Random Raindrops
travel slowly into unchosen puddles
streaming along a path provided
by something set
before.
and then
they cross other larger streams
of raindrops losing their own
way and loosening
to the pull.
Maybe we will pass through the pond of drops.
Or maybe we will look for another
and miss.
Or the footsteps will find the same ground, untimely.
Or the ocean will flood into the feet of those who are strongly planted
and
the fruits
will then gloriously swallow the sun.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Monday, August 16, 2010
another night of my daunting dreams
It seems these days I can't go a night without having one of those troubling troubling dreams. Someone trying to kill me, someone telling me that everyone hates me. I'm lost, I'm running, I'm crying, I'm hitting. It seems so sad that in my "restful" state it is the sadness of my days, my doubts and stress that take over. I may be jumping to the ceiling with delight but am being watched with hateful eyes. I may be flying to a beautiful place but there is the scare that I may fall to my death at any moment. I don't believe that these are the dreams I had as a child. I remember the rarity of scares or running or crying. But dreams were of something I looked forward to. That I truly believed in my young spiritual life told me a story worth holding on to, worth looking into, the meaning, the use of the nightly sleeping experiences. And perhaps, that is the lesson into these dreams as well. I am doubting, I am saddened, I am worried and hurt and crying and feeling no love from any direction. And this is in my slumber!!! and this is in my daily life. And so, I will try to take away, and regain my spiritual attentiveness, that indeed my daily life and the way in which I'm living is negatively impacting my sleep and in my understanding of dreams, my spirit.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
estoy aqui, estoy contenda
I am here and I am glad and the days have passed now with only two more to sink into my skin. After the moments that your yearn to remember in the future, I prepare to write. I gaze at the computer screen and hesitate, and then I walk outside to see the morning skies and practice my Spanish. To enjoy the day before it rains in the evening! as it does every evening. We take off our shoes and we count, and we say ready and then go to run on our bare tippy toes through the rivered streets. whaling, whaling! are we waking those who sleep? I watched the rain fall through the small open door as I watched Mozart's "Magic Flute" in a long theatre under what looks like an old part of an aqueduct. walking under the arch to find Bryce and Chucho under an umbrella. We go eat our corn I had prepared for! cheesey, mayonaise, boiled ear with chili pepper and lime. yumm yumm as all the specialties. spicy beer, spicy, spicy (which I would've enjoyed more if a drunken man wasn't yelling "Oaxaca city! you like, my queen?"
We walk to see posters littered the walls of graffiti. a paint splotted multicolored of eyes. Later to meet the artist at the Oaxacan Painters Museum. He explains the "process" of his creations as to connect the young people of the city, like us walking the streets with the exhibitions simultaneously walking in the neatly laid museum walls.
Today. warm chocolate with dipped fresh sugar bread. and to a graphic arts museum and for tacos and warm rice spice milk. To listen to jazz perhaps and tomorrow a fresh, organic market and much dancing dancing to catch up on before my departure.
we hope we can reach the airport as election for city governor has initiated street blockades by protesters. we will know if I make it home on the 3rd of July, 2010. Like 2006, there is much to protest, and many people who join.
still enjoying the vibrancy and newness and difference. To attempt a recoiling of it all in the keepings for later stories.
We walk to see posters littered the walls of graffiti. a paint splotted multicolored of eyes. Later to meet the artist at the Oaxacan Painters Museum. He explains the "process" of his creations as to connect the young people of the city, like us walking the streets with the exhibitions simultaneously walking in the neatly laid museum walls.
Today. warm chocolate with dipped fresh sugar bread. and to a graphic arts museum and for tacos and warm rice spice milk. To listen to jazz perhaps and tomorrow a fresh, organic market and much dancing dancing to catch up on before my departure.
we hope we can reach the airport as election for city governor has initiated street blockades by protesters. we will know if I make it home on the 3rd of July, 2010. Like 2006, there is much to protest, and many people who join.
still enjoying the vibrancy and newness and difference. To attempt a recoiling of it all in the keepings for later stories.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Una mas, una mas
My third night in Oaxaca I woke, thrashing, run run run to the bathroom to throw away the curtain door. sickness. "the disease period, getting to know the bed". It lasted the entire evening and aches in my body the entire next day I slept with the 10/10 day outside my reach. I bounced back. and then Bryce fell victim. nausea and bathroom living. Chucho and I broke out to Cafe Central, I tried mexcal. not to my liking. and danced our faces and smiles. We found our place on the stage where we dramatically twisted and contorted our matching bodies. No one here will ever see me again. I will dance my most heart. Revealing of the push inside that we ignore. one free dance. and Chucho replayed he and Bryce's meeting in the open courtyard.
