color 7

fragment 5

2006-12-19T14:49:00.000-06:00

A small, blue phrase book from the peace corps enabled me to tell them my name and greet them appropriately, although I could never resolve in my own mind that I had to greet as elders, people who were only three years older than I, but the book ran out of content and sense when I came to the pages which elaborated on the many medical maladies we'd been told we'd inevitably encounter, and I saw no sense in telling them that I had blood in my diarrhoea when I plainly did not. And it's hard to say what is happening when you sit in such uncomfortable silence, their faces made implacable by the gulf of culture and language that separated us, but then a trick which I'd learn to employ whenever some period would pass in too awkward a silence – I'd make an entreaty to the materialism that we both had in common as avaricious, grasping, fellows, and the trick worked, because virtually always I'd have the advantage of possessing more and stranger, exotic material than those with whom I'd share the awkward silence that needed remedy. And dazzle I did, many times, though not so much on that day, and all the little trinkets I'd scrupulously packed according to the instructions on those poorly photocopied packets that the peace corps had sent us did not impress as I'd hoped, and my family was left dissatisfied as they'd hoped for more from America than a couple of Nike t-shirts and some match box cars; the Barbie dollars, I'd later give away. Who knew that there would be no daughters in need of a white role model? But at least brief distraction as they contemplated their disappointment, but I did appreciate the attempt and potential of the technique, and I'd employ it often in the future. Dazzle them with what you own. Sit the neighbours' kids down with my radio so they'll stop hovering; see my new digital camera; I'll demonstrate it so that I don't have to admit I don't know what to say to students that I haven't seen in nearly three years and whom I left behind abruptly to chase my own dreams.
Five minutes spent trying on shirts, getting bored with small metal cars that fit so easily into Alberii's mouth and it was the family's turn and they won and in the end my pants ended up spattered in blood because I stood too close as baba slowly drew the dullest knife in the kitchen back and forth across the afraid chicken's neck, and he stepped on its wings so it couldn't fight and pain and vegetarian inducing beady little eyes closed as the neck, nearly severed finally by the long piece of metal that was almost a knife spurted blood into a waiting dish and my khaki pants. We ate the chicken that night, fried with rice and chapatti, and as I chewed on what I'd just seen killed an hour before, and swore that I was eating the first documented chicken hair, I decided to tell my family that I was allergic to meat and would appreciate, please, the beans and rice that I'd expected and awaited since id' learned that it was a staple in a country where people were too poor to afford anything else. Please, I will live like you and not kill the chickens even though I grow to hate them over my time there because they live under my window, sense when I require sleep and so vocally remind me of their presence, one, with a sickly warble that grated on my unaccustomed ears and who earned no pity, only scorn, resentment, as they conspired to rob my nights of sleep.

2006-12-17T13:18:00.000-06:00

Grenville Byford noted in Foreign Affairs, wars are more fruitfully declared against proper nouns (Germany, Japan) than common nouns (terror, poverty).

fragment 4

2006-12-15T12:44:00.000-06:00

And the streets were only pale prelude to the dark left and right turns we'd make through narrow alleys hemmed in by mud walls, cinder blocked decay, chickens running before us, startled, unable to clear our way, and we left the electrical wires behind, the plumbing, the modernity and language that I'd always known, and passed through a tumbled wooden gate into the courtyard of our house, expectant family standing ready, alerted by the belching of our bug as it completed its struggle up the slope. There they stood, not a word of English ready to come from their mouths, beautiful elise, livingstone earnest in his pressed white shirt, and alberti, truculent and mischievous and most likely insane. An awkward pause, as the bags were set down in the dust beside the chicken coop and elise runs to hug me; she's very happy to see me and I still believe it was kindness that motivated her and not the windows and electricity that the fees they received for guarding me would eventually purchase. The hug was over, and what was there to say, what was there to do, but bring the bags inside and briefly inspect the four rooms that were the house, and I was kept inside one of them, displaced the parents to the children's room where the four slept together on a mattress, sacrificing for 7 weeks so that they could purchase a television and never need to talk to each other again.
Enter the house, doilies, as per usual, cover every surface possible, white and coloured, the arms of the chairs had them, small tables off to the side, the backs of chairs, and occasionally children who'd been still for too long would find that they'd been marked for permanence with a doily carefully perched atop their fuzzy heads. The kitchen, a charcoal stove, and brightly coloured Chinese made buckets, used in some sort of complicated process to manage the water of which I would never be able to make any sense. The family's room was blocked by a thin white curtain, and I was grateful for it because I was not ready to find such an intimate knowledge of the family, their lives and wants so early in my time there. And to the back we went where a muddy courtyard contained the latrine and small concrete stall for showering, and beyond the gate open to a short, blasted stretch strewn with trash and fist sized rocks grey with the pervasive dust, until a small path led downward into the same ravine which had been our curb on the drive in and in the bottom more garbage, offal from the previous day's meal, a receptacle of all unwanted, and in it little girls played and through it ran our drinking water, a small stream, floating detritus on its meagre volume. And I sipped from my nalgene, pure bottled water from the training centre and the dust, cloying, and everywhere parched my throat and would the water last, or would I drink what they'd brought from the refuse and kindly boiled, though always there'd remain flecks of suspicious colour and nature floating throughout. Grand tours take time and distract from our mutual inability to communicate and empathize and understand and the ease of following behind someone's heels and smiling and nodding as each new site is presented wears off when sitting in close quarters around a table upon which were squeezed three white doilies, the centre one being larger than the rest and the one on the left with a small red stain on one edge.

fragment 3

2006-12-11T12:37:00.000-06:00

And then, short and bald, and barely older than I, my father came and grabbed me roughly with sweaty palms and we joined the thronging circle and danced to the drums and no time, but out through the gates, past the Mercedes and other gleaming sedans, arusha's wealth parked on one street, and the cars began to thin until there were none, and still I was pulled along until around the corner, an ancient blue bug, lopsidedly parked in a ditch, rust through the doors, and me unable to open mine from the outside, and it was my way home. Did it make it, how did it make it? A relic, impossibly driven, as each bump threatened its existence as a car, but through streets wide with cars and peddlers through large avenues, teeming humanity we drove north to the mountain, meru, always there to remind that perhaps life might be spectacular, and as I began to think that the city might be left behind, we'd driven so far, the crowds off to our right parted from the impetus of our surprisingly loud horn and revealed a small dirt lane wending deep into a warren of markedly more ramshackle, confused and derelict buildings that was Sakina, our neighbourhood. He aimed his battered car into this mysterious engulfment of potholed streets walled in closely on either side by the garishly signed pharmacies, dukas, and high, glass-topped cement walls that protected the homes from the desperate crime that ran rampant soon after the sun went down around 6 pm. This near to the equator, the day always ended at 6, dusk would bring a quick emptying of the streets and families huddled around their low wooden table, scooping ugali in their right hands by kerosene lanter. And this was what I, too, would come to once we completed the maze of streets that climbed higher and less resembled roads the farther the car groaned up the incline littlered with boulders, stream crossings, and at least one dead cat. And turn right at the third butcher, "Jesus' liberty meat of cow," and then past the "third corner" hairdressers, and up and over rutted, gutted road, deep, grey dust hiding deep gullies which we'd hit suddenly and bottom out and throw clouds of the stuff into the air behind us as we came perilously close to a gorge, rusted cars in the bottom a church on the other side, and up the road climbed and narrowed as it went, banana trees replacing the lively shops of below and not miles, but seeming farther the more foreign all becameAnd finally, a left before the gorge engulfed the remainder of the road and up a steep driveway, past the house with electricity into an alley, dark even when elsewhere the hot, African sun shone and conspired to send small rivulets of sweat down the back of your shirt, for the bougainvillea that climbed high above us and scratched as we struggled to extricate bags from unwilling doors; they still bore the blue yarn then, and do now, even as one has been traded away for petrol.

