Language is important. Terminology is important.
Since the middle of last century, the link between semiotics and radical politics has been a artful one. While I cannot confess to truly knowing the range of the two's love affair, I do believe the importance of the basic phrases we use day to day, especially in reference to radical subjects, is entirely overlooked. The best example is the continued use of the term "pro-life" to describe those who actively work to prevent women from accessing safe medical care in the termination of her pregnancy. Right off the bat, from the perspective of someone who knows nothing of the actual politics of the situation, "pro-life" seems a much more desirable camp to join. I mean, who could be against life, dammit?
Of course, most of us are a little more educated on the matter and realize that "pro-life" actually a.) has nothing to do with existent life, just possible life and b.) supports an ideology with regularly kills women by limiting or negating their safe options altogether. In light of the evidence, why do radicals continue to brand the battle between pro-life and pro-choice as such? Am I unrealistic to think that, overtime, a re-branding of pro-life as anti-choice and the regular incorporation of such into our lexicon might be just another baby step to take along with the larger strides of militant activism? The more we recognize that the anti-choice movement is about the limiting of rights for women rather than the facade of "protecting life" for zygotes, the better suited we are when it comes to educating the next generations.
There isn't a "pro-marriage" or "pro-family" movement, there is only "anti-equality" and "pro-segregation."
We can't let cowards and bigots hide behind socially loaded, psuedo-positive labels.
Archive for 2012
the art of peer pressure
my heart to joy at the same tone.
He stared blankly ahead of him.
Potato chips. Salty, delicious,
hell on cotton chops. The bag was bright
and colorful, the image of a cartoon tiger lazily resting on the pillar-esque
brand name glared with a passive seething at Michael as he stood in the grocery
store aisle, staring blankly ahead of him at his selections.
There were organic chips also. These
were more natural color tones, revisiting an autumn leaf amongst the swirls of
human-injected colors. The bag was made
of something recycled, making it loud from the simplest touch. It was healthier, or so that's what Michael
had come to believe of anything with the words 'organic' spewed across it.
It was also more expensive; two dollars higher. While that mattered little to Michael in this
particular case, he had come to think that "green" products might
have been the saving grace of the system he existed in, not to mention a luxury
reserved for the middle class. The rest,
Michael and his fellow nameless legions, would be stuck with the same
processed, artificial, but cheap, foods that they had been ramming down their
throats since birth.
A girl in bright blue leggings and a Pantera tee-shirt walked down the
aisle, stepping aside from Michael and not even shooting him a second
look. Her ass caught Michael's eye; he
popped his knuckle and wondered when he would sleep with someone again,
wondered what it would be like to sleep with her. She was young, he could tell by the naiivety
in her raised arm as she swiped a box of cookies off of the top shelf of the
aisle. Hormones in food. That had to be the cause of all of this. Too many fifteen year olds roaming the
streets of his city, busting out of their shirts and sheep herding the males
they encounter into dangerous hog basins of moral abandonment.
He grabbed the organic chips.
"Fuck the two bones," he whispered to himself, hoping oddly that the young girl had heard him and would strike up a conversation over his use of the word "bones" to describe his money or his obvious disdain for quantitative oppressions. Neither happened, in fact she was exiting the aisle. He stared at her ass again, any sense of nonchalant behavior absent.
Wondering what it would feel like to have her ass up against him, wondering what it would be like to lay in a bed with her, what her views were in regards to organic chips or if she knew how to fire a gun.
"Fuck the two bones," he whispered to himself, hoping oddly that the young girl had heard him and would strike up a conversation over his use of the word "bones" to describe his money or his obvious disdain for quantitative oppressions. Neither happened, in fact she was exiting the aisle. He stared at her ass again, any sense of nonchalant behavior absent.
Wondering what it would feel like to have her ass up against him, wondering what it would be like to lay in a bed with her, what her views were in regards to organic chips or if she knew how to fire a gun.
No, but that couldn't be the case.
He couldn't cuddle after a fuck.
