Hard Looks

So I'm sitting in Union Square the other day reading a book by bell hooks and this young black girl with the Parks Dept. comes up beside me with her trash bucket and broom, she says excuse me and proceeds to make disgusted noises as she picks up the trash and because I've put down my book to blow my nose I make a face to commiserate with her. As I am blowing my nose this young black guy comes up behind her and starts telling me to throw my tissue on the ground so she'll have to pick it up and to make sure I make it nice and nasty. I sort of laughed and said that wouldn't be very nice of me as she stood there offering to let me put the tissue in her basket. I declined since I wasn't finished blowing my nose and without missing a beat the kid with her was like "what, I was only going to open it up and look at it" as he was walking away. And for a brief second I was thrown off and embarassed and felt uncomfortable because I believed I hadn't done anything to provoke that and didn't feel like I deserved being called out like that. For a split second my mind went to the book I had been reading and I told myself that if I was reading a book like that I didn't deserve that anger because I was trying to understand how to change things. But before I let my head get too filled I thought about it for a second and put the book down. I realized that regardless of what I read or who I am inside my own mind that I had no right to use the book like a shield or to even believe that I deserved a free pass from recieving anger like that, no matter what form the anger took and even if the kid was just ragging on me to impress the girl he was following around. That book should not have been something to hold up like that as some sort of absurd badge or protection. It should have been something I was learning from and so I put it away for the rest of my sit. Beyond the book though, it bothered me that I was so thrown by this kid. It bothered me that I had gotten upset at him when all he was doing was bursting the little bubble that I was sitting in that let me believe I already understood about race. Intentionally or otherwise he was putting the difference between this girl and I right in my face for me to look at and it wasn't something I should've been upset with him for. The thing is I should be made uncomfortable seeing that inequality between her and I. It isn't right that kids like her get jobs like that and that those jobs are amongst the few options that some young kids in urban areas have. It isn't right that black kids are cleaning up after white adults as nearly a standard- I mean there were no white kids on that park crew. I should see the injustice in the fact that all the kids on that crew were black and that there were just as many if not more white kids and adults sitting in that park making trash. Its ok for me to see that and be angry or upset with that. Its important for me to see and try to change. In that way it's right that that kid burst my little bubble and made me see just how unequal things can still be. Afterall no matter how equal I may believe I am in my dealings that girl is still black and I am still white and unless people do more bubble bursting and take constant action towards changing inequality I will always have some sort of advantage. I will always be anticipated to be the one sitting there making trash while some young black girl stands by to pick it up.Thats not to say I feel badly for her, because who knows what the circumstance is that brought her specifically to that job and feeling badly sets up some sort of victim ideology that deprives an individual of empowerment, its just to say that its there and until we can truly say we are at a place where race has absolutely nothing to do with position or job prospects, or whose on the other end of our broom, we cannot stop looking at it critically and realizing the implications of such a setup

Trading our hearts for handlebars

I need something to focus on other than the fact that its gloomy and cold out, yet again, and my weekend days have become relatively uneventful. My program is winding down and they're kind of taking it easy on us and as a result I find myself with my weekends actually free which is strange to me, though not bad, and the thing is if it were nice I'd go outside and if I had money I'd be in a coffee shop reading. Since I don't really have money and the money I do have I've been saving for my nighttime stuff my days are pretty tame. It's nice but scary.

I guess the thing is I've always been the type of person who needs to keep moving around in one way or another. Sometimes I do it to avoid thinking about things I don't want to think about and more often than not it's habit thanks to a lifetime of the former reason. I've done it for so long I don't really know how to stop and when I do its like my body just becomes overwhelmed. I napped for two hours today because my sleep recently has been in fits and starts. Just getting more of it than I usually do is my personal belief, but either way I took a nap. And I'm sure all of you out there have hints and tips for what to do with my free time: read a book, write in my journal, watch television/ a movie, make art, take a walk, take pictures, do yoga. And that's all well and good and often I do those things, but when you have no energy to do anything, all the suggestions in the world wont work and don't work. I barely have energy enough to focus on this, which is maybe why I'm trying so hard.

