not sure how or what to write

My life has been changing so quickly that I'm not sure how to write in generalities. One (if the many) gifts that I received from the knee injury was the space to reflect. I had no idea how intensely I had been burning the candle at both ends, as the saying goes. I've stopped writing. I keep opening my dissertation proposal, looking at it, feeling sick to my stomach, closing the document, and wondering if I'll ever finish.

Honestly.

I have two weeks left of work on the thing.

Two weeks.

Tops.

Yet I can't seem to hunker down with it.

Of course, my personal life has had its fair share of shakeups in recent months. My head is spinning and concentrating is very very difficult. My personal and physical disruptions have led me to turn to yoga - as I often do - for healing. I've fallen back in love with the Ashtanga tradition. I've had breakthroughs in my personal practice. I've certainly had breakthroughs in my teaching.

I had one of the best teaching experiences at the college level in a long time as well. My groups were rowdy and funny and engaged and curious. They were frustrated by the difficulty of the course. But that's always to be expected (the soft bigotry of low expectations).

In any case, things are changing. All of them. I've no written/public language for it yet. It's all very exhilarating and all very exhausting. There are times that I just want to disappear so that I may gather myself. There does not seem to be any time for that.

Stay tuned.

Energetic dogs and torn MCLs

Exactly one week ago today, I was walking my neighbor's dog and BAM!, he struck the outside of my knee. I immediately felt intense pain and instability. A wave of sweat poured over me. With the help of my friend Jean, who had just arrived at the park, I hobbled home and knew that I had to go to the ER. I called my mommy in tears and we went to the local hospital that (supposedly) specializes in orthopedics. This hospital has a great reputation but I've never had particularly good experiences there. This time was no exception. I was seen by a very frazzled physician's assistant who x-rayed me, gave me a cast, said I have a "sprained knee"(meaningless diagnosis) and sent me on my merry way. Upon further reading, he did exactly what he was supposed to do so I can't fault him for that. But he was not terribly forthcoming about why he made the decisions he made and for that, I am not thrilled with the care I received. His ambiguity led me to skulk around on the internet for hours imagining worst-case-scenarios. 

I have an amazing guy that I see on occasion who is a chiropractor but also a general sports medicine practitioner. I trust him and I don't trust too many doctors. I made an appointment with him on Tuesday thinking he'd talk me off the ledge - as he usually does with my mild aches and pains that I go to him with. This time, with one look at my knee, I saw his countenance drop. I knew this was different. Granted, given I couldn't bend my knee at all, I already knew this was different. He order an MRI. He told me to have the results sent to him. He'd read them that day and tell me what was going on. Turns out I have a high grade tear in my medial collateral ligament (MCL). From the MRI report, it appears that I do not have corresponding injury to my anterior collateral ligament (ACL) or meniscus. This is surprising because it is usually the case that an injury as severe as the one to my MCL has corresponding ACL and meniscal strain. In any case, I've been referred to a surgeon. 

I'll be very surprised if I do not have corresponding injuries. An MCL tear rarely requires surgery but, again, it is not terribly likely I won't have other issues given the severity of my injury. Maybe this will be a stroke of good luck in all of this. I don't know. But the longer I don't know, the harder it is to cope. This is so for several reasons. 

Let's start with the easiest one. I'm not accustomed to immobility. I rely on my body for almost everything (I know, who doesn't?). I cycle or walk for transportation. I teach yoga for my living. I do yoga to relieve stress. Ideally, I should be spending my time reading all those books I've said I haven't had time to read. But I'm so distracted and distressed, I can't focus all that well. 

Also, I can't teach yoga right now. Chris and I have been living hand-to-mouth for a good while now. It's been *very* stressful. Relatedly, I've been trying to pay down my tuition before I shelled out the expense of health insurance. Yup. I'm facing knee surgery and I'm uninsured and can't earn half my living.

I've written about health care before. I've called this very situation one of my biggest fears. And here I am, staring down the barrel of what to me looks like insurmountable debt. I should preface this rant by acknowledging that I have tremendous resources at my disposal that will lighten this burden. I have an amazing friend whose first instinct was to organize a fundraiser. I have a mother who is going to help me with the costs. I have another amazing friend who is a hospital social worker and can help me navigate the system. I have yet another person who is a PTA and is siphoning free medical advice. I have friends who are walking my dog. I have a partner content to wait on me hand and foot. I have a lot of friends who have been supporting me in all sorts of ways through this. 

But what if I didn't have a network of people that had the capacity to help me through this in this way? I'm going to fall through some cracks for sure. I'm carrying a burden for sure. I'm very depressed about this - as this was just another setback in a series of blows this year. However, in another context, this could have been the thing that destroyed me. This could have been the thing that made me lose my home. 