It was possible once, in fact it was almost needed. Michael would cling to their bodies like a
newly-made orphan to the corpse of his lukewarm mother. The sex was sex; afterwards he was investing
himself into some spiritual plane that he had dreamed up on all his own. It was a passive form of punishment; he was
weighing out ways to kill himself without ever actually dying by his own hand. Spooning, she on top, however it had to be;
to not feel the secondary warmth of a body seemed to make or break the sex's
appeal at all.
Not anymore. He didn't want to be
touched. "Roll over, please,"
he would say, "if you lay like that, my arm falls asleep. Sorry." So many apologies.
shoveglove.
On a string,
but we pass with no meaning.
you've written more detailed notes in pen,
hung your jacket on the back of a chair.
they turn their chairs when they sit,
because they're just like you.
are you okay?
maybe if we hold our hands up in unison,
something ugly will fall from the sky
and we can name it "genesis"
and drink the nectarwine like filthy Irish.
but we pass with no meaning.
you've written more detailed notes in pen,
hung your jacket on the back of a chair.
they turn their chairs when they sit,
because they're just like you.
are you okay?
maybe if we hold our hands up in unison,
something ugly will fall from the sky
and we can name it "genesis"
and drink the nectarwine like filthy Irish.
get out of my trash,
you can't dress yourself up like that anymore.
you can't dress yourself up like that anymore.
interview at the ruins.
MICHELLE FOECALT: ...was completely unrelated. But as for the captain...
what exactly was the point of the whole venture?
NG: Well, it had... it was actually kind of lacking in any real
drive or purpose. Well, there was
drive. Definitely that. But it was blind. Kind of like... you know, when you're
excluded from a law, when you're that homo sacer and you're inclusion in
the law is simply by the exclusion... it's Roman-esque, it's something
Caesarian. I was on that line though.
MF: And so... here, I read that... what was the story you told then? I remember hearing some biopolitic piece...
real folklore, the "replacement of history" stuff.
NG: Oh, that. I kind of trailed off
with all of that, but in essence,
There was this captain...
NG: ...I don't even really know if you want to call him that, he had this
really egalitarian nature about him. He... he kind of had this limp from a
street battle in Gary that he would call-
MF: Continue.
NG: Right. I digress. So,
CONTINUE READING >>>>>
returning the screw
“get along and hop over,
quit dragging about
like a fucking disappointment.”
I’m no less the anxiety in your voice
than
the wood that built these floors.
No words pass,
but time does and you look
only impatient.
“I’m sorry there is a line,
nothing is worth waiting for.”
quit dragging about
like a fucking disappointment.”
I’m no less the anxiety in your voice
than
the wood that built these floors.
No words pass,
but time does and you look
only impatient.
“I’m sorry there is a line,
nothing is worth waiting for.”
sounds of sculpture
The world looks different after you cum.
I don’t mean to say that the sky is brighter, sidewalks
sparkle, birds seem more cohesive in their pathmaking or that the sheen of
human skin seems any more radiant. I don’t
mean to posit that the surrounding environment bobs and weaves like an
unorganized Oedipal theater, dancing in front of the eyes of an eighteen year
old girl tripping on shitty, west-side acid for the first time. No, if anything, I mean to state that the
physical space between one body and another (my body and the Other) is more
concrete and less subtle, that skin looks more like the less-than-durable outer
shell of a machine we only borrow rather than the pageantry we dress it up to
be. In a word, life-after-orgasm is honest.
Maybe too honest.
Hard to believe that one provoked release of ejaculate would
pull so much fantasy away with it, not unlike the way my mother pulled so much
fantasy about familial structure and whimsical definitions of what sturdy meant when she exited our family
home for a better life. Hard to believe
one could mention one’s mother right after mentioning one’s orgasm, separated only
by the fake boundary of language. Maybe
the divide isn’t too hard to comprehend; only post-cum could I even begin to
articulate the ridges and contours of the roman-esque pillars shouldering the
occasional, flash-weight of sexuality barely two decades young. Before the effort, before going through the
motions of release, I see only conquests and natives (indigenous and
colonialism). I have begun to fear
sexuality is the great imperial beast.
