doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for August, 2004
finding time
0On Saturday, I went to pick up my niece so we could take some of my photography to enter it into competition at the County Fair.
We get buckled into the car, I start to pull away and I hear this small voice being very serious.
“Aunt Dawn?”
I turn to look at her as we pull up to the stop sign. “Yes?”
“School starts on Monday.” She is starting kindergarten at the Spanish/English immersion school and is very excited about it.
“Yes, it does. Are you excited?”
She nods. She’s upset, though, and I can tell.
“What’s up?”
“Aunt Dawn? I will be in school all day for 5 days.” I know she means five days a week and I nod.
“When will I see you? I want to still see you.”
My heart fills to bursting. She has this uncanny way of touching me in places no one ever has. She has the ability to make me love beyond all human capacity. I’m overwhelmed by this little girl sometimes.
She’s worried that we’ll no longer have time for our Friday play dates. They’ve become important to both of us. It’s our time to be with one another. What she doesn’t realize is that she will probably get too busy for me long before I’m ready to give up my time with her.
“We will find time, sweetie. I will make sure we will find time.”
“Good. Because I love you very, very much.”
I think my heart is going to explode.
“I love you, too.”
Monday August 23, 2004
0On Saturday, I went to pick up my niece so we could take some of my photography to enter it into competition at the County Fair.
We get buckled into the car, I start to pull away and I hear this small voice being very serious.
“Aunt Dawn?”
I turn to look at her as we pull up to the stop sign. “Yes?”
“School starts on Monday.” She is starting kindergarten at the Spanish/English immersion school and is very excited about it.
“Yes, it does. Are you excited?”
She nods. She’s upset, though, and I can tell.
“What’s up?”
“Aunt Dawn? I will be in school all day for 5 days.” I know she means five days a week and I nod.
“When will I see you? I want to still see you.”
My heart fills to bursting. She has this uncanny way of touching me in places no one ever has. She has the ability to make me love beyond all human capacity. I’m overwhelmed by this little girl sometimes.
She’s worried that we’ll no longer have time for our Friday play dates. They’ve become important to both of us. It’s our time to be with one another. What she doesn’t realize is that she will probably get too busy for me long before I’m ready to give up my time with her.
“We will find time, sweetie. I will make sure we will find time.”
“Good. Because I love you very, very much.”
I think my heart is going to explode.
“I love you, too.”
Monday August 23, 2004
0Something different today:
Three: Stanzas
Emily Brontë
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things that cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And vision rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
fine line
07 years ago
There is a fine line between pain and pleasure, hate and love, heaven and hell.
We walk it daily, searching for that little adrenaline rush that will catapult us into euphoria.
We search for ways to make that edge just a little sharper, a little more scary, a little more dangerous. We search for more meaning, more enlightenment, more power.
I want to push that line further. Test it. Walk it without fear and cross over as often as I can. I want to walk in a new realm of being.
I want to fly.
—
Three: Stanzas
Emily Brontë
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things that cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And vision rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
dirty politics
0“When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.”
~ Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), 31st US President, Republican
Politics are a dirty game. If a candidate can find a flaw, a weakness in his opponent, he will capitalize on it. If he can’t find a flaw, it seems that there are vast organizations behind him that will be happy to create, design, and implement a series of perceived flaws against his opponent.
I’m beginning to wonder where the honor, the integrity, in our country’s leaders has gone. On one hand, we have a candidate that not only called out organizations working in his favor and against his opponent (Kerry pretty much slammed MoveOn.org for ridiculing Bush’s military record) and is fighting for his own reputation. On the other hand, we have an incumbant who is sitting back, watching his opponent being harangued by manufactured lies on his behalf.
Is there honor in this?
Even the neo-conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, has an article by Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson, in which Ferguson recognizes the Republican scramble to discredit Kerry on his military record.
Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn’t really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry’s record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam in the first place.
If conservative sources are aware of this ploy (and talking about it), maybe it’s time that we, the citizens, actually took a stance and said enough is enough. We don’t want dirty politics. We don’t want to hear about manufactured lies.
The old addage, “Don’t say anything if you can’t say something nice” is around for a reason. Lies will come back to haunt you.
Sunday August 22, 2004
0“When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.” ~ Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), 31st US President, Republican
Politics are a dirty game. If a candidate can find a flaw, a weakness in his opponent, he will capitalize on it. If he can’t find a flaw, it seems that there are vast organizations behind him that will be happy to create, design, and implement a series of perceived flaws against his opponent.
I’m beginning to wonder where the honor, the integrity, in our country’s leaders has gone. On one hand, we have a candidate that not only called out organizations working in his favor and against his opponent (Kerry pretty much slammed MoveOn.org for ridiculing Bush’s military record) and is fighting for his own reputation. On the other hand, we have an incumbant who is sitting back, watching his opponent being harangued by manufactured lies on his behalf.
Is there honor in this?
Even the neo-conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, has an article by Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson, in which Ferguson recognizes the Republican scramble to discredit Kerry on his military record.
Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn’t really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry’s record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam in the first place.
If conservative sources are aware of this ploy (and talking about it), maybe it’s time that we, the citizens, actually took a stance and said enough is enough. We don’t want dirty politics. We don’t want to hear about manufactured lies.
The old addage, “Don’t say anything if you can’t say something nice” is around for a reason. Lies will come back to haunt you.
time for change
0I am convinced that we need a change. We need a change in our government, in the leadership, in our Commander in Chief. I’m convinced of this because 100s of our own people are dying, 1000s of other nationalities are dying at our hands, cronyism seems to be de rigeur, lies are being perpetuated, and individual rights are being eroded.
I’m convinced we need a change. I’m not alone, thankfully. There are millions of others, like me, who want a change. Musicians are even rallying to Vote for Change.
