tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45425962561457206812024-03-19T15:28:37.928-07:00Entrepreneurial Citypost-intellectuals on the post-industrial landscape.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-81258294242720597732009-10-05T12:19:00.000-07:002009-10-05T12:31:48.324-07:00a postcard of campus<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhsHOb3IGNHudQwvdVgLR5Rr48MM6oItdx1b5cHX06tOHrUCmv0nHFaPRQZYEaM1yZRR6mvsVQT-e8JGyKogxFmJB90o5n5vESIiqVRUsJEUL0cSyMSRoZsBRqtQGjuF20hC1wDidQiDQ/s1600-h/IMG_0498.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhsHOb3IGNHudQwvdVgLR5Rr48MM6oItdx1b5cHX06tOHrUCmv0nHFaPRQZYEaM1yZRR6mvsVQT-e8JGyKogxFmJB90o5n5vESIiqVRUsJEUL0cSyMSRoZsBRqtQGjuF20hC1wDidQiDQ/s400/IMG_0498.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389198310511393698" /></a><br />In April 1906, too eager to await arrival at Stanford University, L.M.H posts to an acquaintance an image of the traveler’s future: “I am a little ahead of myself as I will not see this for several weeks yet but never mind,” writes L.M.H. in Boston across the bottom of this postcard. <br /><br />L.M.H., however, never arrived at the scene. Days after this card made post, the 1906 earthquake demolished the major monuments featured at the center of the image, the chapel and memorial arch. The caption is fitting at both personal and political scales: not only does the image portray a place the sender expected, but failed to find, the setting itself is one of a deeply occluded future. It is worth, then, a closer look at these two early nineteenth century mediums, the postcard and the campus, as they both offer an (emotional) practice that has become all but obsolete today.<br /><br />The campus, as if in struggle against the increasing dispersion of everything, unites architecture and planning as a means of asserting a place defined, in ideals and materials, as a self-contained autonomy. The postcard, on the other hand, captures everything by making the most of its mass-produced redundancy, temporality, cheapness, and patchwork aesthetic; it dislodges everything from context, and alone offers its sender the small space in which a minor personal note or adventure may illuminate a whole scenery’s meaning. Nevertheless, these opposing styles of completion (autonomous singularity, or compulsive reproducibility) align in their committed expression of the not-yet: the postcard drops into the mailbox filled with the same anticipatory hope as the campus’s imagined future. “I am a little ahead of myself as I will not see this for several weeks but never mind,” scribbles L.M.H. beneath the oval green field preceding Leland’s Stanford university city which famously began with a clairvoyance of is own: “the children of California shall be my children” announced Leland shortly after the death of his only son. The campus and the postcard avow a glimpse into the distance, like an augur.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-21421158599655104712008-09-12T11:37:00.000-07:002008-09-12T11:42:15.173-07:00Photo TagA local(?) experiment in photogenicism. Take out your cell phone and snap a picture, your best picture of something that catches your eye. Anything at all. Send the image to phototag {at} hotmail.com. Then <a href="http://ev.stanford.edu/phototag">see everyone else's pictures</a>. Vote on your favorite image. The top three images will win a cash prize and have their image enlarged, framed, and displayed on campus: location TBA.<br /><br />Take a photo, send it, vote, leave comments, make something collectively, come along, be a part, rise anew, stand and sing, take a form, come and see, resonate, be not afraid.<br /><br />Deadline to SEND: Nov 1, 2008 <br />Deadline to VOTE: Nov 4, 2008mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-85227135658760962032008-09-07T23:57:00.000-07:002008-09-08T00:06:51.326-07:00Personalized faith<span style="font-style:italic;">People are harder to read than usual and you might accidentally rile someone up if you're not extra-careful. It's not like they're ready to pounce, but misunderstandings are just far too easy.</span><br /><br />Im a Taurus and thats my day's horoscope. There is a grad student in the anthropology department that rumor has it based her decision of who to chair her dissertation solely on faculty members' astrological sign. Is the increasing significance of celestial life forces strictly an academic character trait? Or more generally speaking, is it the increasing resolve to finally accept a socially meaningless life that now functions to endow our "present" with either a religious fundamentalism or an absolute personalized contingency? Anything can happen today, its best to read my horoscope and find out what it will be.