Seriously. I'm living paycheck to paycheck - just barely. I'm working two paid jobs, working on my PhD, co-running an events space, taking care of 5 pets, and trying to have friendships like a normal person. I was in a position where I was walking on a very thin tightrope and praying that the line would not snap. It snapped and I am lucky enough to have an interpersonal safety net below me. 

That said, my society would let me fail. I can tell you the myriad of reasons why our society is broken. Hell, if you read this blog or are friends with me on Facebook, you are likely familiar with my perspective. Yet, knowing all of the vested interests that maintain a wasteful, private, for-profit system that doles out decent healthcare only to the most healthy and/or most moneyed and/or those who chose/have/were lucky enough to get jobs that provided it, I still feel guilty for not prioritizing health insurance. 

That's how culture works. We live in a culture that tells us if we fail, if we're needy or vulnerable, we probably could have made better choices. This is how I feel. I feel like I should have gotten health care. I feel like this is my fault. I am embarrassed that I can't take care of myself and that, at close to 40, I'm asking my mother for money. 

It's kind of like knowing that all the models in the magazines are airbrushed but still hating your thighs when you look in the mirror. Cultural ideologies are powerful and intellectualizing cultural/political/social messages is very different than the power of internalizing the dominant ideological messages that are so easy to see through when it's not you in a cast facing surgery.

Mountaintop Removal and Other Beheadings

This weekend, I took a trip with a handful of faculty members and a gaggle of students to Coal River Mountain. Specifically, we stayed on Kayford Mountain. Kayford Mountain is a protected mountain owned by the late Larry Gibson. When we arrived, we were greeted by Elise who is currently running an amazing organization called Keeper of the Mountains Foundation. She warned us that the area was inherently dangerous. It is dangerous for several reasons. First, it sounds like a war zone. There are explosives going off every few days which is common practice as a  means to blow the tops off of mountains. Second, there are big cracks in the mountains as a result of these practices that can be covered by leaves. It is easier than you think to disappear into one of these cracks. Finally, and this cannot be overstated, there is a literal war between the coal companies and their employees and the folks who are trying to save these mountains. 

It is pretty easy to emerge from a weekend in these mountains and be deeply moved and incredibly troubled by what is happening there. The situation is complicated. It's complicated because while it makes absolute sense that we as a society need to 1. stop blowing the tops off of mountains and 2. need to stop burning fossil fuels, it is also the case that there are very impoverished people who rely on this industry to live. We have become accustomed to a lifestyle in which we take our electricity for granted. It is certainly the case that coal companies purposefully hold the West Virginian economy hostage to create desperate people who will endorse a practice that is literally killing them because there is LITERALLY no other economy in the region. And it is absolutely the case that city folks owe a great deal to everyone involved: pro- and anti-coal folks. The reality is, we need to consume less and transition to a renewable energy economy. 

Here's the story: We went to learn about mountaintop removal coal mining. We learned of it from the perspective of local activists who are trying to stop it. These are local folks whose mountains (their homes) are being blown to bits. Local folks who are breathing coal-laced air. Local folks who are drinking contaminated water. Yet, in the course of our stay, we were also confronted by other locals who are feeling the crunch. You see, coal consumption is down in the US (though lots of Appalachian coal is now being exported to China and India). The overall decline in coal consumption is putting prominent coal companies in danger and is threatening the livelihoods of coal miners in the region. Coal miners are feeling this pinch (though it is rarely the case that CEOs take the hit). They are nervous and have no other skills. So, a bunch of coal folks called Friends and Families for Coal confronted us on the mountain. They escorted us to the interstate and threatened the life of the local activist hosting us. 

What we have here is the "eternal" dilemma - pitting short-term survival against long-term survival. Why? Because our political leaders are thoroughly owned by energy companies. I believe, over time, that we can wrestle our economy back from these folks. But large social processes take years to change. And we don't have years. This is a social movement that can't afford to be patient and I'm worried we're already too late to reverse the practices that are threatening the capacity for humans to live on this earth. I'm deeply troubled and very sad. I'm trying to muddle through the complexity of this situation to figure out how to be a responsible ally to these frontline communities all the while understanding how to be supportive of folks who are trying to feed their families. There are no easy answers.

Desk Jockey

I feel like I'm really done being a desk jockey. I feel like I'm done sitting in front of the computer all day forcing myself to do work that I have ABSOLUTELY NO MOTIVATION to do. I'm not really sure *why* I do it except that I don't know what else to do.

I just don't know how to admit to myself that I'm done and I have to move on.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -Albert Einstein

When something isn't working, you change it.

I felt myself hardening. I was frustrated with a great number of things in my life and this has become very clear to me in the past few weeks. Something just wasn't right. I wasn't getting what I needed to do what I had to do. I could see those old patterns of frustration and blaming and hardness setting in.

Hardness.

My harness leads to things I like about myself: my firmly held convictions, my discipline, my strength (both physical and emotional), my biting sense of humor (i.e., making fun of things), the fact that I'm forthcoming.