He speaks in English and I speak in Spanish and we teach one another. I write my new words in a tiny book Jean made me and I read over every day.
In the morning we had great stories for Bryce and we packed our bodies with mindful of health for the trip to Monte Alban. Zapotec ruins outside the city, sandy brown and bright green grass. we hiked up the ceremonial centers, the view above to praise the gods that gave them the nourishment and beauty of the land surrounding. to eat homemade delicious cooking from Chucho's mother, Anita that evening and every evening after. I am still in awe of what is common here, the colors, the barred windows, enormous doors. soccer/futbol in the streets, children selling candies, the shining sun on the sandy earth floors, the edges and balconies and curiously cut walls, flirtatious smiles, and small closet doorways of stores to buy. and Bryce and I have our share of sleepovers that our parents denied us as children, I sing early in the morning and we talk of dreams the night before and mexico treats me well.
He speaks in English and I speak in Spanish and we teach one another. I write my new words in a tiny book Jean made me and I read over every day.
In the morning we had great stories for Bryce and we packed our bodies with mindful of health for the trip to Monte Alban. Zapotec ruins outside the city, sandy brown and bright green grass. we hiked up the ceremonial centers, the view above to praise the gods that gave them the nourishment and beauty of the land surrounding. to eat homemade delicious cooking from Chucho's mother, Anita that evening and every evening after. I am still in awe of what is common here, the colors, the barred windows, enormous doors. soccer/futbol in the streets, children selling candies, the shining sun on the sandy earth floors, the edges and balconies and curiously cut walls, flirtatious smiles, and small closet doorways of stores to buy. and Bryce and I have our share of sleepovers that our parents denied us as children, I sing early in the morning and we talk of dreams the night before and mexico treats me well.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Oaxaca, Mexico, Dia dos
After a long long journey of confusion and sleepiness and carrying and walking and sitting for hours upon hours. I arrived. with sun shining. and clean green grass. and Chucho drove up in his tiny automobile. waving loudly out the window. I had grand smiles. We breezed through arms and legs and fingers and heads and I brushed up on my Spanish and we laughed at his Missouri accent speaking Spanish through a long ago acquaintance.
Two hotcakes made with love from his mother and a tour of his art collection which is beyond words, brilliant, we drove to find Bryce, one of my oldest friends, as he concluded his teaching lesson. bright pallets of golds and reds buildings holding one another, embracing, row by row, bumping tires, we pound the claw knob and the large door swings!
A hat falls down, jumping and jumping we are dreaming. in Oaxaca, the gringos tell me this is the most beautiful city in the world, the Mexicans live the beautiful world. We eat tasty treats nearby Santa Domingo and the central square of the city.. why didn't I study BEFORE my departure? I lean on Bryce, US American face, Mexican boca. he is my translator. I will catch on. I will catch on.
I rest for hours and we meet Chucho for dinner in an open space, ceilings close atop when rain showers. Immaculate plates of plantains and mole sauce and sweet sounds and pretty faces. The election has stirred strikes for teachers and the city has tarps as sky, human spiderwebs of strings, and bryce says they breathe with the winds and passing time. people line the streets with their sleepings, blankets, pillows, friends in parking like cars.
Today we will visit museums and markets and dance with Bryce and write down my new Spanish words. A dream I am in. I won't wake for 9 more days!
Two hotcakes made with love from his mother and a tour of his art collection which is beyond words, brilliant, we drove to find Bryce, one of my oldest friends, as he concluded his teaching lesson. bright pallets of golds and reds buildings holding one another, embracing, row by row, bumping tires, we pound the claw knob and the large door swings!
A hat falls down, jumping and jumping we are dreaming. in Oaxaca, the gringos tell me this is the most beautiful city in the world, the Mexicans live the beautiful world. We eat tasty treats nearby Santa Domingo and the central square of the city.. why didn't I study BEFORE my departure? I lean on Bryce, US American face, Mexican boca. he is my translator. I will catch on. I will catch on.
I rest for hours and we meet Chucho for dinner in an open space, ceilings close atop when rain showers. Immaculate plates of plantains and mole sauce and sweet sounds and pretty faces. The election has stirred strikes for teachers and the city has tarps as sky, human spiderwebs of strings, and bryce says they breathe with the winds and passing time. people line the streets with their sleepings, blankets, pillows, friends in parking like cars.