I don't know what it is, well, ok I do that's a lie: I'm burnt out on life, on NYC, on dating, on school, on work, on being in my apartment. Sounds depressing no? Yeah, try being on my end of it. Usually it bothers me to express this much negativity, although in my dealings with others I can be somewhat of a pessimist, I don't generally consider myself negative to the point of apathy. Most of the time, while I look at things with a critical eye, I have a passion about what I'm doing or believing in. See I guess its more like I'm feeling apathetic about everything and that scares me. Apathy scares me.

When people don't give a shit about what's happening around them, when they say "yeah but I can't do anything about it so I won't" that scares me because I wonder what the limit is that they will put up with. At what point of injustice will they get angry if ever? Or not even necessarily injustice alone, but even when people just ignore the fact that a beautiful day can make everything in the world seem right and sort of have the response like " so what, its nice out…I'm still staying in and playing video games", it's kind of like I want to scream at them to get out and feel the sunshine, and crowds, and community in general because for Christ's sake the world is a pretty damn amazing place, society is fascinating and our communities are brimming with life. So when I start to feel this way myself I begin to wonder where it's coming from. I usually want to do anything I can to run away from it. I mean, seriously is this just something that happens every now and then because of mood and being busy or is it the result of some overarching and sudden awareness that one voice really doesn't matter, that even if its beautiful out that doesn't change the fact that people across the globe are dying senselessly? I don't know. I guess it could be a mix of both, but it doesn't feel that way.

And so, ok, for me I know this is just an occasional mood and still for others playing video games is enjoying life and is something they completely dive into with passion but what about those who feel apathetic all the time, don't really get passionate about anything they do in life and don't enjoy life on a simplistic level either? Are they just depressed? Do they think about these things or just go around buying into whatever, never loving or fighting for anything, and insisting that they would rather not think about the tough questions because "really, who cares?". Could it also be that some of us have the luxury of feeling passionate about things? I mean seriously, for some people it could be that they are too busy trying to make rent, pay for food and their child's needs and so its less a question of apathy and more a question of not having time to deal with all the other stuff?

Anway, I think parts of the answer to this are obvious and others are not, and maybe its really not productive to think so much about apathy when really I could be out curing my own, but I guess I was just trying to go with the feeling of the moment.