My hardness leads to things I dislike about myself: my rigidity, my sometimes hurtful frankness, my impatience (both with myself and others), the fact that I'm judgmental.

I tend to cling on to things even though they're not working anymore. It takes me a while to realize that I'm doing this. But once I let go, even if the results themselves don't necessarily *change*, I can see myself responding to the world differently. It's freeing.

I'm experiencing one of those metamorphoses right now. Onward.

The Nature of Work

I hate autumn. Everyone is so happy that it has arrived. Me? I snort and sneeze and suffer through allergies, feel that initial chill in my bones that I know will only get worse and remain there for 5 more months, I'll get colds, feel cold, and re-figure out how to layer appropriately to bike to school, work, yoga, and everywhere else for that matter. I'll be less motivated and go to bed even earlier. I do not welcome fall as most everyone else does.

I think I've already hit that initial funk that haunts those with seasonal affective disorder. I'm ready to quit graduate school and wonder what the hell I was thinking devoting myself to a career that demands I sit in front of a computer for umpteen hours a day and turn reading into a task rather than a joy. I read a non-academic book yesterday. I sat down and read the entire friggin thing. It had a plot, I could easily stay focused on it. I didn't worry about whether I was "getting it" or "remembering it" or "integrating it." It was glorious. And writing. I hate it. I'm happy about the final outcome but I'm not sure being a third rate (and I'm being kind to myself when I rate myself third) writer and thinker is worth the effort.

David Rakoff (may he rest in peace) said of writing in Don't Get Too Comfortable:

During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. 

From my dick.

Yes, Mr. Rakoff. That's about right. Making... ahhh!

In this essay - as alluded to in the quote - he also discusses the nature of the transformation of a task into paid work. How that changes the nature of the thing. I think he's onto something there as well. The moment I become re-enmeshed in academia, I get a sense of panic. I want out and I want out NOW. No other thing tells me to flee quite *that* much. But what else is there? Ironically, the nature of the work that I hate is to interrogate the historical and contemporary facets of our economy that demands a "profession" or at least that one become a "wage slave." The wrong-headed "value" placed on sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day doing shit that you hate and that, frankly, is killing people metaphysically as well as physically. Consider this quote by Murray Bookchin:

Socially, bourgeois exploitation and manipulation have brought everyday life to the most excruciating point of vacuity and boredom. As society has been converted into a factory and a marketplace, the very rationale of life has been reduced to production for its own sake—and consumption for its own sake.

This makes perfect sense to me. The way it's all set up. It's a fucking crock. I had a conversation with my friend J this morning about the industrious folks on the Baltimore Free Farm. I was admiring the hard work that they do as well as their deep sense of community and commitment. She wondered how on earth they "made a living." It make me think about how there's so much ideological baggage around "making a living." I explained that they traded their labor for a wage when they needed to but also relied on each other, shared with each other, limited their material desires, and produced a great deal of what they need and want on the farm itself. It blew her mind, that life can be that way. 

Outside of the Free Farm's commitment to sustainability, their value lay in the fact that they demonstrate that life can be profoundly different than that demands of wage slavery and much more enjoyable. They enliven their "species being" and engage in non-alienating work. This is not to say that they live in some type of perfect utopian harmonious la-la land devoid of human drama. But their lives and work, it seems to me from an outsider's perspective, give them a deep sense of meaning and community. 

It's so different than checking my email and FB every three seconds to feel connected to something real. 

My Authentic Self

It's no surprise to anyone who knows me: I fucking love yoga. I really do. I follow yoga blogs, I practice A LOT, and I'm generally curious about how bodies work. One of the things I'm no so into in yoga teachings, philosophy, etc. is the somewhat individualist conception of "enlightenment." There's lots of talk about uncovering the "authentic self" - that the superficial concerns of the world will melt away and the "true self," the unattached self, the observer, will arise from that and create liberation. This flies in the face of my other life as a sociologist who believes very firmly that the self is so embedded in the social; that the self, while they may have their tendencies, are inextricably linked to the broader social, cultural, environmental context that there can be no shattering and realization of authenticity. It rings hollow to me.

Instead, for me, yoga is about dealing with the world as it is. It gives me the tools to breathe through the frustration. Sometimes practicing is one of the most frustrating things I do. For instance, I've been working on dropping into a backbend from standing for YEARS and YEARS. I've (frustratingly) watched my yoga students surpass me in this very fundamental pose in Ashtanga. It's a pose that I just can't figure out. I might not ever figure it out. But I'm going to keep trying. I've learned long term patience. I've learned to be strategic. I've learned to confront my fears but all the while be pragmatic and safe - meaning that I want to do this thing for as long as I can so I need to make my interaction with it sustainable.