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-26787830977862838172008-09-02T14:33:00.000-07:002008-09-02T15:28:24.479-07:00Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)Complacency Insanity Loneliness more accurately pinpoints the trifecta Woody Allen offers us in his hat toss into the post 9/11 genre of the dysfunctional family/relationship. I have to admit that this is by far my favorite American genre to have surfaced since my beloved slasher film kicked the bucket in 1984 with the (still worthy) <span style="font-style:italic;">Silent Night, Deadly Night</span>. Axe wielding Santa was, I guess, as far as we were all willing to go, unfortunately. For some reason or another, without a holiday to base a string of murders around, killing just wasn't entertaining anymore (but do see recent posts below for a more suggestive reason for this out-moded genre).<br /><br />But back to the matter at hand. The dysfunctional relationship genre has perhaps its first appearance with <span style="font-style:italic;">Kramer vs. Kramer</span> (1979). But the post 9/11 version of this theme is much more cynical than its post-Vietnam counterpart (Thanks to Kiersten for connecting war itself to the meditation that this anti-love genre wants us to undergo). For definitional purposes lets outline a few of this genre's most recent examples: <span style="font-style:italic;">The Squid and the Whale</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Little Children</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Margot at the Wedding</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Broken Flowers</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Station Agent</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">House of Sand and Fog</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Punch-Drunk Love</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Lost in Translation</span>, and last and definitely least, Wes Anderson's entire oeuvre (can all hipsters here face the fact that this guy has nothing more to say until he hits age 60, and this, only if, god help him, he somehow turns "political?")<br /><br />The unhappy ending is a new trope in this genre and I kind of like it for that fact. But I guess I'm beginning to wonder if its a symptom of the fact that these filmmakers, despite how acutely personal their character studies have become, maintain a frustrating lack of imagination in their adherence to the humdrum definition of middle-class romance. Which is to say that these relationships are "dysfunctional" only to the extent that they are measured up to the 'true romance' of an earlier generation's definition of 'till death do us part.' If we were to abandon that as the goal, these stories wouldn't be seen as dysfunction, they would simply be stories of the grand escape from that definition of love, they would be understood as jail-break films. But the <span style="font-style:italic;">Shawshank Redemption</span> is there to remind us that the process of such a difficult escape is just as intriguing as that day when, hopefully, all of us will get to eventually massage that sun-kissed sailboat with long restorative thrusts of gritty sandpaper. And maybe its just not watchable, but who among us will write or even imagine, nevermind risk searching for the actual thing itself in real life, the story of the relationship that isn't betrothed in complacency, insanity, or loneliness?<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Vicky Christina Barcelona</span> offers us something midway through the film: a threesome becomes the most functional glimpse of a relationship Hollywood or even an indie film has shown us in years. Is this simply that good ole wishful thinking from a misogynist culture? Or am I too ambitious here to suggest that the film has momentarily begun to actually imagine love differently as something altogether unrecognized and unregistered by the state, that is to say, love as a <span style="font-style:italic;">collectivity</span>?mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-18483032989489733972008-08-29T10:37:00.000-07:002008-08-29T11:18:52.544-07:00Participating from a distance; or, Untraceable (2008)Marketed as '<span style="font-style:italic;">The Silence of the Lambs</span> for the Internet Age,' <span style="font-style:italic;">Untraceable</span> tells the story of a young adult angered over the way in which his father's suicide became a national laughing-stock on Youtube, decides to build a website that is intricately connected to people he has captured and now places into precarious positions: wired to a lethal dose of blood thinner, surrounded by heat lamps, in a glass box piped to sulphuric acid. They aren't necessarily dead yet. But I say precarious because our antagonist has rigged it so that the more people that log onto the website to witness the scenario, the sooner the victim meets his death. Spectatorship is no longer neutral observation, its active participation, a kind of weapon. The online public becomes an accomplice to a murder that otherwise never would have happened. Needless to say, the number of watchers surge into the millions faster and faster with each new exhibition.