Sunday, July 15, 2007
145char. max
So im on my way now to CTY, whichs amazing xept that i wont hav a computer. Damnations, as my oh-so-prophetic predictive txt suggests i exclaim.
Friday, June 29, 2007
V. Disease on Vacation
Sunday, June 24 10:06am
Damned if I did not sleep last night with some sweatpants tied around my damn head ‘cuz my stubborn-ass damn sister would not turn off the damn Cosby Show at three in the damn morning. Apparently my twelve-hour prediction of overall disappointment should have included a special Nick-At-Nite Warning, accompanied by a Heavy Snoring Alert, and followed more recently by a The-Worst-Tasting-Liquid-Tylenol-You-Ever-Nearly-Threw-Back-Up Watch. Halleluia. It looked like blue laundry detergent, and after the rude awakening of the first sip it was an exercise in self-control to keep pouring it down my rebelliously ungrateful throat. Shoutout to McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals: this is the reason kids hate taking medicine, and it is entirely your fault. Although (to be fair) there does seem to be a makeshift vacuum now keeping my nose from physically expressing its discomfort, it comes at the price of torturing my tongue into a state of emergency. At least Echinacea gets rid of the disease entirely, instead of just incapacitating your face.
continued: Thursday, June 28 2:04pm
Yesterday, I hibernated. Woke up twice to eat, and once at about 1am to talk on the phone outside. I think that’s when I got the bite. We don’t know what bit me, but suffice it to say that many hours later, sitting on a riverboat writing this with a pen I stole from the Holiday Inn Express, the bite rises literally half an inch above the rest of my skin, and stretches about 2½ inches across. It looks like a tumor. A donut-glazed tumor, actually, since my grandpa put something that sounded like “Chiggerid” on it, (if you’re from the South you probably know what it is, I sure don’t) which hardened and really looks more like donut glaze than anything else I could describe. He says it could be a recluse spider, whose poison is “poisonous enough”. And yet, here we are on the Tennessee River, paddling farther and farther from the doctor’s office I should be sitting in. A toast!, I think as I sip my second Dr. Pepper of the day; a toast to rigid itineraries and nonrefundable tickets.
There’s a Spanish family here; they’re the only other people aboard, probably because of the dismal weather. I want to go over and say hola, but I’m afraid they’ll take it as a racial slur since they know I know they must speak enough English to have gotten here. I don’t know what particular nationality they are, but their faces remind me of the girl I read with at the poetry slam last March, (organized by the single best teacher I have ever had, Mrs. Casimiro) whom I’d met ten minutes prior to the reading, which was in Spanish. I’ll never forget the last line, whose meaning I probably misinterpreted, but I found beautiful anyway: El destino lo sabrá. Destiny will know.
If I don’t post anymore after this, the spider killed me.
IV. The Decline of Racism
Tuesday, June 26 4:32pm
Me dicen que hablo español como un dominicano. But as I sit thinking in broken Spanglish about how best to avoid being dragged yet again to Wal-Mart with two generations of sale-hungry mothers, it occurs to me that en Tennessee, no hay nadie que habla español in any accent. At least not that I’ve seen. And it makes me think about the diversity in the area donde vivo and how if I ever leave, I’ll have to get used to the white majority most people assume this gringo was raised with. Where I live, there are three major ethnicities: Black, Latino, and White, in alphabetical order, all of which inhabit increasingly-fuzzy-bordered areas of the smallest New York county (besides each of the boroughs in NYC). And the one school district in this county that incorporates each of these areas in pretty much equal parts happens to be the one I attend. So everything in this entry is based on that relatively rare perspective.
This only entered my mind as I spoke with my grandfather about how the town used to be almost all White, three blocks Black, and not Hispanic whatsoever. His attitude seemed to be, although he didn’t say so explicitly, that the change has been a bad thing. Of course, growing up with Black and Spanish friends whom I consider totally equal, I find that extremely racist. Among my friends, we describe people’s race with no reservations. “She’s black with brown eyes and a mark on her hand”, “He’s white with brown hair and blue eyes” – just like any other attribute. Nobody finds it offensive if you’re looking for someone you haven’t met and you ask what race they are – it’s a descriptive physical feature. Do people of different races act differently? Of course. It’s a politically correct lie to say they don’t. But it’s not because of the actual skin color. If a Black baby is born in a totally White area, will they still like the stereotypical fried chicken and rap? I doubt it. And I find it hard to believe that because my skin is white I came into this world worrying about the latest Abercrombie fashions. No.