I take these lessons into my life. In that way, I get a lot from yoga. I use it to serve my life. What makes me suspicious is that people turn a mechanism for drawing lessons about life into life itself - giving everything over to the "spiritual" practice of yoga as if it's transcendent in and of itself. In some ways, I translate it as narcism masked as spirituality as the rhetoric claims that in the finding of the self, the world can change. I think yoga is a great way to make life more bearable in order to go out into a fucked up world and confront its realities without going completely mad. At least for me, it's done that. But I think many rigorous and transcendent outlets allow for that - playing music, dancing, singing, hiking, climbing, meditation - whatever ways people find to center themselves in the visceral.

It could be that I'm a soulless killjoy. But I am finding more and more this "authentic self" stuff gets to me. It fully confirms the individualist tendencies of Western societies - particularly as they play out in the United States - at a time where collective pursuits are more necessary than ever. While I am not suggesting that people are taking this philosophy to its most radical conclusions, complete and utter asceticism, most people don't, I worry that yoga *can* be another mechanism for putting one's head in the sand as justified through philosophical and spiritual texts. 

Maybe I'm conflating this quest for the authentic self with escape from the world. I think a sophisticated reader of these texts would argue that indeed, I am. But I'm not talking about the sophisticated reader. I'm talking about the ways in which something very complicated and nuanced turns into another marketing scheme (Lululemon cough cough) that sells (relatively affluent) people their liberation at 80 bucks a pop.

I'm glad nobody actually reads this blog. I'm sure this would be very offensive to lots of people. 

pluggin in

Super quick post before I have to take the pup out to poop.

What is it about the middle of the night? The middle of the night is when lots of folks feel the weight of reality crashing in on them. Last night, I had the 'holy fucking shit, the environment is going straight to hell and here I am in my office reading John Zerzan and acting like what I am doing is at all meaningful.'

I do not deny that my role as educator is meaningful. It's probably my most important contribution. But if money didn't matter. If weren't worried about how to buy cat food today, I would most certainly be standing on the top of a mountain in West Virginia and letting Massey Energy know that they'd have to blow me up first.* The environmental crisis is THAT REAL. It's THAT PRESSING. Seriously intense actions must happen and while mitigation is impossible at this point, adaptation is completely and utterly necessary in the most just and humane way possible. I want to be part of those efforts. I am morally compelled to act and while I feel busy and engaged, it's not *exactly* in the way I want to be.

The juxtaposition of the intact mountain compared to the one behind it strikes me.

From a piece in Orion magazine: (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/166/)



"Near Pine Mountain, Kentucky, you’d see an unfolding series of staggered green hills quickly give way to a wide expanse of gray plateaus pocked with dark craters and huge black ponds filled with a toxic byproduct called coal slurry. The desolation stretches like a long scar up the Kentucky-Virginia line, before eating its way across southern West Virginia."

And for what? Most of what we do with this energy is useless. I'm not a primitivist. But I think when the facts are in your face, the conclusion is clear. We, in high-energy intensive economies, must vastly retool our production methods. Moreover, our priorities as a collective must change. The challenge is: epochal social change is slow but the change we need must happen, like, tomorrow (or yesterday for that matter). Institutions, as Max Weber remarked, take on the qualities of a "steel hard casing", or otherwise translated as the "iron cage." In this, he is referring to the "efficiency" and rational calculation that underscores capitalist societies. As an analytic category, he's not talking about this exact thing. That said, I think the notion is useful here because it's about crystallized logic that, when scrutinized, no longer makes sense. I think that this is a defining characteristic of our social order. We've become slaves to its logic, even at the expense of all humanity. (We must grow the economy, we must employ people in useless jobs to trade their labor for a wage so that they can prove themselves to be worthy of a meal and some health care, and so on...)

The fact that change is slow and what we need is immediate scares the ever loving mother fucking shit out of me. Okay, that's all.

*I do realize that that's naive from a social movements standpoint, but I'm making a point here.

the whole problem of molding the American mind is involved here

From Victor Lebow in the Journal of Retailing

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.

These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.

What becomes clear is that from the larger viewpoint of our economy, the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants that are the spur to the standard of living in the United States. A specific advertising and promotional campaign, for a particular product at a particular time, has no automatic guarantee of success, yet it may contribute to the general pressure by which wants are stimulated and maintained. Thus its very failure may serve to fertilize this soil, as does so much else that seems to go down the drain.

As we examine the concept of consumer loyalty, we see that the whole problem of molding the American mind is involved here.

This quote is often used to capture the mindset behind the birth of consumer society. I presented this quote in class the other day and a student asked, "When did that become the law? Can we overturn that law?" These are interesting questions. There's a big difference between the laws of the government and the tacit yet very clear "laws" of culture and the economy. Her questions strike at the heart of the complexity of social change. How do we turn around the (sinking) ship that demands we "consume, burn up, ware out, replace, and discard" things at an "ever-increasing" pace? Libertarians would argue the nobody's holding a gun to our heads and making us do these things. But culture works differently than that. It's so easy to get swept up in its currents in ways that are invisible - even when one knows better. Ipads and pods, clothing and shoes, tools and couches, closet organizers and TVs. We have lusted after and/or purchased many of these things in our "eco-, minimalist" house. 