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Untraceable</span> flopped at the box office and most critics hated it for either being too conventional or else not following those conventions of the thriller genre. Adam Tobias of the <a href="http://www.wdtimes.com/articles/2008/01/25/screen_scenes/screen1.txt">Watertown Daily Times</a> points out, <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Part of the problem with “Untraceable” is the identity of the killer behind the Web site is revealed way too early, thus taking most of the mystery out of the movie.</span><br /><br />and<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">But what is confusing is that while Jennifer, Griffin and Eric are trying to stop people from being murdered one by one, the workers in the FBI office are glued to their computer screens watching the terror unfold. Which begs the question: If these are the people who are paid to protect us, then why are they helping out the killer by speeding up executions?</span><br /><br />The film does back-off from the cynical position of bluntly accusing the watching public of being evil as at one point someone in the film suggests, 'its only human to be curious.' But it is clear the audience is meant to feel complicitous and ultimately guilty for the way the internet so easily allows us to make light of the most gruesome situations, the most degrading humiliations. And there is somewhat of a conservative edge to any such pronouncements which, in the next breath, often want to move towards censorship and restraint. Much like any city will want to incarcerate or 'relocate' its homeless population whenever the <a href="http://cgmg.jour.city.ac.uk/news.php?story=129">Olympics</a> of even a <a href="http://latimesblog.latimes.com/washington/2008/07/democratic-co-1.html">democratic convention</a> rolls into town. What remains untraceable is still all those millions around the world without an internet connection. Yet our movie has no trouble substituting its middle-class online spectators with that larger group known as 'humanity.' Once more the language of ethics (who is responsible?) stands in for that of economic inequality and considerations of personal freedom stand in for doubts about capitalist social organization itself.<br /><br />We have, at least, finally gotten our answer to why the slasher genre--so lucrative in the 80s and 90s--is all but old-fashioned and exhaustive to today's audiences. The serial killer has become obsolete and luke-warm in a culture where "everyone" is equally, politically, legally responsible.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-15665669892020266182008-08-28T12:46:00.000-07:002008-08-28T13:49:04.140-07:00La Commare Secca (1962)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvj06lnAG-5g9PyEn8vEXmCi75VybqpRmlB464PNrqSIYGbEjURg4Ub9dpGLvTP6ZqpFchSNz2eodRQk1Wk21Co_79yGVVk02egW_2IcfWjigZCXO-QARSXu54Tu7RxOHPtploimZ9P0/s1600-h/la-commare-secca.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEvj06lnAG-5g9PyEn8vEXmCi75VybqpRmlB464PNrqSIYGbEjURg4Ub9dpGLvTP6ZqpFchSNz2eodRQk1Wk21Co_79yGVVk02egW_2IcfWjigZCXO-QARSXu54Tu7RxOHPtploimZ9P0/s400/la-commare-secca.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239671423318135602" /></a><br />Bertolucci's first film, <span style="font-style:italic;">La Commare Secca</span>, gives us the Italian take on Kurosawa's <span style="font-style:italic;">Rashoman</span>. Here, a prostitute has been murdered on the bank of the Tiber and we listen to police interrogate five men: a thief, a middle-aged pimp, a soldier on furlough, an unemployed vagrant, a young lover of gnocchi--all of whom were seen at the park where she solicits on the day of her murder. The film is five mini films on how time was passed for five lives in the rainy afternoon before which a woman was murdered for her purse. <br /><br />The title of the film gets translated into English as "The Grim Reaper" but something has been lost here. <span style="font-style:italic;">Commare secca</span> is a term you will only hear in Rome and is indeed the unique name this region gives to death, but it is important to note the literal translation of <span style="font-style:italic;">commare secca</span> is 'dry housewife.' Quiet opposite of a prostitute, and this play on words is significant for everything the movie seemed to signal to its own unique historical moment.<br /><br />In 1962, its quite clear the film wanted to say something--in as poetic a way as possible--about how a murder could occur in the same afternoon trajectory as say, a soldier fell asleep on a park bench, a boy was beaten for stealing, a man curses his outsmarting ex-girlfriend. Life is flimsy and short for most of those outside the camera's eye.<br /><br />We know this story all too well by now and the film no longer holds its punch in terms of its intended political commentary. But what does stand out is not so much the point that life is a slow or quick death for those outside the middle class, but rather the fact that a filmmaker once set out to present this grim truth in such a lyrical manner. The dancing curtains of rain, the perpetually moving camera, the comb through the hair, the timing of that acoustic guitar, brings all these small stories forth into an enormous and fundamental surplus of life's ubiquitous dimming resonance. <br /><br />Minger and I talk of branching EC out into a radio documentary podcast in which we interview various people in the bay area. What would the Silicon Valley version of a 'dry housewife' be? How does daily life here relate to daily death and, if it does, what role, if any, would 'style' serve to represent this relationship?