Today we will visit museums and markets and dance with Bryce and write down my new Spanish words. A dream I am in. I won't wake for 9 more days!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Artificial Binary Creates the Masculine Encore, written December 6, 2005, University of Vermont
The Artificial Binary Creates the Masculine Encore
The human body is used as a medium to inscribe identity on individuals in relation to one another. The “artificial binary” system, used in most modern social discourse, regulates individuals’ inscription as either man or woman (Foucault). According to Simone de Beavoir, “one is not born a woman, but, rather becomes one” under the cultural construction of describing their body as “not man” or the “negative”/ “invert” of man. The controversy over the construction of this discourse, as Judith Butler in “Gender Trouble” explains, is the polarity created between free will and determinism. The determination of one’s identity is found consequentially by societal norms, expectations and strict guidelines without regards towards individual attributes. Therefore, the dualistic ideology transcribes one as either the superior “male” or encore “female”. This determination is done with negligence towards possible conflicting characteristics (sexual ambiguities) of the individual.
Butler, through her research, analyzes the female body’s position as “marked” by masculine discourse. In contrast, the masculine body, as defined by the masculine discourse, is “unmarked” and therefore the female “sex” is merely the “masculine sex’s encore”. Even within the 18th century’s creation of the “two-sex model”, evolving from the “one-sex model”, the hegemonic ideology empowers the masculine, male. The social fact that the First Lady of the United States role is the (male) President’s encore, Mrs. Claus was created as Santa Claus’s encore, and Mrs. John Smith is Mr. John Smith’s encore illustrates woman’s symbolic positions in society’s public and private sphere. Merely a continuation or extension of the “greater”, “superior” and more powerful male figure, the female was first defined in the one-sex model as “incomplete”. Therefore, as Jane Adams would explain, individuals become symbolic characters through the social discourse in the shaping of their identity rather than any characteristics innate in them.
The human body viewed as anatomically binary is a cultural construction that has been scientifically legitimized through biology to support false societal pretenses of sexual dimorphism. Thus, biology’s false determination and dualistic approach appears to disregard sexually ambiguous/hermaphroditic people who contribute about 2% of the total population (Blackless and Fausto-Sterling). And to support the heterosexual binary matrix created within biology, sexual dimorphic ideals have been woven into socio-political discourse as well. With using this false binary system, biology extends this ideology to explain “nature” in such ways that are contrary to natural phenomenon. The notion of “man” and “woman” as the only “sexes” found in all living organisms and furthermore the only “genders” is essentially human’s self-constructed “nature”.
Coinciding with a constructed binary system; culture versus nature, man versus woman, feminine versus masculine, and the performative gender structure that is expected, the social production is tightly limited. Butler begins, “The law that prohibits, is the law that invites” in regards to the heterosexual matrix and forced gender binary. Furthermore, her theory conflicts with feminist ideology because of its challenge towards any binary discourse. Feminism theorists could be questioned for their cultural preconceptions which, inevitably, use the binary system of sex and gender edifice.
Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s cultural feminist critique of society observes women as a superior being who is innately peaceful. Her feminist activism and writing acknowledged the hegemonic binary system as problematic but structural. However, her acceptance of the “matrix of intelligibility and heterosexism” sought not to collapse the two-sex model, but rather to manipulate it as if it was pliable. In “Women and Economics”, Gillman illustrates the female’s position as the male’s encore. In contrast to Butler, her use of phrases such as “one sex to the other” and her animal references maintain the binary sex system’s sexual dimorphism ideology as a universal understanding. As Butler would explain, Gillman’s theories are “built from the law and therefore are part of the law” (Butler 75). The construct of “woman” as noun (used by feminism theorists) ratifies the binary system, according to Butler, and furthermore allows the female’s position as the “encore” to remain
The masculine hegemonic, heterosexual matrix supports the “matrix of intelligibility”. If “identity” is an affect of discursive practices, then the question of the relationship between sex, gender, and desire is inevitable (Butler 18). According to Witting, “sex would dissipate through the disruption and displacement of heterosexual hegemony” (Butler 19). The binary “sex” system, as Michele Foucault illustrates, produces regulatory practices that generate identities “through the matrix of norms”. This grammar of sex/gender and the language of social norms “conceals the fact that being a sex and gender is fundamentally impossible” (Butler 19).
Gender as the illusion of identity creates boundaries within the social realm and on an individual level that are maintained politically and socially are signified through identification placed on “the body” (Butler 30). Created by the masculine hegemony of power, the relationship of “the body” in all social systems legitimizes hierarchal inequality and stereotypical differences. The “body” has been manipulated to support a universal understanding of sexual dimorphism that doesn’t exist. Contradictions to the rule are easily dismissed to sustain hierarchy and inequality within the production: the man as the main show and the woman as his encore.