Sad thing is, when you call slavery freedom, it begins to look like freedom. Free to buy. Free to choose a major - but no free education. Free to participate in consumer society - but not economic or political life, not unless you keep the status quo rolling. These are startling realizations for some. All of it makes me angry. We are sacrificing our very existence in the name of toxic, plastic bullshit.

the value of nothing

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we live in a world where people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Of course, these kinds of sweeping generalizations are overstatements. But still...

In the last post, I was lamenting about students and their problematic tendencies. This is the time of year, however, where I begin to get a better sense of them. This is in part because they are frantically trying to figure out what to do to improve their grade - even though it's way to late. But also, I am doing the chapters I enjoy the most, that I know the most about, so I soften and they soften. I get to know and like them in the final hour.

This will be no surprise to the 2 people who read this blog, but I think our educational system is completely bogus. I had a student come to me yesterday who cannot pay attention in any of her classes (maybe ADD, maybe internetitis) and has no everloving clue what she wants to do with her life. Her parents are funding her education and are forcing her to pursue nursing even though she has no interest in it and is not passing her first biology class. I asked the basic questions of a struggling student - "What makes you learn best?""How are your note taking skills?" "How do you study?" "What interests you?" - all met with "I don't know." She confessed that she doesn't know what she wants to do, but nursing ain't it and she doesn't know how to figure her life out. I know that these sound like "first world problems." However, *I* wouldn't want her as a nurse. Would you? 

People are funneled into college and university as a presumed next step. Many of them are bad at it and many have no interest in what they're learning. This is in part because of a broken and standardized school system. This is in part because we ask 18 year-olds to choose their life path when they don't know themselves. This is in part because university is a total holding pen for a reserve army of labor that will continue to be stupefied, pacified and saddled with debt up their patooties. Makes for a good and docile workforce, dontchathink?

The whole of the employment system is fucked. Every aspect of it. University is a corollary to it. I wonder if part of my distaste for what I'm doing lay in the fact that I simply do not recognize its validity any longer. 

I'm a teacher

I used to think that teaching was my calling. I used to walk out of the classroom thinking: "This is what I'm supposed to be doing." Getting excited that students' minds were changing, thinking through complex questions, etc. felt important and challenging. I realize I am on a stage to be evaluated just as it is my job to evaluate them. And just as students feel demoralized from a bad evaluation, I too feel frustrated when I am told that my work is sub-par. 

I know that everyone is not going to like what I have to say. I understand that 75% are there out of obligation and see this as a transaction on their future. I hate that I lose my cool with students when they act like children but expect to be treated like adults or like those who tell me, "Well why do black people get to call me a cracker but I don't get to call them a n*gger?" But there are so many aspects to this job that I am just plain sick of that I'm seriously evaluating whether or not I want to continue after I am done my PhD. Every year, grading tests and papers gets harder for me (it's so tedious). Every year, watching students fuck around on gchat, twitter and facebook while in the classroom makes me wretch and die inside a little more. Each time I see masses of people completely unmoved by and unconvinced of ongoing injustice in the world, I want to weep. Each time I hear a student complain that I don't post my lecture notes on the internet I want to strangle. Every time I'm called "opinionated" while a male colleague is called "passionate" or he "tells it like it is" I want to scream. Each year I find all of this more difficult to shake off. 

Get a Job!

I get incredibly frustrated with the common - and frankly weird - reaction to people who protest: "Get a job!" There are several assumptions that underly this reaction that upset/irritate/sadden me.

First, most people who are protesting for better life conditions - either on their own behalf or as conscious constituents - *do* have jobs. In fact, so many are overworked and struggling to engage in movement activity. Many sacrifice a lot in the name of social justice. I just want to clear that up to the random assholes who yell at protesters most of whom surely follow this blog.

Second, the assumption is that there are plenty of jobs available. This shows a profound disconnection from the realities of the job market. There's the "McDonalds is always hiring" or somesuch. I can't be sure but those who say this are likely people that are fully employed and have somewhat satisfying career tracks. They often harken not their own bootstrap experience but their parents or grandparents - "My ___________ worked 80 hours a week in order to put food on the table and care for their 3 kids. They never complained... blah blah blah."* This statement leads me to my third point.

Third, working 80 hours a week and not being around to raise your kids or have leisure time is the best we can do? Is that the only kind of society we can hope for? Underneath a lot of the rhetoric is an implicit support for a failing status quo and a PROFOUND lack of imagination. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Stephen Duncombe in his book about zines. He writes,

...the powers that be do not sustain their legitimacy by convincing people that the current system is The Answer. That fiction would be too difficult to sustain in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. What they must do, and what they have done very effectively, is convince the mass of people that there is no alternative.