panoptic you

2006-12-05T11:23:00.000-06:00

steven levy: newsweek;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15994151/site/newsweek/
calls it "litttle brother" orwellian terms, but end result foucauldian when we learn that everywhere people with little prying cameras in handy plastic phones ready to broadcast your shame, digression from the straight and narrow, ready to broadcast to world on youtube, email, or other video sharing site. private communication betrays you, moments shared among few become moments broadcast when simple technology thrown into the mix, when we begin to accept the change in barriers, we'll no longer need the training of our institutions to teach us how to behave according to their norms, but we'll self-regulate according the likelihood that our behaviour will amuse, disgust, or outrage enough to merit broadcasting through the mediums to the connected. briefly, but the standards by which we were formerly driven to self-regulate, were generally created by few authorities: legal institutions - courts, enforcement, etc. - and - moral institutions - schools, church, etc. - and their norms were easily understood, the products of long traditions, and hegemonic. now, the power of seeing has been atomised to those who troll the mediums for their info and push little buttons with their fingers, and we're unsure of how our behaviours align with norms we can't really know. a new layer of monitoring and once we realize it, we'll find new caution in self - regulating and new ways to counter it, as do the cctv familiar brits and the antics they engage in for the benefit of the little man sitting in his chair in a fortified room somewhere, but most likely to quietly avoid the threat of broadcasting and will add a new layer of self regulating; they must be law abiding, moral, and discreet citizens; the failure to adhere to the last possibly leading to a uniquely public reprobation, a shift, an affront to the public as a monitoring institution, just a brief.

Fragment 2

2006-12-04T11:42:00.000-06:00

Look out the window and catch your glimpse as the city glides silently by outside your air conditioned world, one last taste of home, because here we pull through the warren of lush streets, made narrow by high walls, topped by broken glass to keep in the wealth and out the crime, the city, and we pulled into our training centre, deep within that pocket of wealth among so much want, and were ushered off the bus to the sounds of drumming Tanzanians, a pastiche, a play for the white ones recently arrived, expect Africa, we must give it to them, and then we sat nervous, expectant, examining little posters on the wall, as our country directors gaily attired and appropriately effusive, introduced us to our new home and declared the kindness of Tanzanians.
And our excitement at arriving was commensurate with theirs at receiving us, children of September 11, whose confidence had been shaken, our notion of America(ns) tested by unruly foreigners who had challenged the sovereign American bubble and its complacent consumerly path.
And we listened and felt what they said to be true and nodded our heads and recognized how lucky we were to be welcomed by the sonorous drums of our Tanzanian hosts. We wouldn't forget, hadn't our books told us that drums were African?
Their acceptance was the only justification we had for being for the next two years. Without that we were tourists and without that we did pass much time because the country did exists apart from its people and we would learn to take advantage of the animals and the geography, but as we sat, nervous and enthralled, all that existed was potential and we filled and plumped with the need to do good, were ready to seize that potential and show the Tanzanians that our presence was worth the nuisance. All these things as we sat through our first formal moments on Tanzanian soil and to varying degrees we bought into it, and it was yearning and acceptance and reluctance and all in between as we sat in the folding chairs and measured our leaders and their baggy shirts and wondered what two years in Tanzania would bring.
And the world was carefully, slowly opened up to us by those who knew better than we did what it held, and our first step into it came as we filed in line to a hotel, not quite ready to interact with Tanzanians beyond self conscious smiles as the locals stopped and gawked at an unusually long line of white people wending their way along the verdant nurseries that lined either side of the road. And twice daily for the next few days, we'd make the same trip and the fragrant smell of burning brush became one of the earliest and most lasting memories of Tanzania, evoking rich memories when the mere hint of it would be encountered elsewhere, in our journeys, mundane or otherwise, through our post peace corps lives, a time that seemed so distant as we first began to walk through the city and learn that riding in public transportation meant that a sweating mama, lap filled with child and vegetables would sit across from you, her legs fit in between yours spread wide, uncomfortably. Are we supposed to be that familiar with our neighbours? Shouldn't she keep her breasts to herself? I don't want to see them, right now, and my stop is coming up soon, and we were warned, "Tanzanians are a kind people, but there are criminals everywhere," and be afraid at night and be afraid when alone and be afraid of prison and do not sit there, and food has germs and dirt and do not eat shit, this is a foreign country and you're not from here. Be mindful. And just as the hotel and our baby steps into the world left us savouring a welcome bit of complacence, we sat down one Saturday and learned that using a toilet was more complicated than we thought and that the opaque culture would need to be pierced soon because that day was the day when we'd be sent off to various houses around the city where wealthy people would get wealthier taking care of us, and we shook our heads and yes we were ready, eager even, to embrace and take one more step away from what we'd left behind, and the drums, of course, the drums, signalled that it was time and they arrived, Tanzanians of all stripe and we all stood around dumbly waiting for the right one to pick us, to identify us from our name tags as the one who would be their source of cultural exchange and hard exchange, and we were all excited to see one another, appraising behind smiles. "I didn't expect Tanzanians would have such nice cars," "That girl is so pale, and yet her arms are hairy," "Why am I so fat?" And a parade of rich, English speaking Tanzanians grabbed us by our arms, and at least we were all equally new to the experience at this early stage, expectant of where they'd take us and what sights we'd see.