Garrison Keillor, in a August interview in Salon, in talking about voting for Ralph Nader, had this to say:
The thrill of Naderism is in telling your Democratic pals that you’re thinking about ralphing and seeing them get all flushed and earnest and wring their hands and roll their eyes and moan. Actually going into the voting booth and ralphing is no great pleasure, compared to the remorse you’ll feel if Mr. Bush is elected and fresh horrors begin to unfold and the nadir is reached and the Bushies keep going down, down, down. I say, Stand tall for Ralph, wear his button, wave his flag, put on his cologne in the morning, be as ralphic as you like, but in that private sacred moment, make your X for the Man.
We want choice. We don’t want choice at the risk of being saddled with the status quo again. When there is someone who speaks to our desire for change but does not have a chance to win, we have to cheer him on but choose to go with the man who can win, who can implement change on a nationwide level.
Saturday August 21, 2004
0I am convinced that we need a change. We need a change in our government, in the leadership, in our Commander in Chief. I’m convinced of this because 100s of our own people are dying, 1000s of other nationalities are dying at our hands, cronyism seems to be de rigeur, lies are being perpetuated, and individual rights are being eroded.
I’m convinced we need a change. I’m not alone, thankfully. There are millions of others, like me, who want a change. Musicians are even rallying to Vote for Change.
Garrison Keillor, in a August interview in Salon, in talking about voting for Ralph Nader, had this to say:
The thrill of Naderism is in telling your Democratic pals that you’re thinking about ralphing and seeing them get all flushed and earnest and wring their hands and roll their eyes and moan. Actually going into the voting booth and ralphing is no great pleasure, compared to the remorse you’ll feel if Mr. Bush is elected and fresh horrors begin to unfold and the nadir is reached and the Bushies keep going down, down, down. I say, Stand tall for Ralph, wear his button, wave his flag, put on his cologne in the morning, be as ralphic as you like, but in that private sacred moment, make your X for the Man.
We want choice. We don’t want choice at the risk of being saddled with the status quo again. When there is someone who speaks to our desire for change but does not have a chance to win, we have to cheer him on but choose to go with the man who can win, who can implement change on a nationwide level.
I am convinced we need a change.
bravery
0“Be brave,” he said. “Be brave with your words. Toss them out there, raw, aching, calling out to the world.”
“You will know freedom only then.”
I am brave. Sometimes.
I will write to write, not worrying about form, function, syntax, grammar…
Rules.
I will write to write, not worrying about offending, interrupting, angering, softening…
People.
I will write to write…
but only to myself.
I am not brave with my words when I write to others.
I hold back. I am careful. I think too much. I care too much.
Will these hurt? Will they anger? Will they…?
You do not see me.
I do not see me.
Because I’m not brave.
But I want to be…
Brave.
Free.
—
Medusa
Amy Clampitt
The tentacles, the brazen phiz whose glare
stands every fibril on the mind on end –
lust looked at backward as it were,
an antique scare tactic, either self-protection
or a libel on the sex whose periodic
blossom hangs its ungathered garland
from the horned clockwork of the moon:
as cause or consequence, or both, hysteric
symptoms no doubt figure here. She’d been
a beauty til Poseidon in a flagrant
trespass, closed with her on Athena’s temple floor.
The tide-up torrents in the blood, the dark
gods not to be denied — or a mere indiscretion?
Athena had no time at all for talk like this.
The sea-god might be her old rival, but the woman
he’d gone to bed with was the one who paid.
A virginal revenge at one remove — there’s none more
sordid or more apt to ramify, as this one did:
the fulgent tresses roiled to water-snake-
like writhe, and for long lashes’
come-hither flutterings, the stare
that hardens the psyche’s soft parts to rock.
The female ogre, for the Puritan
revisionists who took her over, had a new
and siren sliminess. John Milton
put her at the gate of hell, a woman to
the waist, and fair; but ended foul, in
many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast –
whose name indeed was Sin. And in the den
of doctrine run amok, the armored glister
of a plodding Holiness revealed her
as likewise divided but, all told, most
loathsome, filthy, foul, and full of vile disdain.
The Gorgon, though, is no such Manichean tease,
no mantrap caterer of forbidden dishes,
whose lewd stews keep transgression warm.
The stinging jellyfish, the tubeworm,
the tunicate, the sea anemone’s
whorled comb are privier to her mysteries:
her salts are cold, her home-
land Hyperborean (the realm that gave us
the Snow Queen and the English gentleman),
her mask the ravening aspect of the moon,
her theater a threshing floor that terror froze.
Terror of origins: the sea’s heave, the cold mother
of us all; disdain of the allure that draws us in,
that stifles as it nurtures, that feeds on
what it feeds, on what it comforts, whether male
or female: ay, in the very tissue of desire
lodge viscid barbs that turn the blood to coral,
the heartbeat to a bed of silicates. What surgeon
can unthread those muliplicities of cause
of hurt from its effect; dislodge, spicule by spicule,
the fearful armories within; unclench the airless
petrifaction towared the core, the geode’s rigor?
brutalization of war
0Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) chose to write about war as a brutalization of the person instead of the destruction of other men. I think this poem is fitting for these times.
Eighth Air Force
If, in an odd angle of the hutment, A puppy laps the water from a can Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving Whistles ‘O Paradiso!’ — shall I say that man Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?
The other murderers troop in yawning; Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one Lies counting missions, lies there sweating Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. ‘O murderers!’…Still this is how it’s done.
This is war…But since these play, before they die, LIke puppies with their puppy; since, a man, I did as these have done, but did not die — I will content the people as I can And give up these to them: Behond the man!
I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, Many things; for this last saviour, man, I have lied as I like now. But what is lying? Men wash their hands,in blood, as best they can: I find no fault in this just man.