<br /><br />Because 'style' or 'innovation' is deeply active in Silicon Valley, not so much by its filmmakers and writers, but rather through the convictions of its managers. The defense of craft and freedom of creativity is voiced loudest by SV's corporations and new humanistic management theories which encourages high levels of autonomy and self-development as a crucial component of any lucrative firm. Then: we have to face the fact that humanism, as it has been invented and smuggled into American society largely by English and philosophy departments of the late nineteenth century, is most actively brandished today by the corporate world. The entrepreneur in Silicon Valley carries the torch the English department once did for the university. Humanism is alive and well, it has simply been channeled toward market innovation. Managers, it seems, have all remembered that one day they (their product) too will die, and therefore fun needs to be part of the production process so that they may live again. In which case it is not the Grim Reaper and our relation to death that measure the absurdity of these days, but our relationship to a now vanished, even among the subcultures, way of living. Most bluntly, how does one dare today to even begin to explicate the practical public value of labor that lacks a marketable product? 'La Commare Secca' of Silicon Valley is the rather hilarious, if it wasnt so pathetic, position of any professor of humanities.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-76091950451263044402008-08-20T18:36:00.000-07:002008-08-20T19:21:58.036-07:00Because we were made that wayAlmost like the universe itself compelled me to respond to mordenti's post, I was listening today to a podcast (Speaking of Faith again) about the meaning of play. Here is Dr. Stuart Brown on the topic:<br /><br /><blockquote>[P]lay is trivial. It's what you do when your responsibilities are taken care of, particularly as an adult. But if you were to follow, as I have at least scholastically and, if not, clinically, if you're to follow the trail of play in both animals and humans, the beginning point of play in the mother-infant or parent-infant bonding process is kind of the spontaneous eruption of joy and pleasure upon the process of being safely fed and, in the case of the human, when there is eye contact. And the social smile emerges and the infant and the mother begins to coo. That cooing, that's worldwide. And there is mutual joy. And the brain imaging that's associated with that shows an attunement between the mother's right cortex, a nondominant hemisphere of the brain, and the baby's.<br /><br />And then if you build on that and say, 'OK, the child has experienced that and now they're growing up a little bit,' they get some of the same joyful experience from grabbing something, putting it in their mouths when they're infants, and then a little later, playing with toys, and then ultimately, parallel play with other children and on and on. I could go right on up through the whole life cycle, each of which has more and more intricate, more complex play if the individual is sort of allowed, through the environment, to take advantage of it.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-59109567954001398442008-08-20T12:28:00.000-07:002008-08-20T13:04:39.876-07:00There is no why<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPz_aK_ddFNKZ-9-f6FtvmDNIZHoa2xAzUIzY8XgC_AxV7guNGFvqW4aIRb2LK61I5EcwGwK0gQXxPD0gjexzV2TBiycJnG-GIZytE7XBv97pgAbylzRkSirMAprUuDrKMmejLFZEO7Hg/s1600-h/WTC-crossSmall.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPz_aK_ddFNKZ-9-f6FtvmDNIZHoa2xAzUIzY8XgC_AxV7guNGFvqW4aIRb2LK61I5EcwGwK0gQXxPD0gjexzV2TBiycJnG-GIZytE7XBv97pgAbylzRkSirMAprUuDrKMmejLFZEO7Hg/s400/WTC-crossSmall.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236690269862893490" /></a><br />He was in the dentist office when he saw an article about the twin towers in NYC. He drew a line to connect their roofs. His dream was to walk across this line. He had felt they were now unknowingly building these structures solely for him. But these twin towers instead became the symbol of an entire generation precisely because of the bodies that did ultimately fall from their towering heights. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.manonwire.com">Phillipe Petit</a> was not one of them. He walked back and forth eight times over the course of 40 minutes across the wire he fastened between the WTC towers. He trained at Notre Dame, a bridge in Sydney, a park outside Paris. Where did the money come to do all this? Why did all of his relationships--both intimate and platonic--end immediately after this feat? Unfortunately for me, the film does not go into these details. We are told Phillipe is particularly upset by the media's immediate response, they want to know 'why did you do this?' He tells us this is an uniquely American question, only Americans would watch this act of beauty and immediately ask why. There is no why, he tells them.