The human body is used as a medium to inscribe identity on individuals in relation to one another. The “artificial binary” system, used in most modern social discourse, regulates individuals’ inscription as either man or woman (Foucault). According to Simone de Beavoir, “one is not born a woman, but, rather becomes one” under the cultural construction of describing their body as “not man” or the “negative”/ “invert” of man. The controversy over the construction of this discourse, as Judith Butler in “Gender Trouble” explains, is the polarity created between free will and determinism. The determination of one’s identity is found consequentially by societal norms, expectations and strict guidelines without regards towards individual attributes. Therefore, the dualistic ideology transcribes one as either the superior “male” or encore “female”. This determination is done with negligence towards possible conflicting characteristics (sexual ambiguities) of the individual.
Butler, through her research, analyzes the female body’s position as “marked” by masculine discourse. In contrast, the masculine body, as defined by the masculine discourse, is “unmarked” and therefore the female “sex” is merely the “masculine sex’s encore”. Even within the 18th century’s creation of the “two-sex model”, evolving from the “one-sex model”, the hegemonic ideology empowers the masculine, male. The social fact that the First Lady of the United States role is the (male) President’s encore, Mrs. Claus was created as Santa Claus’s encore, and Mrs. John Smith is Mr. John Smith’s encore illustrates woman’s symbolic positions in society’s public and private sphere. Merely a continuation or extension of the “greater”, “superior” and more powerful male figure, the female was first defined in the one-sex model as “incomplete”. Therefore, as Jane Adams would explain, individuals become symbolic characters through the social discourse in the shaping of their identity rather than any characteristics innate in them.
The human body viewed as anatomically binary is a cultural construction that has been scientifically legitimized through biology to support false societal pretenses of sexual dimorphism. Thus, biology’s false determination and dualistic approach appears to disregard sexually ambiguous/hermaphroditic people who contribute about 2% of the total population (Blackless and Fausto-Sterling). And to support the heterosexual binary matrix created within biology, sexual dimorphic ideals have been woven into socio-political discourse as well. With using this false binary system, biology extends this ideology to explain “nature” in such ways that are contrary to natural phenomenon. The notion of “man” and “woman” as the only “sexes” found in all living organisms and furthermore the only “genders” is essentially human’s self-constructed “nature”.
Coinciding with a constructed binary system; culture versus nature, man versus woman, feminine versus masculine, and the performative gender structure that is expected, the social production is tightly limited. Butler begins, “The law that prohibits, is the law that invites” in regards to the heterosexual matrix and forced gender binary. Furthermore, her theory conflicts with feminist ideology because of its challenge towards any binary discourse. Feminism theorists could be questioned for their cultural preconceptions which, inevitably, use the binary system of sex and gender edifice.
Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s cultural feminist critique of society observes women as a superior being who is innately peaceful. Her feminist activism and writing acknowledged the hegemonic binary system as problematic but structural. However, her acceptance of the “matrix of intelligibility and heterosexism” sought not to collapse the two-sex model, but rather to manipulate it as if it was pliable. In “Women and Economics”, Gillman illustrates the female’s position as the male’s encore. In contrast to Butler, her use of phrases such as “one sex to the other” and her animal references maintain the binary sex system’s sexual dimorphism ideology as a universal understanding. As Butler would explain, Gillman’s theories are “built from the law and therefore are part of the law” (Butler 75). The construct of “woman” as noun (used by feminism theorists) ratifies the binary system, according to Butler, and furthermore allows the female’s position as the “encore” to remain
The masculine hegemonic, heterosexual matrix supports the “matrix of intelligibility”. If “identity” is an affect of discursive practices, then the question of the relationship between sex, gender, and desire is inevitable (Butler 18). According to Witting, “sex would dissipate through the disruption and displacement of heterosexual hegemony” (Butler 19). The binary “sex” system, as Michele Foucault illustrates, produces regulatory practices that generate identities “through the matrix of norms”. This grammar of sex/gender and the language of social norms “conceals the fact that being a sex and gender is fundamentally impossible” (Butler 19).
Gender as the illusion of identity creates boundaries within the social realm and on an individual level that are maintained politically and socially are signified through identification placed on “the body” (Butler 30). Created by the masculine hegemony of power, the relationship of “the body” in all social systems legitimizes hierarchal inequality and stereotypical differences. The “body” has been manipulated to support a universal understanding of sexual dimorphism that doesn’t exist. Contradictions to the rule are easily dismissed to sustain hierarchy and inequality within the production: the man as the main show and the woman as his encore.
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