Combat boots and fishnets

Forgive the lack of spaces, it was seperated out to paragraphs, but thats what you get when you cut and paste I guess:
Women. From the beginnings of what most scholars agree is civilization, women have been put down and put upon by men and other women alike. For reasons I will only begin to explore in my lifetime women have been held down and more importantly thought to hold themselves down for reasons I can't seem to explain, even utilizing current feminist theory. Is there aggression that is innate in mankind and if so is it this aggression that has created in men the need to subjugate groups of less physical strength? Is it somehow believed to be so beneficial to society that women are kept under leading to the entirety of society striving to make that a reality? Have sexism and the beliefs inherent in it become so pervasive and normalized that the extraction of them from today's society would be nearly impossible? What would society be like were the removal of sexism and subjugation were possible? It's a frightening prospect that I cannot even picture such a system. Slowly but surely we are seeing our current situation turn backwards toward the oppression of women. We are systematically removing rights that were just coming into their own and we are doing so at a time when the nation is in the grips of enormous fear. We are beginning now to see a push towards the "good old days" and all that that encompasses, and unfortunately for women, it includes the idea that we do not have the right to our own bodies. It includes the concept that if we merely rely on God and trust in the Divine Plan things will work out well for us and all Americans will somehow end up in heaven. It also, however, includes the concept that women are property, but not enough of us will consider that a real problem until we once again find ourselves with back alley doctors manipulating coat hangers, and homes for unwed mothers run by those good servants of the Lord- the nuns. And the more frightening part is that those days are neither far behind us, nor difficult to imagine in front of us. Society has yet to succeed in genuinely changing towards more equality between the sexes. It has resisted continuously the idea that women ought to be treated with the same attention to their personal details and desires as men have been, and due to this resistance it has left our girls with emotional scarring that has become accepted and innate and therefore expected and normalized. This emotional scarring presents itself still, within today's society of adolescent girls and women and has yet to cease making its mark on the minds, behaviors, beliefs and actions of young men and women coming up the line. To suggest a way to change this would be an enormous undertaking that I alone would not be capable of, but to open the discourse in yet another place, to speak to it from my point of view and to put out some of those questions that are so much in need of answering, is at least a small step. The thing of it is that sexism and the situations it prods women into can be seen across cultural barriers and can be recognized from every day behaviors through behaviors driven by neuroses and anxiety. While it can certainly be argued that not every woman grows up with the experience of a hostile and sexist world, it can be said at the very least that those women who have not will inevitably be in contact with someone who was raised under sexism, and as such will be exposed to it. It's my belief then, that whether raised in a more feminist household or not, the everyday interactions with those raised in the sexist environment are eventually enough to cause that persons outlook to be flavored by their socialization. At the very least the interactions cause those of feminist thought to recognize the existence of the hierarchy and to learn how to operate over, under and around it. The impact of sexism then, is still terrifically far reaching. Anecdotal evidence of the various acceptable roles society has for women can be found in the school aged experiences of any young girl. Many are the young women who take up those roles, play them out to the furthest degree and perpetuate the likelihood that some day their own daughters will take up the roles and their own sons will pressure more women into fitting the mold. These roles can take the form of the stereotypical occupations society states are suited to women, or they can move into the area of the behaviors women exhibit towards one another when in competition for that coveted husband. But anecdotal evidence has never been enough for society. It becomes too easy to dismiss or explain away, or to counter with anecdotal evidence from the other end of the spectrum. Yet those that actually research these topics are also dismissed and demeaned. The name Feminist is nearly thrown in their faces as if it were the equivalent of being a Republican in Massachusetts: they exist, but nobody around them really listens to them, and many people just pretend they aren't there. So the question that continues to pop up for me still is 'why?' What is it that's unsafe about letting go of the old boy's network? Or forget the old boy's network, why is it seemingly open minded women will even balk at a discussion of feminism? I challenge anyone of you to bring it up at a polite dinner party and see what reception you receive. There are only a few that can genuinely say anywhere they bring up the topic, or with any group of friends, the following discussion will be warmly received by the host or hostess. Now maybe you think I'm being over the top, maybe you don't. Maybe you think the issues of women having fewer rights than men are a moot point and everybody knows how bad women have it. But maybe if more women spoke about it, even if it's been beaten like a dead horse, it would make a difference somewhere to someone. Maybe I just think that the questions should be asked until they become irrelevant or untruthful. Maybe I think any discussion can't be over until the problem no longer exists.

Piecing Things Together

Sometimes, like today, I walk through a street fair and its beautiful out. I mean the sky is blue, the air is just warm enough, and you can smell the roasting sweet corn, the shwarma, the incense, and the african shea soap cooking all up and down the street. There are children, and men and women, and every possible combination that could make up a household. There are singular people, couples, groups of teenagers. And one minute you are taking it all in and you can't wipe the smile off your face and the next moment you are filled with this incredible longing. A lust for life it might be called, but your right there in it, being it, so why are you lusting after it? Perhaps then lust for life is not quite the right phrase. What is it about group and community that makes us long to lose ourselves in it? That must be what it is right? I mean look at any grouping, even ones you dont want to belong to, and inevitably they emit this power, this promise of fulfillment that assures all members that they are part of a whole, that for one brief moment they make something other than themselves a tiny bit more complete. Perhaps this is why so many of us are so easily drawn into group mentality and mob thinking- we long for the wholeness we feel from being one of many, we don't feel so alone in the universe. Human beings after all have been said to be innately social creatures. They study monkeys and other mammal groupings and come to this conclusion that we need support systems, we need to belong, and I dont know if this is the truth or if this is what society tells we ought to believe, but it seems to me if society tells us this is how we are supposed to experience things and we are required to be part of society to obtain the things we desire from life, then that distinction is pretty irrelevent. And yet at the same time we are all these seemingly different individuals, whose thoughts and ideas can never fully be identical, and can never be traced back to exactly the same source. So which is it then, are we independent individuals who are not only capable of functioning solo but inevitably must always function solo due to our enormous differences, or are we merely pieces of the whole? Or is it possible that its both? How can we be both part of the group and totally different from the group at the same time?

