plurality, his fragmentary nature, and I'm not just referring to his race (though it's an appropriate visual metaphor for multiplicity, no?) Obviously the 'Obama-text' is problematic and is not by any means a perfect work of art a la Kafka: his "yes we can!" is an attempt to communicate a simple meaning, and yeah, all his talk about being able to "unify" and so on, that can be understood as indicative of him trying to reduce himself into the simple category of "the uniter", appropriately matching the discourse about Hilary as "the divider." Unfortunately, when most people 'read' (I use the word 'read' interchangeably with 'interpret', and in this case I mean both books AND politicians), this is the kind of meaning they expect to find: something easily summed up in a sentence, a phrase, or better yet, a single word; the faster, the better. We watch TV, listen to political commentary on the radio, skim the most e-mailed articles of the NY Times, and go to bed with a feeling of fat lazy contentment, without any action actually taking place. Sure, we might remember some facts later (remembering the ransacking of cultural artifacts in Iraq? Or how the purpose of the war was liberating the Iraquis from Saddam Hussein, oops, I mean WMDS?), but these events no longer communicate any real meaning to us. Blanchot writes, "There should be interesting events and even important events, and yet nothing should take place that would disturb us: such is the philosophy of any established power, and, in an underhanded way, of any cultural service." w.o.r.d. This attempt to erase the meaning of our experiences is the biggest danger to the formation of genuine communities.

That was a long digression, but it was also a build-up. Americans, I am sorry to say, do not want to see a politician who is self-reflective or self-critical. Fortunately, it is not these qualities that will make him president, irregardless of how I admire them. My sister has said it before and I'll say it here now: in Obama you can find the essence of human community, not just in the way that he represents different races, countries or cultures. To start off, he's good in the way that all good books are good: on a very simple, primal level, the words of the "Obama-text" are a pure pleasure to read. They're well-written! They're coherent! They're good. At one point in one of his essays Blanchot speaks as a language that is spoken by no one, the ‘murmur of the incessant and the interminable’, citing Samuel Beckett's The Unnameable,, a beautiful passage I will quote in full (as Blanchot did):

"The words are everywhere, inside me, outside of me... I hear them, no need to hear them, no need of a head, impossible to stop them, impossible to stop. I'm in words, made of words, others' words, what others... the whole world is here with me, I'm in the air, the walls, the walled-in one, everything yields, opens, ebbs, flows, like flakes. I'm all these flakes, meeting, mingling, falling asunder, wherever I go I find me, leave me, go towards me, come from me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone astray, I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their setting, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, feeling one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet..."

This may sound silly, but this image of language as murmuring and rustling makes me think of youtube and facebook, even blogging itself. It makes me think of the folks chopping up the words of Obama's speeches to make music videos out of them. On a purely sensory level, it makes me think of voices coming together. This is undoubtedly overtly complimentary (sorry Beckett), but I'm even reminded of Obama himself. Reading Obama's speech on race, it's tempting to think that the 'narrative voice' emerging in the speech is the voice of the speaker, the voice of the individual Barack Hussein Obama, and undoubtedly there are some sorts where the presence of this voice seems very real indeed (his personal anecdotes and heightened degree of self-awareness help, especially in his comments about how he cannot disown the Reverend completely). It is for this quality that I liked the speech, because it reminded me of literature. It reminded me of literature because it expressed language in its own singular way--not in a groundbreaking, innovative sense, but in the way that the main thing the speech speaks of is that of a particular individual speaking. It is the singularity of Obama as an individual that shines through that speech, and through his campain in general, and that, I think, is what is truly hitting a nerve with people, rather than the exact details of his policy plans.

Unfortunately for him, Obama is not a literary text, but rather a man (and a politician, at that!), and thus is obliged to impart certain moral and political messages to please the soundbyte makers. I am realistic in my acknowledgement that Obama cannot subvert this deemand, that to a certain extent the "Obama-text" must be compromised by wishing to "teach" voters what he "stands" for. Books that deliver clear political messages and morals are just plain bad, but that's just what you gotta do in politics, and ironically enough it's the main thing that people are going to criticize him for when they view him as the boxed-in message he's forced to give due to the nature of the game.