It’s the environment you’re brought up in that decides these characteristics. People make the connection between certain races and certain traits because people in the same environment tend to be of the same race, and ties between residential areas tend to be through families, who tend to be of the same race. So it is not the Black skin of someone that predisposes him to liking hip-hop, it’s the Bronx neighborhood he was born in which happens to promote it. The misconception occurs when people assume that all Black people, even if they’re not from the Bronx, automatically like hip-hop. An excellent illustration can be found in Freedom Writers, (an excellent movie which you should see if you haven’t) where the one Black girl in the AP English class, when asked for “the black perspective” of The Color Purple, thinks out loud, “What, Black people learn how to read and we all miraculously come to the same conclusion?”
Of course, everything breaks down in high school. Kids from unimaginably different backgrounds sit in the same row, eat in the same cafeteria, and write the same papers for the same grades. Now this can go two ways: either you get gang war and racial tension (watch the opening scene of Freedom Writers), or – in a rare realization of the “melting pot” America is supposed to be – there can be harmony. And I’m never one to be idealistic, but a lot of people don’t realize that the obviously-calibrated-lack-of-racism on TV (look for it in commercials – there’s almost always one Black, one White, and usually an Asian or Hispanic person) can occur in real life. I personally think that it comes from parents, at least until their children are mature enough to consider the matter themselves. If the parents haven’t lived in the area long enough to have seen ethnic changes, and develop related prejudices, then the kids will have no reason to inherit them. This increasingly common phenomenon results in a generation of tolerance – the generation I believe is this one.
continued: Thursday, June 28 3:09pm
Living in the next generation will suck. People born after 2000 (for example, my nephew Nick) will have so much more to worry about: the whole damn planet, apparently, is slowly (but oh so surely) turning into a world which incorporates both sides of the phrase "hell and high water". But as we head for higher ground, the social problems we pose ourselves will be brought out into the open as the running begins.
Especially racism.
I’ve heard it put that race implies difference and difference implies superiority, which is one of those things that makes sense even though you wish it didn’t. I’d have to reread Blink to get the name of it, but there is a test that you can take online that measures how much of a correlation your mind draws between White and good, and Black and bad. The book analyzes different groups’ results, and apparently even Black people subconsciously think they are inferior, or at least considered so by the society they live in. So it is everyone’s individual responsibility of to direct their actions consciously when in contact with people of another color. This extends to all our sensitive characteristics: religion, weight, gender, preference, etc., but the difference in ethnicity where I live is so blatant and widespread that it is by far the most prevalent of these, and therefore must be treated with the most effort. I say “effort” not because it is particularly difficult to refrain from derogatory comments and actions, but because –especially for those who aren’t predisposed to tolerance – it requires active effort to treat everyone equally. You have to know your own self well enough to know how you act around “your own people”, and apply the same behavior when you aren’t. The reason I believe that mine is the first generation of tolerance is that more and more kids and teenagers are realizing the need for this effort.
But I really wish adults would get a damn clue.
Me dicen que hablo español como un dominicano. But as I sit thinking in broken Spanglish about how best to avoid being dragged yet again to Wal-Mart with two generations of sale-hungry mothers, it occurs to me that en Tennessee, no hay nadie que habla español in any accent. At least not that I’ve seen. And it makes me think about the diversity in the area donde vivo and how if I ever leave, I’ll have to get used to the white majority most people assume this gringo was raised with. Where I live, there are three major ethnicities: Black, Latino, and White, in alphabetical order, all of which inhabit increasingly-fuzzy-bordered areas of the smallest New York county (besides each of the boroughs in NYC). And the one school district in this county that incorporates each of these areas in pretty much equal parts happens to be the one I attend. So everything in this entry is based on that relatively rare perspective.
This only entered my mind as I spoke with my grandfather about how the town used to be almost all White, three blocks Black, and not Hispanic whatsoever. His attitude seemed to be, although he didn’t say so explicitly, that the change has been a bad thing. Of course, growing up with Black and Spanish friends whom I consider totally equal, I find that extremely racist. Among my friends, we describe people’s race with no reservations. “She’s black with brown eyes and a mark on her hand”, “He’s white with brown hair and blue eyes” – just like any other attribute. Nobody finds it offensive if you’re looking for someone you haven’t met and you ask what race they are – it’s a descriptive physical feature. Do people of different races act differently? Of course. It’s a politically correct lie to say they don’t. But it’s not because of the actual skin color. If a Black baby is born in a totally White area, will they still like the stereotypical fried chicken and rap? I doubt it. And I find it hard to believe that because my skin is white I came into this world worrying about the latest Abercrombie fashions. No.