I see this failure of imagination when I teach. When I pour my heart out to students when we learn Marx - that Marx was in awe of capitalist production for its tremendous productive capabilities, that these mechanisms can free us from toil rather than enslave us. For a moment, maybe 5 people get it. But "reality" sets back in, for all of us really, and we go on.

All in all, I think we can demand more. It's possible and it's not wimpy to want more time with our families, our friends, cooking *real* food, relaxing, caring for our neighbors. We don't need to exhaust ourselves making others very rich. To me, it's that simple.

*I fully realize that the idea that a career as a measure of self worth is a "first world" notion and that many people work many hours for little return. I will get to that in a moment.

I'm backish

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Ordinarily, I post when I have some time to ruminate. I have some half finished and largely forgotten posts – about the Occupy Movements, about household decision-making, about animals. By the time I revisited them, the fervor that led me to write about them had diminished and there they sat.

I’m doing pretty well in Baltimore. I feel engaged. There’s no shortage of movement work, PhDing, pets, stray cats, teaching, and socializing. Most times I have to actively say no to the awesome events and leisure activities in order to take a breath.

Problem is, I’m too busy. The weird thing about doing schoolwork in Toronto was that I had time to sit with my ideas. I let the ideas breathe. Paradoxically, having that much space felt isolating and depressing. I actually enjoy the momentum but I know it's detrimental to my progress as a PhD candidate.

I've purposefully downshifted for April (at least a little). Hopefully that will allow me some space for reflection - both academically and politically. I'm currently reading a lot about the environment and I'm really concerned about the lack of political momentum in the U.S. in this regard. This is topped off with these incessant attacks on women's bodies in really fundamental ways around rights that I (sadly? stupidly?) took for granted. It makes me think about how social movements solidify gains. The state as mechanism to do so is such a tenuous entity.

While I'm happy overall, I do feel a little uneasy about the state of things writ-large.

it's the little things

Literally. We have a functional house by all intents and purposes. But we still need to finish the little things. The list is long and my patience and time seem to be running short. Little things that take forever.

Took a nice vacation at Martha's Vineyard. This vacation consisted mostly of sitting on the porch and reading Bossypants and Endgame: The Problem of Civilization: two great tastes that taste great together.

In all seriousness: reading Endgame reminds me so thoroughly of the horror that is to come. I don't hold out much hope that this can all change and we can turn this massive, unsustainable ship around. There are too few viable alternatives, too little will to do what it takes - whatever that is, and too much entrenched power and tacit belief that we are, indeed, at the end of history.

I am trying to read Jensen critically and I'm holding off on reading the book reviews so that I can assess how I feel and what I think about this work. I think that it's informed a number of activists' tactics and thinking. I can't see how it wouldn't. It's moving and it's a call to action steeped in urgency. Why wouldn't it cannonical?

The problem is, it makes me feel like my efforts are not enough* and the efforts around environmental sustainability (or whatever is appropriate to call it) are nothing if not insufficient. Frankly, it's all very scary and makes me want to hide under the covers rather than be more firmly committed to the work that I am doing.

*My friend Bryan would call this liberal bullshit or something. Who am *I* to take the weight of the world on my shoulders?

I probably was inappropriate

But I'm not sure it matters.

I was chatting with an old friend yesterday with whom I waited tables back in the day. We were discussing the fact that the owner wasn't a big fan of either of us. In part, he didn't like me because I brought my politics to work, which my friend conceded *was* inappropriate. And it probably was. I wasn't much fun in those days. I had a hard time seeing past my white-hot anger. If you haven't worked food service before, I can attest that servers bare witness to some petulant, spoiled behavior. In the face of people making a big deal over the fact that they don't get a second basket of chips and salsa for free (which cost a buck fifty and signified to me typical American bloat), I couldn't help but want to jolt some perspective into the assholes. Ordinarily I didn't take my anger out on my customers and most customers were a-ok. But I was in that newly radicalized phase of my politicization and, frankly, I would not want to be friends when then-me. I'm sure I was mildly unbearable.

THAT SAID - I'm not quite sure that it's a good idea not to be as white-hot angry as I was. In some ways, I was responding to the vast and overwhelming injustice that prevails to this day - that manifests itself in over-consumption and petty self-centeredness that makes "Americans" the butt of many jokes and the site of much global disdain.

Take this debt ceiling nonsense. I'm not a big fan of the state as an entity. However, the state is currently the place where resources are collectivized and distributed. The batshit crazy tea party conservatives have completely gutted any and all wealth redistribution allowing the uber rich to get richer, continue to buy the government and shape public opinion, and leave the ordinary person - most of us - adrift. This is a populist movement funded by very wealthy people (which makes the resource mobilization perspective in social movements compelling).