“Humynkind needs to cum, collectively…needs to arhythmically
remove the monocle of sexual colonizing from the right eye and dig the rheum of
a three century long night out of the left eye.
Maybe then will white devils in gray trucks turn their blue eyes away
from malice and pale skin demons skitter away to reclaim their magnum hearts
for love.” You looked like a demagogue from
the third row and I could feel the sexual thirst for waters of domination dry
my throat and roll lazily across my liar’s tongue. Three hours have passed and I am the
dichotomy of native and oppressor once more.
Fanon argues for half my soul, Van Aerssen van
Sommelsdijck brutalizes for the remaining half.
All of history tumbles, rejoices, feigns
and then burns within three hours, behind my eyes and below my stomach.
And then we cum.
defeat/release
there is a traumatic
moment; wanting to talk
with you over a cell phone
and tell you about how
strange this town's shows
should start so far into the
evening.
the accidental and sudden (parte deux).
II.
By the time Sebastian’s decrepit car pulled into the cracked driveway, the sun had already disappeared in the Western sky, leaving an orange haze on the horizon. It was at this time of day that Sebastian’s eyes always played tricks on him; there was just enough light for the form of objects to show, but little else, their details smudged by the oncoming darkness.
Stepping out of his car, Sebastian slid the lock on his door to the secure position and shut it behind him. He opened his back door and, one by one, pulled out the bags of groceries (his aunt had jokingly referred to them as his “rations”) and slid his arms through the plastic handles, making it possible for him to carry multiple bags on one arm. With his other hand, he grabbed his tattered backpack and shouldered it. Locking that door as well, he trudged away from his vehicle and towards the back gate.
It was the dramatic climax of the last days of summer but the air was still remarkably humid and warm. The Midwest was always like this; Sebastian once remarked that the name of the state he resided in was unimportant. The whole Midwest might as well be wiped clean of state borderlines and made into one massive hunk of bullshit. Going from one state to another, little difference could ever be noted. Grey cities, endless corn and bean fields and the same people, their eyes blank and hands dirty from consumption and worship, as in the next state and the next one and the next one: all characteristics he had come to know and loathe. “Familiarity is the last refuge of the modest and chaste individual,” he sighed. He would have to write that one down, it seemed like a keeper.
the accidental and sudden (parte un).
I.
Whenever Sebastian drove around the streets of his old hometown, he realized how bad living on the south side of any city could effect one's driving. He slid past stop signs with little hesitation, rolled up on curbs often to avoid having to stop on a narrow street and let another vehicle pass. All concept of a police presence, that wasn't far too worried about rapes and murders to pay mind to speeding, vanished. Almost always, he tried to take the alleys as much as possible, to avoid seeing the ugly, downtrodden faces of the people he was so used to avoiding.
But here, in these streets, the people, while still bloated by fast food diets and bespeckled with graying clothing and hair, seemed less guilty. Or maybe just unaffected. Their ways seemed backwards, but comfortable for them. And who was he to take that away yet, while the concept could still retain a hint of its virginity?
For example, there was a corner he has passed nearly every damn time he was behind the wheel. It sat on the square, parallel to the city’s off-white, Roman-bastardization excuse for a courthouse. Nothing special gleamed about the corner aside from the sole wooden bench that sat outside of whatever business resided there (Sebastian never looked, he was in the midst of his teenage years when he would pass it, what purpose did it serve him to find out?). To continue the normality of the bench, from sunrise to sunset, a man sat and watched the cars pass with hollow eyes and mouth slightly agape. He was the most common of the Baby Boomer fossils that littered middle America: reeking of grease and social retardation, his fat hanging over his red sweat pants and poking it’s nasty head out from under the hood of his green, stained tee-shirt (displaying enough slogans to wonder if he was possibly sponsored by whatever beer company it may have been. Paid to sit on a bench and die, for the whole world to see). His existence was nothing spectacular, meaningful or even noticeable. In fact, it would seem to Sebastian that his existence wasn’t so much its own “thing” but rather a branch off of the bench’s existence. Could his hometown be host to what he so affectionately heard Jeremy refer to (cynicism awash in his words) as a “being-of-itself?”
