Finally. Thank God.
please, jesus, i can no longer take the suspense.
(Shout out: Sorry Mom. I know you don't think Obama can take on McCain, but I really can't stand Hillary any more.)
--------------------------------
There’s a reason for this, the block I have to walk around,
the wilds behind the gas station, kicking weed seeds out in puffs,
the wooden planks in what’s left of the Walkers’ fence
like vowels resounding in dissolved words,
carbon remnants of what she said, why I pace her block,
and probably why she’s not home. We were best of buds,
but when the not so latent became not so veiled, scribbled
on the truth-or-dare torn from her spiral-bound,
we were sent running through the sprinkler,
its arc swelling cathedral around us,
and I tipped my face up to the mist, thinking,
I’m no longer envious in the least.
At last I’m living my life.
But tell me it was that simple, with her wet shirt
the sheerest resistance hugging her ribs, the radio
picking up our signal in the basement
and waving to us in pop love recognition,
or was it shattering the silence of all after,
ruining whatever grace young girls are said to have?
I saw a movie where now I had to kill her
if she didn’t return my regard. But what was I going to use?
A tampon string to garrote her? A Bic pen to the carotid?
She leaned against the hill to view the stars and I looked at her to see them.
I wish you’d never said all that, she said, and I could have said more
but by now what good would it do to "best left alone?" I watched her lips,
her lips, her lips, I watched her throat for its pulse. You’ve always
been a crazy girl, she said when I was beginning to think there’s just no way
a night as big as this one could drain empty that fast. Crazy, crazy,
crazy, crazy, I waited 8 beats before I kissed her. I’ll show you
crazy, I’ll show you it’s my life you’re in, not the other way around.
--Amanda Yskamp, Not Home
----------------------
I'm not really sure why I've been writing 3-part posts so often recently, but I'm just gonna go with it. I have a theory that if , for some reason, I inexplicitly keep doing the same thing over and over, there must be some deep psychological reasoning behind it, and I shouldn't try to stop myself.
It might be important to reveal that this theory was developed around my eating Pumpkin-granola cereal for every meal, but w/e! The theoretical transference is totally legit.
Uhhh, where was I? Alright, well theres yet another reason for the three-part posts -- my brain is way too fried right now to create anything new, or even follow the same chain of thought or more than ten minutes.
Intellectually at least, I'm feeling a pretty intense mental burnout. As far as writing about politics/socialissues/culture/news/science goes, I honestly just cannot get there. I'm exhausted and have an ... interesting emotional balancing act going on. Couple that with the magnificent disarray my universe is contending with right now, add in a furious mosquito that has been eating me alive for two nights and the ensuing bites all over my body, and packing everything I own in boxes (physically and proverbially)... annnnnd we arrive at the current State of Things.
Right, so:
I recently realized that I won't be making course selections for this fall. Luckily, this means I'm graduating. Unluckily, this also means that I don't get to reap the benefits of someone else doing all the footwork in creating course syllabi for topics I want to learn about. A lot of students I know looovvveee to lament about how much reading they have for classes, and I've done my fair share of whining too. But now that I have this sudden departure of all constraints academically, I'm back to learning about new things on my own.
This is a lot harder than it sounds. Most especially when you've done the "101" stuff already -- when I want some deep, comprehensive shit about something really specific, its a lot easier to have a professor (who hopefully spends their time specifically looking for literate content regarding their field) hand you a packet full of knowledge than it is to google around for hours and hours. Its also a lot more efficient than buying 3 or 4 theory books on amazon.com, only to discover than maybe.... 20 pages dealt with what you really wanted to read about. Cauuuse then you're also 40 in hole.
I get kind of learning-rabid -- especially around mid-summer when I've been watching Top Chef too much and feel myself getting significantly dumber. Its around that time when I usually start lingering around the outsides of Borders, soliciting passerby like some paper-deprived addict, Please, ma'am, can you spare some excerpts? Do you have any social theory? I just need a little course reader, its for the kids, I swear....
Awesomely crazy, this is becoming. Right, well -- awesomely during the CLPP Repro Rights Conference this spring, I was monitor for the panel on Queer and Trans Reproductive Rights, which Dean Spade was on. The facilitator, at the end, suggested that the panel put together a "radical education reading list", which was SO GOOD, and which, like an idiot, I threw out whilst in a pack-it or chuck-it craze earlier this week. Tragic.
Butttt: I realized (awesome.) that Dean Spade posted the course syllabuses for two classes which, did I go to UCLA, I would sit nerdy-style-front-row for: Race, Class, Disability and Trans Rights, and Law and Social Movements. Both are here.
I imagine this will keep me busy for several weeks.
Speaking of trans rights, En|Gender has a post about the American Psychiatric Association's recent work group appointed to revise the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders, specifically in regards to GID ("gender dysphoria"), which is classified as a mental illness by the APA. Anyway, I won't give away the ending, cause that's be no fun for you. But, I'll foreshadow by saying that the sitch is four ways kind of fucked up.
Also, after that, Bird of Paradox also has a brilliant breakdown of different discussions/the various levels of fuckery/the people involved. Hilarity and insights:
"To quote Lynn: “Ken Zucker, who heads a reparatist clinic for gender-variant youth in Toronto, was named as Chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for DSM Revision. Ray Blanchard, widely known for pronouncing that transitioned women are “men without penises”, was appointed as a member of that Work Group. Any bets on how this is going to turn out?"
According to TS Roadmap, Zucker is famous for - Actually, that whole page is a must-read. I really can’t find any single quote that I would want to abstract from it… *pauses briefly while mind boggles*"
via: http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/mad-as-hell/
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