I just lost a lovely post on giving, that recounted my dream of the coffee pot, and I will not attempt to reconstruct it now. But the meditation of the week is on giving, giving too much, more than one has or should give if one wants to be in a position to keep on … More Giving
True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal. One reads and rereads the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them to reach, to touch, the vision or experience that prompted them. One then gathers up what one has found there and takes this quivering almost wordless “thing” and places it behind … More John Berger on Translation
Here is a good, basic piece on the fantasy of the white race. The term Caucasian was created to trace the origin of “white” people to the Golden Age of Greece and the ancient Near East. These populations were not, of course, “white,” and this “Caucasian” race is an invention. Americans were strong and vital … More Hector de Crèvecoeur
When I have to give that pesky Spanish class again, I will have grades recorded all the time in a gradebook they can see electronically, with comments. Grade structure will be very easy to average at the end, because everything will be worth 10%. Four quizzes or tests taken online outside class time, that include … More Notes for next time
La méditation de la semaine: trauma. You must not teach, you should not be research oriented; your choice of research field indicates that you are not qualified to be in any research field; you are unemployable and I am qualified to say that; you must do this project and only this project, our way and … More Cold vista
It really was. And I have just ordered Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas and it discusses the Americas — both of them — and Haiti; Frederick Douglass apparently said he was more Haitian than North American, and Afro-Latin Americans were dis-identifying from Blackness so as to join the nation … More On Latin America, (cosmopolitan) vanguard of the nineteenth century
For the next three days I will work on this project and remain rational in it, no matter who I talk to or how scary that is. I will put myself first — and putting this first IS putting myself first. For my present purposes anyone else’s irrationality is irrationality of my own that they … More Trois jours de santé
These people, too, wanted to get away from them, and so did I. One wants to see oneself unmarked, belong to oneself, inhabit oneself. I see where my unquiet comes from. Rushing about like a rabbit, looking for cover. If I arrange things such to have pleasant days with ego in them, then I can … More Scenes of crimes
Destruction came from the combination of: recriminations for being research oriented, multiple “boundary” violations, the internalization of these recriminations, the rage at the boundary violations which I turned against myself, and ultimately, the conversion of what had always been positive spaces into scenes of torture. That was the combination of elements. Condensing: boundary violations, authorities … More Encore une méditation
I am looking for Hass’ poem on it. “Poetry proposes no solutions: it says justice is the well water of the city of Novgorod, black and sweet.” Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 