Is this country that conservative? Or apathetic? What is it?

I can't help but believe that the norm of not talking about your politics, the norm of "politeness," lends to overwhelming dearth of response to this madness. Of course, it's also a function of the corporate media and the distracted, busy nature of our lives. I just can't decide whether the anger is worth it. Do I let myself feel this injustice or do I just keep on doing what I do - teaching, organizing, reading, writing things that no one reads, complaining a little in the blogosphere and facebook? Probably.

like pieces of garbage

A few weeks ago, I was biking down Falls Road. I'm using the "bike lanes" these days which brings me right next to Baltimore Bicycle Works. As I was passing the shop, I noticed a small orange tabby (OT) cat hanging out near the not-yet-opened shop. As I often do, I stopped to say hi to the kitty. He immediately flopped over for belly and chest rubs. He was filthy, un-neutered and ridiculously sweet - all signs of an abandoned cat. When I got home, I emailed someone I knew from the shop and she said that though she'd been away, her co-workers had mentioned that the kitten had wandered into the shop a couple of days ago and she'd keep me posted about whether he returns. I was prepared to shoulder the expense of having him neutered (which is relatively inexpensive at Hampden Pet Health). A few days later, I stopped by the shop and asked the dude working about the cat. He said he'd brought food for the cat hoping to figure out what to do with the little guy but thus far, the cat hadn't returned. As far as I know, the cat's gone. I bike that path often and I have been keeping an eye out for the little guy. Not doing anything for him in the moment has been haunting me. I'm hoping that someone took him in and that he wasn't hit by a car or eaten by some of the predators that lurk around those parts.

Falls Road is home to a variety of suspicious activity. My last visit, I was biking down it and noticed a trash bag in the middle of the road. This isn't completely unusual as many people think that the thick bush is a perfect dumping ground for their garbage. When I was biking back, it was clear that several people had run into/over the garbage bag. It was then that I noticed that the bag had a dirty litter box in it. Okay. The next time I biked by it, probably the next day, not only did I see the litter box but big tufts of grey fur. Yes, someone wrapped a cat in a big garbage bag with its filthy litter box and threw it into the middle of the road. I prayed that the cat was already dead before someone did that. It's unlikely. This breaks my heart.

In looking for OT yesterday, I spied with my little eye a black fuzzy cat (ala Gordon) lounging on the streetcar tracks outside the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The cat noticed me right away and kept its eyes locked on me. I've seen a feral or two in that area and figured that I could count this kitty among them. Nope. Black kitty cat (BKC) got right up, came over, flopped on its back and let me pet its chin and belly while it purred and cooed and rubbed. BKC was mostly skin and bones and its longish fur was matted, as often happens with stray long hair cats. Recalling OT, I just couldn't ignore this cat. I made some frantic calls to no avail. I pet the kitty for a while and then noticed a long-haired calico, then a white and orange male tabby, then a tiger striped tabby, then a grey and white kitty who is clearly on death's door - drippy eyes, ears that go this way and that. All of them seemed to be waiting for food.

I biked home, grabbed a big tupperware container of food that my spoiled cats have rejected, and trekked back to the museum. When I got there, there was an older fella sitting on the bench outside the museum shop feeding the cats. He said he feeds them a few times a week, less so in the winter. They were clearly happy to see him and very hungry. He said he was unable to come to feed them on Fridays and Tuesdays. So, I guess that's my job now.

More on the commitment of maintaining a feral colony in another post.

Moral of the story: I just cannot fathom the way people treat animals. I am aware that I'm probably a bit overly sentimental about it. But it simply breaks my heart to see that kind of suffering.

what now?

Not really. Now, I paint the walls.

Nobody will be surprised to hear that since I've gotten back from Toronto, I've been pretty consumed with getting the house together. This inevitably means that the other things that ordinarily consume me have withered away a bit. Particularly, I have not been reading for my second comp at all. In fact, I haven't even finished compiling my list. That world seems to "other" to me right now. My friend in Toronto was recalling a recent tutorial that he'd had where students were asking the same question over and over again in different ways. He said, "Do you miss it?" And I have to say, definitively, no, I do not. At least not yet.

I've been teaching yoga as a way to make a living and it's been pretty good. I don't think I'd want to teach a whole lot. I'd say that teaching three classes is about my cap. More recently, I've been seriously considering teaching high school. But I am still firmly on the fence about that too. Frankly, I'm sick of teaching right now - mostly, I'm sick of evaluating and the ways in which those evaluations structure the learning experience. I'm definitely grateful to take a break from it.

So where does this leave me? I'm seriously considering applying for a job at the SPCA near my house. They need an animal care technician. The one thing about that job that gives me pause is that one of the expectations is to learn to euthanize. I think I'd really have a hard time with that. Yet, who better to do it than someone who cares to be there for the animals in their last moments? It's a part-time job. All the better. I'd like to have a couple of part time jobs. In fact, I'd be a-ok with not doing the same thing all the fucking time. Nothing deadens my soul more.