You're not in Kansas anymore, or Park Slope for that matter

This morning I was walking to the bank, up this slight incline in the main street running perpendicular to my own. Its funny how there are things about our experiences we forget until some unrelated event brings them back to us in full color. So Im walking, and the sun is really starting to beat down, nothing like the last few weeks but its getting there, and then this convertible pulls up into my line of peripheral vision, and I hardly notice at first, my mind being elsewhere, until all of a sudden this muffled sound that seems like a high pitched chant, starts coming from somewhere, and its sounding as if the speakers its beating out of are really poor quality because its mixed with a whole bunch of static and the words are hard to make out. I look around and its coming from the convertible I mentioned before. And maybe because of the poor quality of sound, maybe because of the heat mixed with this, but prayer time popped into my head. Briefly, I'm again sitting in a tiny overpacked and windowless bus, listening as the call to prayer gets pumped over public speakers along the red dirt roads of Dakar in order that those not near a Mosque can put out their blankets and pray along with all the rest, facing towards Mecca. Now the thing of this thats probably also assisting this momentary loss of time and place is that my oversized sunglasses are this brownish red, lending the quality of that red African dirt I mentioned to the pavement, the buildings,and the cars. Funny, I know. I feel like I should be back in my makeshift head cover and sea blue wrappa that I was always being told I knotted wrong. I haven't thought of Senegal like this in a couple years, despite my continued contact with a favorite acquiantance of mine from over there, and I think the oddest part of this little memory is that it made me nostalgic for the place. Africa was something that got under my skin and burned for a very long time, something that changed me in both subtle and obvious ways, that I hated and loved and cried over for countless reasons. And strange though it seemed to me at the time that the scene rushed back into my head; I missed the place, and smiled at the thought of it. Now perhaps you've seen one of the pictures I have up here, or perhaps I have it elsewhere, but its a black and white of a broken down bus in a back yard with trees and trash and walls surrounding it; well that was my backyard when I was living in Senegal. The doors to the room I shared let out onto a tiny little balcony that overlooked that, and every day when I came back from my research or some other venture, I sat overlooking that mess, listening to my music on my walkman, and I thought of all the things wrong with this world that could let that happen, of all the things wrong with my being there in the way that I was, my doing what I was doing. I hated myself for wanting to run, and beat myself up over doing, but not being able to do enough. Anyway, I guess it takes some years for experiences like the one I had to fully work their way into the mind and find a way to be interpreted that doesn't inspire more than a quick smile to sum it all up, but there is was, and it colored my day in a strange and familiar way, and so it made me smile.

What are you conserving?

So, what are we afraid of that we believe being conservative and religious can cure or fix or save us from? This is what comes into my head as I read about Bush's new nominee for the supreme court. See the thing Ive noticed, and this isnt just because Im a tad left of center, is that this country, while it has been more or less conservative straight through its history, is clinging desperately to its past now more than ever. By this I mean we are trying to undo the years of success and movement we have had toward truly equal rights. Sounds like a big statement, I know: let me finish. When I look at conservative views of abortion, birth control, womens rights, minority rights, the rights of the poor, rights of the homosexual community,welfare, medicaid, and a whole slew of other areas pertaining to the previously ignored groups in this country and ignored relations with other countries, I am completely saddened and very disheartened. And yet we move more and more towards conservativism with this president, with this cabinet and with this supreme court. So I ask myself, why is it when we have made so much headway in terms of actual, geniune equal standing that we as a people would try so hard to lean so far right and try to revoke those rights and turn around decisions and defund programs and force ourselves on other countries in " the same old ways"? The conclusion I came to is that we are scared. And who wouldn't be if you were in our position? I mean genuinely you see the hatred metered out to our troups in occupation of Iraq, you know we've been bombed by terrorists with something against us and our allies, I think we are right to be scared. But the thing that we are neglecting is that conservatism, racism, and type casting of certain religions all had a hand in bringing us to each situation we find ourselves in currently as a country . We made piece of this mess and as such we have to deal with it. So with this accurate fear in mind, people seem to believe that if we just go back to "then" and practice isolationism and keep people "in line" by giving the government more power over our rights and our movements then we will be safe. But safety is an illusion isnt it? Its an illusion we pay for in many small ways in our own individual lives and its an illusion we believe we can pay for and recieve guaranteed from our government. But its still an illusion to a degree. I mean dont get me wrong, there are safer choices and there are more reckless choices, my point is not that danger is lurking around every corner, my point is only that with this in mind, which seems like the more realistic view: dealing with problems in a way that is different from how we've handled things in the past and therefore maybe more innovative and up to date, or relying on the old ways that have brought us to where we are now, and have in many cases shown themselves not to work?Yes, they say history just keeps repeating itself, but then they also say that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over but expecting different results. But this is all just my opinion and who am I but some left of center, tree hugging, peace loving, neo hippy...right?