It’s the environment you’re brought up in that decides these characteristics. People make the connection between certain races and certain traits because people in the same environment tend to be of the same race, and ties between residential areas tend to be through families, who tend to be of the same race. So it is not the Black skin of someone that predisposes him to liking hip-hop, it’s the Bronx neighborhood he was born in which happens to promote it. The misconception occurs when people assume that all Black people, even if they’re not from the Bronx, automatically like hip-hop. An excellent illustration can be found in Freedom Writers, (an excellent movie which you should see if you haven’t) where the one Black girl in the AP English class, when asked for “the black perspective” of The Color Purple, thinks out loud, “What, Black people learn how to read and we all miraculously come to the same conclusion?”
Of course, everything breaks down in high school. Kids from unimaginably different backgrounds sit in the same row, eat in the same cafeteria, and write the same papers for the same grades. Now this can go two ways: either you get gang war and racial tension (watch the opening scene of Freedom Writers), or – in a rare realization of the “melting pot” America is supposed to be – there can be harmony. And I’m never one to be idealistic, but a lot of people don’t realize that the obviously-calibrated-lack-of-racism on TV (look for it in commercials – there’s almost always one Black, one White, and usually an Asian or Hispanic person) can occur in real life. I personally think that it comes from parents, at least until their children are mature enough to consider the matter themselves. If the parents haven’t lived in the area long enough to have seen ethnic changes, and develop related prejudices, then the kids will have no reason to inherit them. This increasingly common phenomenon results in a generation of tolerance – the generation I believe is this one.
continued: Thursday, June 28 3:09pm
Living in the next generation will suck. People born after 2000 (for example, my nephew Nick) will have so much more to worry about: the whole damn planet, apparently, is slowly (but oh so surely) turning into a world which incorporates both sides of the phrase "hell and high water". But as we head for higher ground, the social problems we pose ourselves will be brought out into the open as the running begins.
Especially racism.
I’ve heard it put that race implies difference and difference implies superiority, which is one of those things that makes sense even though you wish it didn’t. I’d have to reread Blink to get the name of it, but there is a test that you can take online that measures how much of a correlation your mind draws between White and good, and Black and bad. The book analyzes different groups’ results, and apparently even Black people subconsciously think they are inferior, or at least considered so by the society they live in. So it is everyone’s individual responsibility of to direct their actions consciously when in contact with people of another color. This extends to all our sensitive characteristics: religion, weight, gender, preference, etc., but the difference in ethnicity where I live is so blatant and widespread that it is by far the most prevalent of these, and therefore must be treated with the most effort. I say “effort” not because it is particularly difficult to refrain from derogatory comments and actions, but because –especially for those who aren’t predisposed to tolerance – it requires active effort to treat everyone equally. You have to know your own self well enough to know how you act around “your own people”, and apply the same behavior when you aren’t. The reason I believe that mine is the first generation of tolerance is that more and more kids and teenagers are realizing the need for this effort.
But I really wish adults would get a damn clue.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
III. On Cars, Highways, and Literary Self-Criticism
Saturday, June 23 9:04pm
The answer to “Are we there yet?” is always No. Because if we are there, everyone is either too excited or too tired to ask. Or, in my case, too busy screaming We’re Lost because the Holiday Inn in Harrisonburg, Virginia fails to indicate (at least, transparently enough for my flustered sister after she’s been driving for nine hours) that it shares a hidden-driveway-parallel-to-the-highway with the adjacent Comfort Inn. See, the GPS (with whom we have a love-hate relationship) is always technically right but never tells you that the U-turn you’re supposed to make is in fact a substantially Larger U-turn. In my case, I’m sick of the car and glad to be rid of it.
I spent part of my nine hours reading over “Why I Won’t Describe Me” and realized that it is, in fact, a massive rant with no focus and a crappy conclusion. This is due to the fact that we stopped at McDonald’s somewhere in Jersey and, lest my family discover that this is not in fact a fiction novel, (and therefore discover I’ve been talking about them within it) I had to be quick about it. The lack of focus, alas, has no excuse. Does it mean anything to apologize for low-quality literature?
Says the little-devil’s-advocate within me: To apologize for low-quality literature is to edit the low-quality literature.
Me: (mumbling about the vitality of a first draft)
L.-D.-A.: You’re being lazy.
Me: If I get locked up in editing I’ll never finish writing the piece.
L.-D.-A.: (expletive censorable as “horse manure”)
Me: So what do you want me to do?
Lest I segue into a one-sided argument with myself, suffice it to say that if Entry II has more than one paragraph by the time you read it online, I edited it. As of right now it consists of a page and a half of uninterrupted rambling.
So does this one.
Damn.