Fragment 1

2006-11-29T15:13:00.000-06:00

Rainbows crashed around us daily and then we looked up and didn't notice them anymore because they were there, had always been there, quotidian and colourful and implacable, riding, as was their wont, over the poignant and the sublime, the dusty, dusky children crying as they were held close to their mothers' backs bent low
over dry fields, sowing seeds that wouldn't grow the good life they wanted, and then, also, rising high over the hot air balloons that carried wealthy cameras far above the Serengeti, who sipped champagne, squinting to see the animated bugs below that were people distant enough to be romantic in aspect, noble savages; let's preserve their culture before they die off and we have fewer subjects for our lenses. Rainbows and albinos and Tanzania.

And we sat, and stood, and formed a long line that snaked through the terminal, our 2 large bags each tied with light blue yarn to signify that we were together, the ones beginning our long journey, and we waited as slowly the bags with blue yarn were taken away behind the counter, some of us reluctantly emptying them of their carefully considered contents when they were deemed to weigh too much, and others looking on, knowing that their lone sacks of books would not come close to pushing the limit. And who knew what of their 70kg would prove invaluable in tanzania and what would be discarded as superfluous when it was time to really live the place? But we'd talk and debate and smugly reflect on the moral superiority our preferences indicated, and we'd all be honest and right, the packing of the bags the last step on our distinct arrival at the journey. We left our bags and settled into the uncomfortable chairs of the waiting lounge, and began to know each other and the like and dislike and he was a rock climber, she a pig farmer out in the Midwest somewhere, and he would never a month in the bush. And all there for different reasons, shall I save some heathens for Jesus? Collect my one adventure before settling down to my aspirational trajectory? Find something in myself? Whichever, not bad not great gets the job done and then you go and figure it out later and sometimes it's something worth doing and sometimes not, but he didn't worry too much; he was there, nodding his head, ready to follow the line to the grand adventure that waited an ocean and a continent away. We had tickets; we were going to fly. And our sore arms showed us how valuable the expensive vaccinations had made us.
And the airport, our last taste of Americana, a mailbox where our stamps would hold currency, the familiar food, California pizza kitchen, second time in two days; they don't have pizza in Africa, and that's where we're going… Africa. Sometimes just saying it makes it a little more real, bursts the little insulated bubble that 40 other fresh faced American youth can create, and we sit around severally, opening travel books, their spines already well worn as they made their rounds justifying the elegance and magic of our experience to sceptical relatives and friends, nurturing our own expectations and wonder at what an amazing thing we were beginning. And already had it begun? The anticipation, and "where do you want to live" "I've been there already, and the people are beautiful and kind below skies that are blue without end." "But, I heard that some houses are built of dung, and anyways I need electricity for my laptop." Such a foreign experience, with only a glimmer of what might await, pictures in a book, sage words from previous volunteers handily transcribed in poorly photocopied induction books, and the company of so many others like us equally unsure. And much easier to imagine the safaris, the adventures, than to understand what it might mean to live with them, Tanzanians, learn their names, and problems, and ideas. The pictures are shiny, seductive and calming.
And he would mail his last letter on American soil, probably the first letter he'd actually written, and it would be to his girlfriend, the one he's chosen to leave behind even though one time emotion overcame her and she did what she vowed she wouldn't and asked him to stay. The last letter, and then on the plane, time to make new friends.
Five hours to Amsterdam, the airport shiny, cosmopolitan, with chairs too uncomfortable for sleeping; thence to Nairobi, over the Sahara, he looking out the window, the Sahara, complacent in limnal opportunities of the journey. Twenty hours and finally, abruptly: Africa, the smell of body odour searing sensitive nostrils accustomed to the sterility of the West, and jovial men greeting us outside the airport teasing us for our Lion King knowledge of Swahili and with the promise of a real bed in Nairobi university.
Sleep.
The next day's breakfast, our first taste of the institutional cafeteria style meals that would be the hallmark of organized PC events and would find us all shuffling up in line, dispersing to our tables where cliques had already begun forming. After breakfast a bus ride to Arusha, savannah as far as the eye cold see, views of Kilimanjaro, ostrich eggs for sale by the side of the road, and local music to emphasize that we were no longer in America, but that our adventure had really begun. And we were ready to assert our readiness, sniggering knowingly when a monied blond was fleeced at the first souvenir stand he encountered, smugly, too eagerly hoping/knowing we'd never let ourselves be taken either by unscrupulous traders or by the urge to so conspicuously consume as the other Americans were wont; don't forget how few embrace the noble challenge of Peace Corps. Heroes are not tempted, and would never lose in the struggle against the avaricious African peddler. But, forget schadenfreude, hustle back on the bus, Arusha awaits, and the training centre and the smells and crowds and sights of our first African city.

dusty, dusty it chokes you

2006-11-29T15:11:00.000-06:00

This blog will include sundry and desultory entries, but also a serialization of a narrative, unedited, written at various stages of lucidity and including incoherent transitions, but tell a story of more than a year in Tanzania, doing some things and not doing others and it's all just as well.

no longer moribund

2006-11-27T11:44:00.000-06:00

impelled by efforts of friends and colleagues, and an end to a rather consuming teaching assignment, writing begins again with new posts about nothing and particular and the inclusion of a serialized account of life in another place.

today

2006-11-27T11:41:00.000-06:00

Gambol, gambol, gambol, because god is in his side, a small voice behind the ear, gnashing teeth pumping lusty chagrin through the pulpy mass of neurons that light the righteous burn in his eyes. And the little voice behind the sloping forehead and beneath the bristling hair, the same parasite that infects the railing and wailing Christians that throng and flock behind their big screens that announce their predilections and paths in booming strength and simplistic surety, wages his war against man with the monkey being, his mouth, his grasping hands. And the monkey with slick teeth revealed in scowl and smirk, pounds his message behind tall podiums and protecting men whose ideas form the substance from which he builds the platitudes that can sometimes be discerned in his struggling howls out into space and the captive, flaccid minds behind the flashing boxes that fill their heads with their opinions and whose screens – screens, nourishing and everywhere – when inactive reflect the cruciform talismans that prominently caution all comers about the viewers’ adherence to the same virulent influence that infects their leader with a fear and loathing that are broadcast in his dull eyes and foments the sincerity of his steamrolling, dichotomised rhetoric.
And he shits in shiny, plastic diapers, eminently disposable, as he peels back the layers of nuance and rights and justice as he would to a banana before he’d thrust it in his mouth, tonguing the mush through the gap between his front teeth, and slime dribbling out through carelessly closed lips in his eagerness, eyes greedily dull, pushing the button for more, more negative feedback, someone else paying price for his rewards, and the men in suits feed and push and stroke the parasite and keep Georgy from getting an itch, lest he dislodge its influence and the certainty and absoluteness of his resolve crack in his urge to scratch that itch by searching for complexity and depth in the messages that he struggles to articulate in strained solecisms. Minders mind and Georgy forges his path, straight and hard, directly back to the dead documents – religious and secular alike – that are held sacred by those that fear that the future’s opportunity will fall to others whose parts add up to wholes of different colors, predilections, and ideas.
Buttons are pushed and suits change diapers and Georgy is happy, redolent of a sour complacence, and gambols freely behind a comforting conviction, the parasite’s bite a welcome sign of security when startling pictures threaten equanimity and the healthy digestion of everything that he’s been fed beneath the flashing screens.
Georgy, hiss and spit and divine messages in your shit as your push it about with your twiddling little fingers, jump, gambol, jump in fits of pique, and dance for our shocked amusement.