However, despite this inevitability, there is a displacement and elusivity about Obama that differentiates him from Hilary. For Obama, communication (the relation that characterizes the community) is not the exchange of information. For Hillary, communication is a tool for the externalization and preservation of Hillary-thought. It is the expression of the potent subjectivity that is the brand name of the CLINTONS and the 90's and all that disgusting, comfortably familiar nostalgia people find appealing. Obama's communication, and hence his conception and formation, is different. I think this is reflected in the way Obama's speeches have been dissipated and disperesed throughout the Internet with a fever that neither Hilary nor any politician (since Kennedy, if I am to believe my father!) has been able to inspire. This is the reason why I think Obama is more literary than Hillary: at the same time that the "Obama-text" presents an idea, he also very much embodies absence. Ironically and interestingly enough, by hinting at exteriority, at inaccesibility, Obama seems more inviting. There is an empty space there that people can place themselves and their own stories (there are no empty spaces in the Hillary book; everything is indexed, cited and cross-referenced). In Obama, I find the kind of quality which I refer to so much throughout my thesis as something 'unsayable,' something opaque, mysteriously thick and dense, like cake batter. There's "just something about him" that people find appealing, something that people can't appropriately put into words without falling prety to the discourse of celebrity worship (the primary "I-like-Obama" discourse that the media exposes to people). He comes from a position of narrative, rather than knowledge. It is a language that is not governed by its subject; it is language that is aware that it is language. It is a language that speaks of a community that is fully aware and reflective of what makes a community of human beings possible in the first place, as opposed to taking the human community for granted. He wants to 'rewrite' the story of the American people. He wants to give money to college students and make them volunteer, encourage parents to turn of their TVs and read poetry to their children. It is a very strange and exciting voice. It feels as though it is coming from outside this world. It makes some people uncomfortable, even if it is only faintly discerned and it is not clear to them what precisely is making them uncomfrotable. It may even cost him the election (the nomination, even--we're not there yet!). Still, it is a voice that I am glad to have heard during my lifetime, especially in an arena as unexpected as politics.

This turned out way to long.

refeshingly depression

I highly recommend watching this video. I almost never follow the news, let alone on Iraq. I guess lately I've been looking for distraction on my thesis, but what I have been finding instead is perspective.

There's something really cathartic about hearing these words spoken on a screen (if only my tiny glowing blue computer):

"The Americans in Iraq are like a virus, like a disease. And for us we need to get rid of the Americans, because the Americans just don`t know what they`re doing."

and

"it's a crime after five years that electricity is not back to prewar levels, because Saddam Hussein, who was a dictator I detested, was able to have electricity back in 45 days. So, why is the United States not having achieved that in five years? It's not just miscalculations. The priority was, you know, to make sure that the oil flows. Sorry, but that is true. The only sector that`s working well right now is the oil sector. It`s not the schools, not the hospitals, not the reconstruction. The oil sector is working.

What a mess. It's telling that this makes me think of my thesis, specifically the relationship between truth and fiction. I was reading excerpts from Ricardo Piglia's "Critica y Ficcion" today. He's an Argentine writer and was my advisor's advisor at Princeton, and has provided me with a good quote on the relationship between truth and fiction:

"Me interesa trabajar esa zona indeterminada donde se cruzan la ficción y la verdad. Antes que nada porque no hay un campo propio de la ficción. De hecho, todo se puede ficcionalizar. La ficción trabaja con creencia y en este sentido conduce a la ideologia, a los modelos convencionales de realidad y por supuesto también a las convenciones que hacen verdadero (o ficticio) a un texto. La realidad está tejido de ficciones."

Reality is woven out of fictions. Hmm.

obama-ed

I've guess I've officially become an Obama supporter, in the sense that I've gone so far to donate $10 to his campaign. How did this happen? I'm not really sure. I read a quote from him on a NYTimes blog that I liked: “I think it would be a problem if Senator Clinton’s voters disliked me or my voters disliked Senator Clinton [but] I don’t think that’s the case. I think our voters are passionate about bringing about change. My sister keeps asking me, a fervent Obama supporter herself (she went to a rally in Conneticut; you can see her photos here: (http://goodtimes.webshots.com/album/562385124SwFVbz) Part of me wonders if I'm just as much of a bandwagon jumper in politics as I am in sports (ver since the Lakers acquired Paul Gasoul and suddenly looked championship caliber again, my interest has suddenly resparked). I didn’t expect Obama to get this far, but since he has, he’s definitely looking better than Clinton. I’m suspicious and cynical about politicians in general, but as far as these things go, Clinton is definitely more of a politician than Obama, in the worst possible sense.