<br /><br />But perhaps the question can be changed around. That is to say, who else in the entire world could see the value of 'art for art's sake' in 1974 other than a well-to-do Frenchman? Children have been napalmed in Vietnam, a civil rights movement had brought entire continents together, a national recession had brought homelessness into figures widely beyond those known in any other of the world's metropols. All of this was in ear shot when Phillipe Petit shifted his weight from the left foot firmly on the roof to the right foot now slightly touching the suspended wire half a mile in the air. In total concentration, he balanced above it all in the name of 'poetry,' 'the sublime,' 'the utopian boundlessness of human potential.' This was one last outcry of nineteenth century humanism.<br /><br />What can we make of this today? Do we call this unfettered narcissism of a sadly disconnected madman, or rather a statement about how much more would actually be possible within all of us if we we were not hourly burdened with the numbing obligation to earn a living?mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-90430120685890543002008-08-18T20:26:00.001-07:002008-08-18T21:21:13.680-07:00Where there's smoke (or Sometimes A Cigar?)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2772622707_6ab59c5143.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2772622707_6ab59c5143.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Allow me to present an emotional revelation in four (and a half) parts/four days.<br /><br /><B>Thursday: Groundwork</B><br /><br />Last Thursday, I listened to <a href="http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/tolle/">Eckhart Tolle being interviewed on Speaking of Faith</a>. Here's Tolle talking about his notion of the "pain body" (I got the text from the <a href="http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/tolle/transcript.shtml">transcript</a> of the program):<br /><blockquote>[H]ow can there be so much emotional pain when the situation that [a person is] in cannot actually justify that much emotional pain? ... there's something in everybody that is a remnant of past painful emotion. And these remnants of past painful emotion from pain that you suffered as a child, perhaps even pain that was passed on from previous generations.</blockquote><br /><br /><B>Friday early evening: An Abstract</B><br /><br />On Friday, I told B. that I found it very difficult to be present, to pay attention to the particular thing happening in the moment. Instead, I said, my mind would immediately jump from the present to an abstracted universal, of which the present was only an example, and an insignificant one, at that. Even that statement, I noticed right away, was an abstraction. I couldn't even tell him about a particular time when I went from the concrete to the abstract, since such a time would itself have been a concrete example.<br /><br />Discerning principles in the particular is an important skill for attorneys and judges engaged in legal argumentation, but when you can't turn it off, it becomes an impediment to mindful living.<br /><br /><B>Friday late evening: All The Wrong Places</B><br /><br />At the end of the evening, when B told me he did not want to date, I had an emotional response that was quite out of proportion to the event. I had fears, anxieties and judgments come up, such as the fear that this was just another example of a "failed" date that confirmed my essentially unlovable or undate-able nature. <br /><br />Tolle suggests that we "become the space for the emotion", and cultivate an awareness of the pain body, which is the thing that causes these apparently disproportionate hurts.<br /><br />Late that night, speaking with my brother, I was indeed able to talk about my pain body, its manifestations and possible sources. This included relating to him a rather unfortunate incident in my childhood when my father, out of a misguided attempt to shame me into losing weight (I shall assume it wasn't out of pure spite or intentional hurtfulness), told me that I was so fat that, if I were a girl, nobody would want to marry me, certainly he wouldn't. I think I was about 13 or 14, at just the age when sexual and social anxieties were foremost in my mind. This was one of the first times that I became aware that there could be things about me that were sexually and socially undesirable, and also that certain traits were <I>inherently</I> bad, and made me <I>essentially</I> unlovable.<br /><br />That night I tried to sit and go through the <a href="http://www.bswa.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=544">Metta meditation</a>, but was not even able to summon up lovingkindness for a child, as I was feeling so vulnerable and uncared-for myself. I tried to feel some lovingkindness for myself as well, but with similarly lack of success. I decided that I would practice self-care by going to bed rather that sitting.