this post is also published on the blog: www.mytiroo.com

so much happening. close your eyes your bitter, bitter eyes

2005-04-01T16:45:00.000-06:00

Joel, do you see what a big time for life this is these days and it is so funnny and all from christianity the future of so many and its effects and it's all out of our hands and the christian right will end our chacne to chooose our future and save the right for peopole to do what they want and they all use terri as an excuse and they will destroy what our constitution and belief in justice built and read some article about what delay says and sickness will be your companion and and I can hardly believe it and really wish I knew what I could do to stop the persistence of such vile men in our political system and then the pope about to die and what does that mean for the world and the new men will continue to advoate the hatred of homosexuality and condoms to preven the spread of aids and why so much change and will all te change be regressive and harm liberal sensibilities and social justice I feel so disappointed as an american and a human being and the other would be the senate's attempt to obviate the blocking of fillibusters for judicial appointement and joel why are we so impotent and why do we live in such dire circumstances and but it will continue I don't think we have voice even thoguh we are suppposed to is farce and doesn't matter but will destroy freedom. You have to read david harvey spaces of hope. Would so much play nad inform your view of the world. I need to purchase that book and learn that I can be dissatisfied with the reality with which I am presented byu zealous politicians and leaders religious or secular, I worry for our future.
amd

To you who might enjoy the company of we who enjoy the company of marx and david harvey and the spatial fix, we are talking and will do and damn capitalist accumulation, will find ourselves in some brazilian bar at holborn tomorrow night at 7:30 tomorrow night, Saturday the second that would be the number 2 for those who appreciate arabic numerals more than the english language. And we will be there enjoying or tolerating each other's company if you wish. The details will follow, and the music will be brazilian at the minimum though it will not extend to american indie, interpol, modest mouse tomorrow yhou are forgotten for the benefit of brazillian to my consternation, but I have been charged with the notification. Some of you are here, some not. Some of you will respond some not, but this email goes out to all in spirit of comraderie of our marxist fellows. That is the mystery of our program and our mutual connection. More details forthcoming.
adm

Hey you, frenchy, beautifyl frenchy. So this guy, big d is his name and on the roof we were (that would be the roof of st clements, the building wehre we are geography and is wondrufl and where yuoy and bmiddle p and we wil cele brate your return to wondruful london and that place where we all live for the next few monthsn) and anyways big d was telling this stor0y abot an afternoon after a class, gy 411 with jones, gareth and that is the class and we were there sitting on the roof and the story came out and it wasn’t mythical it wasn’t mundane, but it was french and it was you and it wasthat you he and fiona were walking down that stree that is houghton and then you were talking and the talk turned to sinks and hten sinks in rooms and then you scandalized both crazy big canadian and innocent english fiona by announcing that you utilized your sink to piss and then I said well what do I know this girl frenchy and then no secrets and then everyone to know that she pisses and sink but maybe I’m the only to have seen her recently but you scandalize by announcing and make big d love you for that announcement and you, qwho are laure tell that story and we all know and for that we appreciate it you are who you are and that is unique an good. And ther you go. But that wa s just the beginning of the evenign that brought each of the adams one gin bottle from sainsbury and many stories and one very nice inside analysis. And that would be 1-4 for most girls and one 1-3 for most actually and ask me to explain it and I wlll, but ofr now, jennyh is 1-4 or 5 and you are 1-3, and no matter tha you have ferwer numbers, it is enough and very nice. And then we talk boaut it and that is the way it is. I have a song to which you should listen and acity to which you shold go and mourn the papacy and that is rome 13-15 rome and me there and mourn the pope and his conservative bent and the ultraconservatives that replace hikm and denounce condoms for aids prones africans and bitter little men that love jesus and in rome we will see their window and mourn them for the ill they wish upon the world andgays. And that is what you should do 13-15 and see what one bottle of gin can do and one walk home from holborn passing slutty british girls and one loquasious spelled incorrectly yugoslavian man. And that again that is the evening that follows the day that was indian buffet with friends and romanesque natural history museum alone. Well anyway I hope you have good day before you go to paris and that you deign to write back some time and not be angrified and hateful and french and realize that sometimes though americans love the culture of life and judicial servitude to the senate and legislature and executive branch that occasionally some of us can be critical and of interest and delight to the rest of the world who consiedrs secularism a worthy rationality for understanding lifea nd then we are not so bad and not all love jesus for bleeding and dyhing and tonight was that night when we discovered how unahppy we were with the narrow narrow love of jesus that most christians espouse and use to justify their fertile hatred of those who don’t smell the same as they do and tehn I should enbd this email lest yhou become bored and choose to look at yhuor paper wall as a more interesting alternative to reading emails by americans that miiss your pyjamas and absense of said pyjamas and hateful french personality. Well you have a good night and ihope that all is well and if not wonderful at least tolerable and not hateful or if hateful at least hateful in agood way.
Adam
Who is an amercan who spelled his name correctly inadvertently and tomorrow will look for jobs on the intornet a man’s best friend

nothing to say no one to read

2005-03-22T16:41:00.000-06:00

been so long since something to say i've had, but still now, nothing substantive, nothing itching to be said about the christian right and their feeding tube fetish, nor about that guy who shakes things from a window over solemn crowds. tired still but sleep will come over the next weeks three without distractions in the evening less alcohol and smoke and nonsense. pull your socks up time to write little pieces about minor places and issues. still contentment tonight, though haven't left the house since noon today. will begin some sort of regiment tomorrow with bile and cycle tricks and red shirts to be worn. just have to say some words to feel as if i haven't given up yet on this little project. coming closer to dissertation topic one that won't be disdained by professors but one that won't be interesting to development professionals my future employers those people i hope who need a quitter of an american with blond hair and gimpy knees, but what is it a heart full of soul i think the yardbirds have remade. not bad. frenchy's back and made up mind and positive outcome so far. turkish food and shisha's and all not a bad kid. three alcoholics reunited for one last week before china intervenes and boredome and general disappointment with each other and nothing to say, let's kick it. with these essays done such a wonderful chance for relaxed summer. no marathon no goal. but really it's fascinating to read the schiavo case and her advocates' blogs and their seeming insensitivity to reality. they all presume such a large media conspiracy, and it's not so interesting for this case specifically, but their misconception that they're informed and our misfortune that they're the voters who will keep churning out shiny conservatives to promote a culture of life for some but not for others. i've only learned to hate them from reading about them, but reading their own words is illuminating and fascinating but scary. it's a whole world of paranoia and conviction which i'll never really understand and their videos to which they cling as evidence of life and sanctity and prescience are pornographic in the mixture of revulsion and compulsion to watch they elicit. five minutes mother chants to lolling daughter. i need less intornet, more work and productivity in the face of it. oh well. tomorrow try to resume.