In other news, things are stressful. I vacillate thinking I’m totally screwed with my thesis and that I’m never going to finish it, verses being absolutely giddy and convinced that I’m a total genius. I am rarely in between, and quite frankly it’s getting exhausting! I’m working in the Catholic Charities immigration office this semester, which I’ve really enjoyed so far, but I had to flake out on going there this afternoon for the second week in a row just because I’m so far behind on thesis work that I’m absolutely panicked about meeting with my adviser with what I feel is very little to show him. Part of this comes from being mildly depressed for the past week and a half, whether from the always gray weather or having the flu or general ennui, I’m not sure. But anyway, I keep forgetting (and then relearning!) that the best way to conquer malaise or writer’s block is to simply get out and do things! I’m at my best, mentally and emotionally, when I’m buzzing around like a little bee, going with grim determination from one appointment or assignment to the next. When I don’t have clear deadlines or goals, I waver. I get bogged down and overwhelmed, like I’m walked through a swamp and my boots get so much mud attached to them I get stuck in a slurpy mess. Onwards and upwards, then.

State of Denial (Bob Woodward)

There were many moments in this book that made me put it down in my lap and gaze somewhat mournfully off into space, thinking, “Wow... that would make for a serious dramatic moment in the movie version.” My favorite is the scene at the end of the election chapter, after Bush receives a phone call from Kerry (that useless twat) conceding the election. Bush promptly breaks into “convulsive sobbing” and goes around hugging everyone in the room. “This is a wonderful gift you’ve given your dad,” someone tells him. When he reaches Cheney, Bush tells him “I know you’re not the hugging kind!” and shakes his hand. It’s all there: the unexpected display of emotional weakness, the reference to the creepy father-son undertones (which are especially emphasized in the book’s first few chapters), Cheney’s fundamental creepiness.

Reading this book was a pleasant walk down the memory lane of the past five years. More accurately, it was like receiving one stomach suckerpunch after another: Katrina, Harriet Meirs, that whole crazy CIA identity leak scandal, the non-existent WMDs based on evidence that was blatantly inaccurate, the Abu Gharaib prison photos, Cheney’s blatant fear-mongering for reelection. I could go on and on.

What was most interesting to me in this book was reading about how people’s personalities and fucked-up psychological makeup directly affected the administration’s handlings of the war. Rumsfield is the principle villain of this work (Cheney remains dark and inscrutable). Woodward emphasizes how Rumsfield frenzied need to control everything really fucked Washington in the ass. Basically, everyone in this book just came off as hopelessly incompetent. There are some moments in the book that are real killers. Like when Bush is asked by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel if he believes that he is getting “bubbled” in the White House on Iraq. Or Woodward describing the atmosphere in the Oval Office following the early days of the invasion as a royal court: “some upbeat stories, exagerrated good news, and a good time had by all.” (226) I found particularly sickening how Bush seemed to only think of his strategy in Iraq in regards to what Kerry and the Democrats had said or did that way: lots of Iraq rhetoric and pep talk in terms of how it would affect his reelections, but not once asking a specific question of what was going on there and what should be done.

What Thomas Pychon would have called the “whole sick crew”—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfiled, Rice, and to a lesser extent Wolfowitz—come off as completely and utterly clueless. Simply put, they had no idea of the reality of the situation. They existed in their own little world. It’s one thing to have that attitude if you’re running an NGO, or a university, but as the leading administrators of the most powerful and influential nation-slash-imperial power, it’s inexcusable. I know it’s easy in retrospect for people to stand outside an incredibly complex situation and criticize—ooooh, I woulda done this, I woulda done that—but is it really too much for me to want people in those kinds of positions, power and influence to achieve a certain level of competence? Even if it was just enough to realize the need for translators for soldiers before 18 months had passed.

I’m grateful for journalism of this sort, that is both readable and accessible, and yet highly detailed. I feel like the book could have been edited down a little bit; the last hundred pages in particular felt to me like Woodward was getting mucked up in the slog and losing his bite (how many times can he use the “Rumsfield was furious” example of his control freak tendencies?). I wish Bush’s and Cheney’s motives had been explained a little more: why the heck was Cheney so obsessed with connecting Hussein with Al-Qeada? Did Bush really believe all that democracy-in-Iraq rhetoric trash? This book was useful for me in light of the upcoming presidential elections. It makes selecting a viable candidate I truly want to support more difficult. Ideally, I would want somebody hardass and smart enough to deal with the kind of bureacratic mess that is the politics and military that this book describes. But what a person psychologically brings to a table as well (what they “represent” as a leader) is just as, if not more, important. On a scale of 90 second segments officially produced to an angry Ani Difranco song, I rank this a stars and stripes that is only slightly bent.