Jeremy had been so drunk for several days. When the alcohol had run out (the whiskey bottles set upside down on their necks, for the remainder to drip out like a puddle on the table, all the beer cans rounded up and those that hadn’t been fully vanquished quickly chugged, cigarette butts be damned), Jeremy had begun eating all of the diphenhydramine in the house. Whether it was to assist in sleeping away sobriety or simply for the excuse of getting fucked up, Sebastian didn’t know. Instead, he adoringly sat on the loveseat near Jeremy’s couch (where he slept, when he did) and listened to the ramblings the strung out mysterion had to offer.
CONTINUE READING >>>>>
Whenever Sebastian drove around the streets of his old hometown, he realized how bad living on the south side of any city could effect one's driving. He slid past stop signs with little hesitation, rolled up on curbs often to avoid having to stop on a narrow street and let another vehicle pass. All concept of a police presence, that wasn't far too worried about rapes and murders to pay mind to speeding, vanished. Almost always, he tried to take the alleys as much as possible, to avoid seeing the ugly, downtrodden faces of the people he was so used to avoiding.
But here, in these streets, the people, while still bloated by fast food diets and bespeckled with graying clothing and hair, seemed less guilty. Or maybe just unaffected. Their ways seemed backwards, but comfortable for them. And who was he to take that away yet, while the concept could still retain a hint of its virginity?
For example, there was a corner he has passed nearly every damn time he was behind the wheel. It sat on the square, parallel to the city’s off-white, Roman-bastardization excuse for a courthouse. Nothing special gleamed about the corner aside from the sole wooden bench that sat outside of whatever business resided there (Sebastian never looked, he was in the midst of his teenage years when he would pass it, what purpose did it serve him to find out?). To continue the normality of the bench, from sunrise to sunset, a man sat and watched the cars pass with hollow eyes and mouth slightly agape. He was the most common of the Baby Boomer fossils that littered middle America: reeking of grease and social retardation, his fat hanging over his red sweat pants and poking it’s nasty head out from under the hood of his green, stained tee-shirt (displaying enough slogans to wonder if he was possibly sponsored by whatever beer company it may have been. Paid to sit on a bench and die, for the whole world to see). His existence was nothing spectacular, meaningful or even noticeable. In fact, it would seem to Sebastian that his existence wasn’t so much its own “thing” but rather a branch off of the bench’s existence. Could his hometown be host to what he so affectionately heard Jeremy refer to (cynicism awash in his words) as a “being-of-itself?”
Jeremy had been so drunk for several days. When the alcohol had run out (the whiskey bottles set upside down on their necks, for the remainder to drip out like a puddle on the table, all the beer cans rounded up and those that hadn’t been fully vanquished quickly chugged, cigarette butts be damned), Jeremy had begun eating all of the diphenhydramine in the house. Whether it was to assist in sleeping away sobriety or simply for the excuse of getting fucked up, Sebastian didn’t know. Instead, he adoringly sat on the loveseat near Jeremy’s couch (where he slept, when he did) and listened to the ramblings the strung out mysterion had to offer.
it's a start, right?
There's a spectre haunting the subconsciousness of my generation. It has
crawled from parent to child, it's ugly, grotesque form masqueraded by cultural
traditions, public education and universal morality, squirming through decade
and century. You know it when it rears it's loathsome head because you can hear
it in the way your parents described their days; they were never exciting or
worthwhile tales, rather they were nothing more than mundane and banal
descriptions of busiwork, coupled with the infamous conclusion: "...and I get to
do it all again tomorrow." Does one ever look up to that life? It might have
been hard, honest work or provided plenty of revenue for the household but
did the parents ever appear happy? Or had the idea of comparing and
contrasting happiness and monetary fortune long disappeared from their heads and
from their childrens' heads? Has neo-liberal psuedo-optimism pushed the
residents of these past few centuries into self-imposed slavery? What makes us
eternally toil for and under a proxy of our collective willing?
If you're
asking me (and I assume you are, you've read thus far), it's
career-destiny.