little parasites that are embedded

2005-03-08T16:10:00.000-06:00

and life with the orange box on wheels? how is it does it progress in the usual fashion with forwards and backwards and then it's giong alright in the end. getting somehwere teleological and all. me, back to my side, teacher i need books and money, and something to love a calling a passion, i sthat what you americans say? i've got a new word for you and it's two actually and goes like this and "queue barge" it's brit speak for to cut in line the lines tha the brits love and insufferably form to snake around sidewalks and stairwells and block both of the gresses both in and e and on they go. aside from the forming of queues nothing occurs in my life that is exciting. london becomes quotidian just as somerville would had i remained except with weather significantly more dreary and neighbors with worse teeth and sallow skin. the brits are so unattractive that they well you see there is lots of vomit on the sidewalks. the foreign girls at school, however, beautiful and numerous and pleasing accents. i am learning anew to hate with a more sophisticated language of marxism and heuristics and overdetermination and today is invigorating tomorow enervating but learning a bit not enough in a year i've realized. have been to exciting things a few, such as caving in holes, and walking around on chalky cliffs, but with no jumptastic i find no one who is willing to sacrifice the well being of his health so that i may destroy myself and that is a sobering thought. i need exhaustion that i haven't found in a long time, beyond the lassitude of elitist academia, what's the word? ennui, i feel it, but why not one more? enervating fits the ticket. people here are good somehow. they carry on and have recently adopted my filled with hate sticktoitiveness and that is how it goes. will begin looking for jobs soon, and hopefullyh will have a new place to live by the end of august at which time my dissertation should be completed and my time here up. you would like marxism. i think it would provide a vocabulary and conceptualization for much of how you view the world. though i use it only as a critique and not as the ideology as it's espoused here, i htink it serves to reinforce a profound sense of injustice in the world and motivates my desire to do something about it. it's greatest flaw is that it is structuralist and seeks to define everything in terms of accumulating wealth whereas i feel this too essentialist, but you would enjoy some of it no doubt and i can recommend some readings if you are interested at some point. how is life i hope it is well. i am cold here in a cold room. and have gossip that i can share and which would be of interest, but about which i am not sure that i want to talk at the moment. for now i'll let you know that sally and i broke up after she left in january because again, we will not coexist in the same continent for the foreseeable future. she is a good girl and likes climbing and jesus. jesus makes us so happy that sometimes we feel like he's all we need. we can just eat him up he's so yummy and then spit out the bitter bitter holy spirit. i hate you holy spirit don't make me do that. oh well. and so that's how it goes. and i hope again that life is treating you like a bucket of cherries with no stones in them and then you are sweet and ripe and hanging from a tree somewhere that hasn't been chopped down by our wooden toothed founding father.
this is my story to a painter who doesn't always wear shirts but is a good guy nonetheless and did i sap this evenings creativity in writing to him. in case i did, publish the above i did.
and so quickly to switch from one to the other and how sticky can be the sum of three days? the answer i hope and believe and need is not so much. more the absence of opportunity the sudden obviating of opportunity what could have been in the imagination, will linger for a bit but less if other opportunities, african opportunities meet fruition in spectacular fashion. ahh, wll still ambivalence and i had among my most successful one line communications today to go downi n history and that is me who is the guy who ois writing. can modernism be a framework through which to introduce a new conception of informality being an interstitial practice? is this too theoretical complex worthless? i'm no guy who says things just a guy who does something occasionally without intellectual rigour with a british u and then what? how far can i veer toward practicality? i don't think i want to find that direction and doesn't it matter what people's consciousness of their world tells them? do they have to get caught up in the same ideology? i think not hope not and then too depressing otherwise. need to read some more, but not sure that will make that tonight. too much gossip, and i want to but finally learning that nothing comes of it. maturity little more than reticence. reticulated yes, that's the ticket i do believe we've made something let's call it an aphorism and then publish it under our pseudonym of gallopping androgyne, the third of a series of four who still claims tulsa as the place from which he most wants to derascinate himself. ahh bitterness hold it deep inside and treasure it, it's yours and informs all your colours. ok

splinters of light, odious heat

2005-03-06T16:26:00.000-06:00

and tonight i will not use the leopard print sheet, nor the down sleeping bag, nor stained sheet nor blanket blue; i've kicked my radiator and finally as winter will wane i have heat in my room good for me and small companions, my featherless feckless friends that wander in and out and not here hearing at the moment, but later perhaps will arrive in a rush of moral ambivalence all wet again. damn dusty desk. and that's that. weekend over in five and have decided that i must create jargon for my dissertation or i will be dissatisfied, becuase what is academia if not the reckless creation of jargon and proliferation of special words and tautology. lap it up little puppy big round belly jolly laugh spittle gathering at the corners of your mouth, forming spindly white threads as you open your mouth to admonish us to consider space lest we succumb to blind historicity. yes then that's what will be done. interstitial activity replaces informal activity in a world where failed states only serve to extend partial rigidities that overspecify in a context that can not endogenously contain all the actors and against which and complicit with the actors create some sociospatial outcome and that is my conceptualization in its first articulation and not the last but what interests me, no boring reduction to governance or bland, slippery informality no thank you manuel, i'll leave you off the abstract and jargon will save the world with flapping cape and avuncular grin. leave him be, he's good people, supports his troops and all, yours occasionally but not the chomskyite from jordan glasses and all, he'll be forgotten when the cape flaps, rustling noble wind. bury yourself in the treasury little man with delicate sensibilities, the nabateans are gone as far as we and indy understand. desert is left. she's still around and foreign and cancerous. she lives amongst deep holes that curve sinuously left and right and sometimes left again, a funny coincidence since she would never deign enter them or acknowledge that they exist as wonderful wonderful karst. tired little sleep soon.