The way I can envision my life is as such. Work with animals a few days a week. Teach one or two academic classes (either at the college level or as a substitute teacher) and maybe two yoga classes. Do some political work in the area, perhaps working with 2640 or the Free School or the UWA - there's no shortage of amazing political projects in Baltimore. All I need is a health care plan. Frankly, this doesn't sound like a bad life to me. The question is: why does it feel like back peddling?

rushed

This post will be rushed, much like my current existence. I am still in house limbo. We just finished refinishing the floors. They are beautiful. I estimate that we will be doing work for the next week and then we can bring the cats in.

I have been so exhausted lately. Our days consist of working on the house. Our evenings are filled with planning what we'll eat, where we'll sleep, and how we'll lug our existences from one locale to the next. After long days of physical labor, that part's the hardest. We have been staying with my mom on occassion (as have the cats - still) and I'm sure that to the suburban elite, we look like crust punks. We are sweaty, covered in sawdust, carrying all the things we'll need on our backs, and wandering around the grocery store looking for food that requires no preparation but is cheap and nutritious.

Pretty soon we'll be able to move our bed back into the house and actually finish rooms. We have to trim out the baseboards and windows in all the rooms. Today, we are demolishing an ancient sewer pipe and carrying it from the house in 3 foot increments. We'll be happy to have that thing out of there given it cuts through the basement stairs.

The great thing is that I can begin to see this project crystalize. I'm excited to build a photo album because the progress, though slow, is really stark.

twin crises

I am back in Baltimore and it really does feel like home. I am eager to "begin" my life here - for it to take some semblance of the shape that it will. But I think I've spent most of my life waiting for my life to start. I've just completed my first comp and I'm now trying to think through the second one. However, moving back here makes that life seem so distant, even though it was only a week ago. This distance is what I feared - that school and its culture will seem hopelessly out of touch with my experiences.

The house still needs a ton of work. We are in the process of laying the floors. We anticipate that will take up all of this week and a bit of next. Then there is the detail work that comes after. This is all feeling very rushed by the fact that my cats are staying at my mom's place and there's definitely an expiration date on the sentiment. So what would perhaps otherwise feel like an enjoyable experience feels rushed and stressful. In frustration I keep crying. I haven't yet hung out with anyone in a relaxed way and my mind is single-tracked for sure.

Freddy, my tabby cat, is really struggling with this transition. I know I shouldn't feel guilty about putting him through this. Clearly his last person didn't care and just threw him into the alley. But I feel so bad for him. I spent the night at my mom's on Monday night and the poor little guy meowed all night. I can't wait for him to get here and watch the birds all day and get cuddles and love.

things i will not miss

More suitable to my temperament, I will now reflect on the things I just will not miss about this city.

1. Walking down the street. I don't know what it is about people in this city but they just don't get out of the fucking way. Seriously. Just go to my left (your right). Simple rules of traffic will suffice. This is something people to whom I mention it either can't see it at all or recognize it as a fundamental part of the Toronto experience. It's maddening.

2. Rudeness. Seriously. I have not experienced this level of rudeness anywhere else. I'm from what could be described as a gruff American city. I have been to New York - and lost in New York - many times. Never, ever have I experienced the blatant coldness that permeates this city. This manifests in a number of ways. For one thing, people just don't acknowledge one another (see above). People cut in front of you in line - A LOT. The tacit norm is that one is expected to be "polite" and not mention it. Mentioning rudeness is rude. There really is just no sense of community or cooperation here. Again, I don't think this is a function of it being a "big city." My experiences in New York have been so much more congenial than they have ever been here.

3. Grey skies and long winters. In other words, the weather. I does not agree with my constitution. I like warmth. One notable difference from Baltimore is that it's oddly a little dryer here, meaning it doesn't seem *as* cold as it is. But it's cold. And what Torontonians consider hot is as laughable to me as my being in a down coat when everyone else is in a t-shirt. I know that Toronto's climate is the mildest in Canada. It's still difficult for me.

4. For it being such a big city, everything closes really early. This one's self-explanatory.

5. Veterinary costs. They are seriously prohibitive. This means that people do not spay and neuter their animals which means that the feral cat population is astronomical. It's heartbreaking. One can "fix" their animal for under $50 in Baltimore. It made animal rescue much easier.

6. Cost of living. While we're at it, everything is more expensive here. I would happily pay more money for things if I thought it was because I was absorbing externalities. But that's not the case. I'm sure there's a reason that everything costs more, but I'm not into it.

7. The Beer Store. I simply cannot stare at a wall of labels and choose a beer. That shit makes no sense to my tactile little mind.

Seriously, how is anyone supposed to understand their booze given this display?