Rooftops and ice shavings

(To those of you who read both here and friendster, yes many are just repeated in both, but there is enough of a difference in the people on here to warrant it being posted both places sometimes, so thats how Im doing it)-
I was sitting on my orange and green striped couch in my top story brownstone apartment in Brooklyn, four floors up and I was reading this book about world war II. This being Brooklyn most noise no longer catches my ear long enough to make me put things down and find its source. But then I noticed the untrained saxaphone belting out over the street and thought to myself ' this is not someone's cd or record recording' because it wasnt bad, just untrained and hesitant. So I got up. We have three windows in the front of our apartment overlooking the street below and since we are four floors up and the building across the way is only three, we've got this kind of view. Anyway, I looked into my neighbors windows and looked downward to find the saxaphone player but couldn't from the central window so I moved to the left one thinking if I could place the sound better I could look in the right direction. And then it struck me. Look on the rooftops. And one street over directly in fron of me is this white apartment building with a ladder reaching to the roof from the fire escape in front. It stands maybe five or six stories, hard to say since below it is blocked by other apartment buildings closer to where I am, and there on the rooftop, glinting in the setting sun, is the saxaphonist. turning and moving slowly as if he's pacing out his next notes, trying to find his way to a rythm. And when he finds one he sticks with it for a few rifs, repeating it over and over, then moving to the next. Like I said, he is untrained. And then the strangest thing happens. I am sitting in my windowsill at this point listening to him. It is just wide enough to sit and long enough to bend me knees just slightly to get my whole self in. My white flowered couch is directly below me leaving me a way to climb down. Anyway from down the street comes a small hispanic man and his smaller daughter, with her long hair in a ponytail, and they are pushing this aqua blue metal cart with a wide blue and yellow umbrella attached to it, with palm trees gracing each triangle making up the umbrella. In the center of the cart is a bin of ice for shaving and around the ice are these glass (i can hear the way they clink against one another) containers holding the various flavors. and they are walking down the center of the street and a man stops them, and asks for an ice. He is in a panama hat and sandals. Its around 8pm and the subway station down the street is letting out workers in small clusters every ten minutes. A older woman in scrubs wither her voluminous braids pinned in a greying swirl at the top of her head, shuffles along- tired in her orthopedic white shoes. Two men in shorts and baseball caps pause for a conversation out front on of their gates, and mothers with babies and strollers and a purpose move along the sidewalk. A girl with a navy blue bandana on her head like a kerchief and her jeans cuffed at the bottom slowly rides on her bicycle down the other side towards somewhere else. And while my initial thought is to laugh and think this all very cliche, part of me realizes its actually happening and something in me warms in the cooling evening air and the word home surfaces for just a brief moment before I catch myself being too idealistic and sentimental and turn back to my book, after all my own home has never been like this and I cannot lay claim to some greater feeling of familiarity and belonging here. Only the saxaphonist has not stopped and while the italian ice vendor has gone on his way I can't help but think, 'yes, now this is a neighborhood' and even if I am only a part of it in some infinitely small way and for a terribly brief millisecond in the grand timing of things, I am grateful I have had the opportunity to be a witness to what all those brilliant authors and painters and photographers invoke so much more eloquently than I even could.