letter to guy

2005-02-28T16:13:00.000-06:00

Garbled Vomit,

This is a letter to you who is that guy who ran that place where television was watched and movies enjoyed and chai so sweet that blisters in the mouth and corroded, black, sinister teeth. You are the recipient and object of these words, so enjoy it because it will be the last I write until the next time or the time after whichever it be. So news to write, the next three lines will be censored and then after that will be more lines with words to write. So that was what I thought about the death of the third caliphate. Now let’s move on to the fact that for a week I knew well a girl who was French and somewhat beautiful though small and tasted of cancer and too different than I, and that now I will know her less biblically because she wants a relationship, which is something I do not think that is something that I want. Oh well. What can you do as a person with no prospects? To you I will send movies and books, but not at the moment. I will look into phones perhaps that would be feasible, to be brought to Africa with wings and a pint of gin, gin to be drunk. I’m ambivalent at the moment about coming to tz. I think too much work to interview people at bus stand, but should be interesting. Nothing is sto my me what I want to do now. No longer. To do what to do nothing? I am who want nothing to do nothing be nothing, perhaps write about nothing. In abook about nothing, and now I have this thing called a blog which is an online journal so that I can record some thoughts and not leave them hostage to some exgirlfriend in the letters I wrote to her. Bitch, whore, I read a john irving book, son of the circus, uses great word, cunt of misery. Of all the appellations the best appelatoin appostive not quite but to the mininmum I feel that way. Applied to this job in Afghanistan, in northeast poppy growing region, but they needed someone to leave this week and I said no, I am still being indoctrinated with Marxism and am not ready to be more than my own person yet. Am still the person who my professors tell me to be, jimmy, what more can you ask, who shall I be tomorrow but that guy that they told me to be and not the one that we’re all afraid to be. And I’ve realized that I do have to figure out when I am to stop seeking to serve the world and worry more about serving myself self serving. But not yet. I need to save the world one miserable little human being at a time, like a religious movement they should take me the miserable little missionary of goodwill into their miserable little lives and we can be wretched together in the same foul place, sitting in the muck, let it be foul, odious, hateful little life and then populate the world with our mistakes flesh and moral. That is who I will be tomorrow and the day after, but in the future, miserable alone and not miserable dogooder, miserable take take take ther is no slake. Stuff as such will continue. That I am not going to be sure but will talk about parents and bishops and knights moves to you. My father comes to Ireland in may and there I will go and will be and visit and drink water sometimes. That will be what happens when I am there and then they will come here and see that I have built a little life like a temple to astringent cleansers. I have no dirty hands, no hands that peck and pick and struggle for profundity, but they have clean no blisters and no pus and no gaping wounds to be my Christ. I’m alive and not crying and then isn’t that enough when you think of it, so I say yes I do. I need to find a place to which to go that is not here and not british with pale skin and teeth that ago every which way. Your stories about moral movies and upright secretaries to bishops can not resonate with me, I believe in nothing more than chairs, which are good for sitting anyway. I will publish my letter sto you on the web and if you had internet you could read them faster than mail can deliver, but you don’t have intornet not the interest. Do you like William Faulkner? I will send you a good story mocking georgy in the fashion of Faulkner written to be that way, so hilarious and worth reading and makes me feel like a better person for having read it. Doesn’t happen often. Not since border trilogy or Troilus and Cressida, Chaucer you know dirty old chap. So nice when something you read can move you to more than apathy and mild disgust. I hope my letter fill you with hate in the same way that day to day fills me with hate and guns. So filled with guns that my pants sag and my friends are always asking me why I have so many guns that I use as electric toothbrushes and other small appliances. And I have no answer other than that guns make me feel like a man, a righteous man out to do georgy’s and god’s work in god’s country, I mean america’s country, that place with the desert and the one with the mountains and the forest and the place that is not covered by ocean. God bless America and those people that love its subjucation, support our troops to the max til you can’t throw them no more. They’ll be there for you the poor suckers till you kick them up and down again. Dig it, like that pony you dug. Funy story today about a guy who loves to fuck calves at his neighbor’s farm. When caught he defended himself by claiming that he’d never cheated on his wife or any girlfriends with a cow. And then Richard senett wasn’t talking about fucking cows, but about how we do bad things with race by pseudospeciating people, - psycho analytic stuff – and then if you’d fuck an animal you can fuck a person, and there was a thought in there but I no longer feel like articulating it, just assimilate it, tuck it a way in a corner of cavernous head mind and then pull it out later next time someone thinks about fucking a cow and you will learn to love sennett and ideas that come from his mouth. I know that’s the propensity. Store and use, little squirrel, winter’s here at last. You’ll need to use it bitter cold and no snow to mask london’s filth. And there you go, I’ve written you a letter about things both uninteresting and hateful, and you will read it because you live in Africa and you don’t hate me. Good things come to those who hate as the saying goes. Ok, you have a good one to the max, I’ll relieve you from tripe and guts and did I tell you that vegetarianism has come to me quietly recently and quite recently and is now who I am and what I proselytise. Don’t eat meat, it kills babies. Don’t eat cows. Theyr’e for fucking. Don’t eat pork. My religion hates you. Don’t eat goats. Also good for fucking. See how well I take to it? The best ever man. What else going on? I hope that you are well and eating at happy pub where the eggs are greasy and waitresses truculent. I’m alooking for a job, I need to head west, old man. Figure it all out for me.
adm

link to slate article, 23-2-05 The Administration and the Fury by Sam Apple
http://www.slate.com/id/2113927/

continuing on in that fashion, to the max

2005-02-28T15:34:00.000-06:00

and then today, a small bit of destruction, belated, should have been saturday down a deep dark hole water rushing freezing, destruction, but today no soreness, no broken body, bent but not broken, just the cessssation of a small little contentment built not so long ago not so durable, not so important, not meriting enough of pain in destruction. overthrown, the rest that is not this little bit but most actually, on and on tomorrow be today was yesterday it's about the future, boy and there it is waiting for you, green grass soiled pants. the year here is over. nmh awaits, marxism is an ideology from a frenchwoman, yes the truth is spoken by a foreigner once, not twice they go away after that. so much to read on infrastructure and have to print out your letter and send to you stories about love, bad movies, worse theorising, and english spelling. buy my ticket will be there soon, so not later. intornet wastes too much. it's where your mother sleeps and the room where monkeys are people with guns who shoot people with forks in their eyes unprotected by corks and enough well, ok, for later to talk be will it be.

frozen boots in the morning

2005-02-27T16:25:00.000-06:00

slowly people wake up and dip a finger through te greasy pan, overthrown. got to go caving, maybe, maybe nevermind back to sleep lazy fuck. was the best of times and the worst of times, stopped by a muddy hole, returned to wobbly ladder and waning daylight. no self destruction, no soreness save the bailing bucket syndrome. british radio is the radio of suck. so weekend existed up and down in the mendips, now tired, plied people with germs germs give vomiting, pain, misery. sharing is god's country salt of the earth. swildon's hole. people are too young too young, but good story of bush on faulkner on slate is salt. mellow madness only word to describe is magical to the max three words to the max not one only three. get to know a few people in the tsunami.

support your troops' habits

2005-02-23T16:11:00.000-06:00

no afghani for me, fell down a hole and that hole is immediacy not for me, can't leave next week for some job that little british girls whine and sell soul for, but another time, cv in to funny man, danced about a bit and out of the hot room and into the snow, london snow never accumulate not this time. adam appreciates adams emails and shares the same name and the same height is not shared but not so dissimilar that the troll would be apt description for latter and the giant for former, but rest no and then they read blank stare. nobody to know, three weeks left til gone and gone, tedious conversatoin too much fine china talk, enough wit hte big country with people numerous and smoky misty mountaintops in south desert west factories clouds the rest. nothing interesting to write tonight eat cauliflour or cauliflower is white vegetable like tape worm is white and long and segmented slimy. don't eat that though. no, shouldn't do that. time to read.

what is gum, what is hake?