The answer to “Are we there yet?” is always No. Because if we are there, everyone is either too excited or too tired to ask. Or, in my case, too busy screaming We’re Lost because the Holiday Inn in Harrisonburg, Virginia fails to indicate (at least, transparently enough for my flustered sister after she’s been driving for nine hours) that it shares a hidden-driveway-parallel-to-the-highway with the adjacent Comfort Inn. See, the GPS (with whom we have a love-hate relationship) is always technically right but never tells you that the U-turn you’re supposed to make is in fact a substantially Larger U-turn. In my case, I’m sick of the car and glad to be rid of it.
I spent part of my nine hours reading over “Why I Won’t Describe Me” and realized that it is, in fact, a massive rant with no focus and a crappy conclusion. This is due to the fact that we stopped at McDonald’s somewhere in Jersey and, lest my family discover that this is not in fact a fiction novel, (and therefore discover I’ve been talking about them within it) I had to be quick about it. The lack of focus, alas, has no excuse. Does it mean anything to apologize for low-quality literature?
Says the little-devil’s-advocate within me: To apologize for low-quality literature is to edit the low-quality literature.
Me: (mumbling about the vitality of a first draft)
L.-D.-A.: You’re being lazy.
Me: If I get locked up in editing I’ll never finish writing the piece.
L.-D.-A.: (expletive censorable as “horse manure”)
Me: So what do you want me to do?
Lest I segue into a one-sided argument with myself, suffice it to say that if Entry II has more than one paragraph by the time you read it online, I edited it. As of right now it consists of a page and a half of uninterrupted rambling.
So does this one.
Damn.
II. Why I Won't Describe Me
Saturday, June 23 1:37pm
I am thoroughly pissed off. After the altogether enjoyable beginning of this journal early this morning, it seems the twelve hours between then and now have been most disappointing. The next twelve don’t seem to hold much promise either, as I embark with half my comically (sometimes) dysfunctional family upon our Epic Voyage to the beautiful state of Tennessee. Since we live in New York, the drive there will devour this perfectly good Saturday, which pisses me off even more thoroughly.
As I consider my anonymity and concurrent desire to complain about people, it seems the only option that won’t cause distressing pronoun abuse on my part is to bestow nicknames upon everyone I discuss. So with that in mind, rest assured that I am lying through my metaphorical teeth when I tell you that the other four people in this jam-packed Honda are my mother Louise, my little sister Kerry, my big sister Jessie, and her four-year-old son Nick. I haven’t told any of them about this blog, but in case I overlooked something when I stripped my profile of all relevance, it feels better for me to change the names. My name, for your purposes, is C. I hate to describe myself beyond the absolute necessities, especially in the first few entries, because unless you already know me (and therefore don’t need any reminders) you have no emotional interest in who I am, and probably very little in what I have to say.
Shoutout to Nick for showering me in choco-crumbs just now, by the way.
And I think a lot of blogs, diaries, and autobiographies are ruined by the albeit-difficult-to-resist prospect of having your life out there to be passionately examined by the deprived-of-good-literature, just-waiting-for-the-One-Amazing-Blog-with-its-One-Amazing-Author-with-which-to-forge-a-meaningful-connection, simply-ravenous-for-wisdom Public of the World. And by the apparently-obligatory résumé that consequentially finds its way to the forefront of the good-intentioned publications, which nobody likes and usually prompts the reader to sigh and continue on its quest for literary sustenance, (a quest similar to, but not the same as, the one described in the previous over-hyphenated run-on) the compassionate or naïve reader pausing to skim and maybe be drawn in by the better parts of the article- this second chance is God’s gift to those authors, a gift I would rather not need. Therefore, you will only know me by examining the character you find in my words, and not by the words I might have chosen to blind your opinion with. If you don’t like it- you would have left by now.
I am thoroughly pissed off. After the altogether enjoyable beginning of this journal early this morning, it seems the twelve hours between then and now have been most disappointing. The next twelve don’t seem to hold much promise either, as I embark with half my comically (sometimes) dysfunctional family upon our Epic Voyage to the beautiful state of Tennessee. Since we live in New York, the drive there will devour this perfectly good Saturday, which pisses me off even more thoroughly.
As I consider my anonymity and concurrent desire to complain about people, it seems the only option that won’t cause distressing pronoun abuse on my part is to bestow nicknames upon everyone I discuss. So with that in mind, rest assured that I am lying through my metaphorical teeth when I tell you that the other four people in this jam-packed Honda are my mother Louise, my little sister Kerry, my big sister Jessie, and her four-year-old son Nick. I haven’t told any of them about this blog, but in case I overlooked something when I stripped my profile of all relevance, it feels better for me to change the names. My name, for your purposes, is C. I hate to describe myself beyond the absolute necessities, especially in the first few entries, because unless you already know me (and therefore don’t need any reminders) you have no emotional interest in who I am, and probably very little in what I have to say.