2005-02-22T16:06:00.000-06:00

big voice talking in recently shorn head tonight about stuff, bit of enthusiasm in the decrepit body, fallen ankle. shake it left and right and now it's better, keep on truckin. and this could so easily be the stories of the beautiful girls i meet and offend. not british, but from those places where the food is less shit and less shit o nthe ground and fewer teeth shitty teeth fewer shitty teeth and skanky skirts and trashy tripos, that would be them. they proliferate, belligerent and numerous. tomorrow central asia corralled in a little room in soas where we beat it with questions and shiny faces enthusiasm all to make it give us pounds and pounds and one year of its time. and me too though more of a glare than a smile and little weasley will be there too with a question abotu the world bank and americans and recycle his feel good moment yet again. how big do i go then? do i revolutionize modern thought with my ten pager or do i muddle about in the back of a van, pita nyuma, damn you, andy needs answers and soon to give to give and then only the job left. and then there was that time at some point in the dry sweltering days before the rain breaks that Josephat stood proudly amidst the piles of sun baked bricks as if he were moses appraising the land that god offered him and the sluglike growth shined on the back of his neck. the bricks were the same red as the dust that swirled about him, and he picked up oneo of his bricks, and proudly exclaimed, "now this is a fine brick, and we're going to build a fine school with it," and he placed it gently back on the heap whereupon it cracked in twain, and josephat didn't realize that he had shitty bricks, that his bricks were as shitty as any other 46 year old virgin's bricks and that his school would be shitty whether with good bricks or bad because he still lived with his parents, and i hated tanzanian bricks. why didn't they ever build a good brick, they had the fire, they had the time, but the bricks you could chew them to clean your teeth and spit out the red sludge find its place next to the wad of sugar cane some sullen student bit off between classes and no baba wa taifa for joselflap. his bricks just weren't good enough. good bricks beget good walls beget good places for raping children. oh well.

facility with nalgene, dirty dirty nalgene

2005-02-21T16:11:00.000-06:00

why always too tired to write with hands both write and right and left, and nothing to say to this or that, by this time of night it's reached the point of studied disinterest, but tonight do i have a reason to stay awake, more than toye and development and new angles with informality, not sure phone calls to me that i should answer but nothing to say particularly to frenchy, though pretty and tastes like cancer. oh well. people are good people sometimes bad people sometimes nonentities and it's the last of the three from which i plucked l and then foot straddle the line body one side what's that her personality has it not crossed over yet, but what does it matter in the end? four more weeks. and then there's africa, keeps jumping out of the past won't you leave me alone you dark continent you, and no too young to be an africanist and don't have the energy to be a theorist, but practicioner yes but not taht guy who's that guy who has one s tory and how many times have a itold it to you? more than you can remember you say? but yeah i'm just waiting on my next story, dirty little london isn't the home of anything but the mundane, what's to tell you if you;ve experienced itall yourself? to whom am i going to gloss over my inadequacies with slightly fictional stories glorifying the hardships i've endured and the lives i've saved and my stoic resolve in the face of screaming meanies, but then well stories, i'll tell you about the one where i caught my leg in that rope and then the boat was sinking and out on the prow like george washington crossing the delaware we stood chin thrust forward, the wind blowing into our steely faces as the little engine powered us onward away from the burning shoreline and to the verirtable conuerbation that would be nkhata bay after the absolute insignificance of mbamba bay and its shady fishermen. and there we crouched on our gunny sacks of maize, insensible to the cold and the fear lining the shadowy visage of the boatman as he slowly lost the battle to the rising water in the boat. Our will alone brought that boat to shore as we smuggled one foreigner and twenty sacks of maize for the starving people of malawi. in the early morning we were heroes and just wanted to go to bed. so magical that now i am a new man and can tell this story to you confident that you can't contradict me. i have pictures and guns and germs, but no diamonds; if you want to see my rubies, they're in the little case shaped like a dung beetle, made of pulverized limestone pressed into a mould. they're small and uncut, but the germ of another story that you can't refute. and that's what it's all about and on and on. short story tonoight shorter story tomorrow night, have to get a letter out to you.ok be well.

garbled vomit on the floor

2005-02-20T16:45:00.000-06:00

it happend for the third time. oh well. no different than the last, lingering disgust, recrimination, but more than anything else indifference to it all. another night.

eyes closed or open

2005-02-16T16:10:00.000-06:00

birthday catchers pitchers of gin, need more gin. today like the other it went, and gone almost with a little scp thrown in to make the day more interminable, but yes as i said earlier, it's gone. did large portion of future determining today as we sat and read and then stood and read and milled about because my topic wasn't quite there and then pratt, who'se my guy, my advisor said no not taht direction, take another, a road not chose by you because you just can't see it and then i said to omyself nod your head and you'll find it in some david harvey. walk back two steps turn around and yo're out the door and down the hallway skipping the elevator because despite your gimpy ankle you cant not take the stairs you fat ass. keep walking, but jonesy more agreeable and less angrifying in that he didn't contest, but intsead proffered hope of connections to zambia of which my only experience is davis, the philandering thief of a teacher who one time stole the school's jumpers and sold them off and went into hiding before he was caught and resumed his english instruction. i swear he stole those english books. oh well. so cv done, tomorrow a fair and a tour and ken livingstone's house roundish egg cracked open for us to peer at its governance, dirty dirty secrets there they are just waiting ripe and simply uninteresting. yes that's the ticket. too much gum on the pavement here.

where i go sometimes with feet that walk

2005-02-15T16:40:00.000-06:00

A letter by adm that is to say me who is that guy you knew in songea who quit his game and muddied his feet and flew back to old America which was a nation a good 180 years before tanganiyka and zanibar clung together in a mulatto union. Just finished yesterday, blood meridian by cormack mccarthy, the most violent, disgusting, hateful book I’ve ever read, but in a good way. I’ll send you one of his books some time the one about which I’m writing now. or you should order it. almost magic realism, though not quite, he could be marquez in the autumn of the patriarch lines of blue light arc across the sky wastelands solitude not 100 years, (writing letter at work cause nothing else to do and background chatter boss always talks to himself yelling and disgruntled bad for blood pressure good guy but supremely critical) now read Ralph Ellison invisible man so small where is he? never before have read. going this weekend to see passion of Christ become member of popular consciousness suck in breathe out we’re all the same taste at minimum. but go and Christians rail and wail and love their god and so pained by the suffering he had painted onto him with red oil paints and charcoal and rubber whips and metallic nails and god was there and is like it was good old pope hates gays and a Tennessee town wants to make homosexuality illegal and put them in jail or expel them from the county. good old home that I love. grandmother died last week got a three day vacation and a tv. nobody eulogized her, she went to the grave unremembered. stomped around in the dumpster to compact her life’s detritus, her house is empty and she’s gone. still training for marathon. one month left to go. I walk everywhere with blisters on my feet and stiff and tired legs no boyish enthusiasm allowed arthritic and hesitant gait scuffed shoes. but will try to run still, not going so badly. on and on to the max big suv. have been rejected from two graduate schools, expect other rejections shortly, only school to which I’m interested in going at this point is lse, but they are having problems with my references so that aspiration has been mooted and my rut gets deeper, as a failure I always have plans b and c and d and e and for now plan b is to stick with job for another year save some money and hike the Appalachian trail after which I go to law school and save some poor fellow from the systems while I drown in whiskey where has my life gone? still compelled to try to save the world, consider immigration law because bush and patriots so hateful towards foreigners they need all the help they can get, I have to get off this kick, not be afraid of money, money’s good, but can I stay at my job another year as I waste away each day eyes rotting from flickering computer screen. pinpoint the one day each two or three months during which I actually exercise my brain at work. plan b sounded good if I can gloss over the next year and look forward to next march and five months of hiking on the trail, but will I suffer plan b when I actually have to live it? perhaps better option is to run off in a vaguely defined plan c that drives me to flee to another country and find my way somehow. lassitude soporific quit quit quit, just sit in your chair, the time passes, don’t worry about it. support your troops, eat more fat, clog your medical system with your obesity born disease. I don’t recall when the last time I wrote to you was or when was the last time, what has happened since, no loves won and then lost. discovery of good music that you would not like neutral milk hotel, go to cape cod play on beach slate gray water churning, sucking, cloying at ankles, log rolling about in littoral. class continues on as little intellectual stimulation. mates fear my advance. little kids all, I’m and old man. enjoy lrb. met this literary wunderkind of a girl who developed crush on me because I read it and can fake conversations about such and such and their incisive tripe. I’m glad you got that movie, one of so beautiful color and slow and Americans don’t know how to do that. we always talk, fast, and some people say we make faster movies because we as audience are better versed on moviecraft and understand process better and need less coddling in exposition, but I think too short attention span is big factor. no appreciation of silence that foreign movies have, bad bad to the min. hyperbole dystopy not dystrophy. bored. so how life in new house new money new sold no debt? I’m glad you like the piss, you need people that are talk and understand and up and down can read your head to see what it says irony there no slack jaw, viane talk too fast don’t understand. I sent him through school and he sends me an email that he’s graduating now, he expects a gift from me. I owe it to him. no gift from my bounty. barren. giftless shiftless gun control. this letter will be long. I declare filled with vacuity. read it love it spit on it and bandy it about my ideas about the louse the grouse eat the latter infested by the former, a night in morogoro bloody sheets. I read at least two newspapers a day as well as two or three online news sources. being better informed doesn’t slake appetite. it’s good news that alex is going to school. he’s a good kid and better to do something than nothing. what kind of taxi did rasta purchase? not a landrover? if he leaves his money with his wife that is good. but if he leaves it and then takes it and remorse, the money is still gone and he is drunk., but at least he admitted that he is a sieve. good first step, if he were in suburbia, we could bake him a cake and kick the habit with good intentioned, god intentioned good Christian housewives support circle, or dingy church basement circle folding chairs, worship at throne of Fight Club. anyway, if you have mother Theresa complex, does it matter? too late to change, twenty years into the process. as long as you got your house and your movies, I’d just say that you need a dvd player. and lots of chai. all of that is good and better than not having. owning is good. I punish you with words many many. stop reading, the letter’s intent could have been conveyed in two sentences: “screw you, hippies!” and “the mud seems to be getting deeper.” but I’ll continue on in my own fashion and digress and circumlocution and perambulation and kick it you crazy Tanzanians. just when was supposed to be warm, but now snows and spring begins tomorrow. any interesting news? abnegation. a man in India married his grandmother so that he could more effectively care for her. a little girl had been earlier married to a dog for good luck. my friend’s father is purchasing a soda vending machine for his home which he is buying so that his step children will have to pay for soda instead of just taking it from the fridge. a man in Afghanistan was arrested when he was caught having sex with a donkey inside a ruined edifice. watch the movie osama. ok I am ending letter now for now. you have good time doing stuff and dust and cooler weather and walking up hill. I will write again unless I don’t. I will, I mean.
adm

teleological

2005-02-15T16:31:00.000-06:00

optimism is fragile. oh well. read about alaska today - where more people disappear per capita than anywhere else in the united states; bespeaks opportunity in that chris mcandless kind of way, and something fun to day dream about as my loans pile up and my cv reports an inane picture. on and on. where's that good letter that i wrote? need to find it. happened a while ago, but anyway. tiresome in c's class as we hit a wall of academics from whom we can not get an acknowledgement that a reality exists beyond discourse and that discourse may not always have all the answers. if we spend the day condemning the teology of modernism, how can we rest on a different teology that communities become marginalized in their failure to achieve some standard of living that we offer up as desirable? it's tiresome sometimes. theory has to hit the ground somewhere, and then it breaks loose. oh well, another time.

first post, second blog

2005-02-14T15:21:00.000-06:00

So this will be my second attempt at a blog, and will try to keep it up this time. last time got too self conscious about what to write and became mired in self recrimination. this time, well probably the same, but i'm trying under a different conceptual framework, and instead of a journal, i'll think of it as a series of letters. the only time in my life that i've successfully recorded my thoughts and experiences was during the time i spent in tanzania and then only because i had someone back whom whom i trusted completely and in whom in confided honestly - some day i hope to get those letters back from her to use in some writing - but i'll try to stir the same confessional need again, although i no longer have s as my reader. there are two or three people whom i imagine would be similarly forgiving readers, and it is to them i will write. I'm beginning this at a period of unusual hope and optimism in my life that is only occasionally tempered by the uncertainty i will be facing in a too near future, and i'll try to be consistent for what i know that in the future i'll appreciate that i've preserved some of what i've learned and felt along the way. shall see though

monday

2005-02-14T14:49:00.000-06:00

again