Shoutout to Nick for showering me in choco-crumbs just now, by the way.
And I think a lot of blogs, diaries, and autobiographies are ruined by the albeit-difficult-to-resist prospect of having your life out there to be passionately examined by the deprived-of-good-literature, just-waiting-for-the-One-Amazing-Blog-with-its-One-Amazing-Author-with-which-to-forge-a-meaningful-connection, simply-ravenous-for-wisdom Public of the World. And by the apparently-obligatory résumé that consequentially finds its way to the forefront of the good-intentioned publications, which nobody likes and usually prompts the reader to sigh and continue on its quest for literary sustenance, (a quest similar to, but not the same as, the one described in the previous over-hyphenated run-on) the compassionate or naïve reader pausing to skim and maybe be drawn in by the better parts of the article- this second chance is God’s gift to those authors, a gift I would rather not need. Therefore, you will only know me by examining the character you find in my words, and not by the words I might have chosen to blind your opinion with. If you don’t like it- you would have left by now.
I. The Third Day of Summer
Saturday, June 23 1:15am
So it’s the third day of summer and I decide it’s a good idea for me and my as-yet-insignificant self to start a written documentary of what I otherwise wouldn’t remember in a week. Is that a good thing? I have no idea, but nonetheless I begin my rant. As I struggled just now to decide what word to use there (as you may have noticed, I picked “rant”) to describe what very well may (or may not) resemble an angry tirade, one out of the endless? stream of word choices caught my mind’s eye: “withdrawal.” Perhaps just a byproduct of the God-knows-cuz-I-sure-don’t-how-many homeless thoughts bouncing about my head, I really like that word to describe what this is. A withdrawal, from my Inspiration Account of creativity. Overdraw and you get writer’s block. Maybe that’s why I chose to start this anonymously. I don’t want to write a check (because that’s exactly what becomes of publicizing something you’ve just started- insatiable expectations on everyone’s part) that I know will bounce.
As you may have noticed the discrepancy between the date atop this entry and the date of this blog post, I feel somewhat obliged to tell you, my dear reader, that I am in fact writing this by hand in a notebook in my room. Sorry, but the computer is significantly more conspicuous at 1:something A.M. Reading back over (say what you will, I want this to sound good- I have no shame) this has been a rather turbulent introduction, to say the least. I just decided to write, without pausing to think of structure (or even function), whatever my mind saw fit to tell me. As good an introduction as any to the outer workings of my brain (the inner workings will require some reading between the lines; I recommend it- if you analyze the first sentence of this entry you can get a rough estimate of my age and outlook on life- just saying) I think it’s probably better than any contrived, probably melodramatic, humbly-conceited Introduction I would have otherwise come up with.
So it’s the third day of summer and I decide it’s a good idea for me and my as-yet-insignificant self to start a written documentary of what I otherwise wouldn’t remember in a week. Is that a good thing? I have no idea, but nonetheless I begin my rant. As I struggled just now to decide what word to use there (as you may have noticed, I picked “rant”) to describe what very well may (or may not) resemble an angry tirade, one out of the endless? stream of word choices caught my mind’s eye: “withdrawal.” Perhaps just a byproduct of the God-knows-cuz-I-sure-don’t-how-many homeless thoughts bouncing about my head, I really like that word to describe what this is. A withdrawal, from my Inspiration Account of creativity. Overdraw and you get writer’s block. Maybe that’s why I chose to start this anonymously. I don’t want to write a check (because that’s exactly what becomes of publicizing something you’ve just started- insatiable expectations on everyone’s part) that I know will bounce.
As you may have noticed the discrepancy between the date atop this entry and the date of this blog post, I feel somewhat obliged to tell you, my dear reader, that I am in fact writing this by hand in a notebook in my room. Sorry, but the computer is significantly more conspicuous at 1:something A.M. Reading back over (say what you will, I want this to sound good- I have no shame) this has been a rather turbulent introduction, to say the least. I just decided to write, without pausing to think of structure (or even function), whatever my mind saw fit to tell me. As good an introduction as any to the outer workings of my brain (the inner workings will require some reading between the lines; I recommend it- if you analyze the first sentence of this entry you can get a rough estimate of my age and outlook on life- just saying) I think it’s probably better than any contrived, probably melodramatic, humbly-conceited Introduction I would have otherwise come up with.
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