<br /><br /><b>Saturday: Mixers and Maturity</b><br /><br />On Saturday evening, I went to a wedding where I felt a mix of emotions. Some were positive: happiness for my friends who were getting married, relief at having gotten there on time, joy at seeing an old friend I hadn't seen in a while, delight in the little funny things that happen at grand/solemn ceremonies. Some were what I would call negative: melancholy at the passage of time, sadness that I was not at this time anticipating my own marriage or celebrating with my love partner, some physical discomfort at the cold and my own hunger and, of course, guilt for not feeling an unadulterated joy. <br /><br />Of all these emotions, I now see that only two were "present-oriented": the delight and the physical discomfort. I think also that these two emotions are strongly associated with children's reactions to such ceremonies.<br /><br />At the dinner, I drank enough to be very pleasantly tipsy throughout.<br /><br /><b>Sunday: A man of substance</b><br /><br />On Sunday, I had a sudden urge to buy and smoke a cigar. In retrospect I have some possible explanations (none or all of which may be true) for this urge:<br />1) My masculinity needed some bolstering after the somewhat tiring and dispiriting emotions of the previous two days.<br />2) Mordenti had mentioned smoking cigars the last time I saw him, and I was missing his company on Sunday.<br />3) I was sleep-deprived and seeking a stimulant to self-medicate.<br />4) I was horny from not having had sex for a while, and wanted to interact with something phallic.<br />5) I was craving novelty to once again tap into that feeling of delight which I knew I was capable of because of Saturday's ceremony.<br />6) I wanted to spend money on a "luxury" in order to revel in my ability to provide myself with things I wanted.<br /><br />As I smoked, I thought about all the things the cigar represented, but I also thought about the physical details of smoking the cigar. It had been very difficult to light the cigar, a lot more so than a cigarette. Also, smoking a cigar required a very different action from smoking a cigarette. Instead of inhaling the smoke into my lungs, I tried to hold it in my mouth in order to taste the qualities of the tobacco. I was careful also to exhale, when I remembered, through my nose, the better to smell the smoke. A breathing exercise of sorts.<br /><br />So what does it mean to smoke a cigar? It means all the things in that numbered list. But it also means all the things in the paragraph that follows. Smoking implies fire as well as loneliness; breathing as well as stimulation; tasting and taste.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-13859537780818130412008-08-16T18:17:00.000-07:002008-08-16T18:53:56.862-07:00Hawaii palace takeover<span style="font-style:italic;">An "occupation public information bulletin" distributed by a member of the group began: "Majesty Akahi Nui, the King of Hawaii, has now reoccupied the throne of Hawaii. The Kingdom of Hawaii is now re-enacted."<br /><br />Akahi Nui claims to have been coronated in 1998.<br /><br />Hawaiian activists have long used Iolani Palace, the site of Queen Liliuokalani's imprisonment following the 1893 U.S. overthrow, as a prime location for protests against the United States' occupation of the islands.<br /><br />About 6:30 p.m., the group let reporters onto the palace grounds for about an hour. A spokesman, Alfred Love, said he was a federal marshal. He said he "placed the kingdom under federal protective custody" and has asked the U.S. Congress to determine that the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii was illegal.<br /><br />"Our plan is to take the palace for the crown," Love said. "Our flag is now over the guard house, the flag has not flown since before 1892. We plan to be here forever."</span><br /><br /><a href="http://honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.d11/frontpage">more</a>.<br /><br />Of the approximately 30,000 residents, eight percent of the population in East Palo Alto identified themselves as <a href="http://bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/EastPaloAlto.htm">Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander</a> in 2000.<br /><br />Since we're on the subject of statistics, race, and politics, take a look at these comparisons of the <a href="http://paloalto.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Palo+Alto&s1=CA&c2=east+palo+alto&s2=CA">crime statistics</a> comparing Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and the Nation in 2006. The 2007 stats come out in two months.</span>mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-53793673271703625862008-08-14T15:58:00.000-07:002008-08-14T19:01:54.670-07:00By this shall all men know that ye are my disciplesOrson Scott Card has a <a href="http://mormontimes.com/ME_blogs.php?id=1586">blog entry</a>* on Mormontimes.com that opens with this proclamation:<br /><blockquote>The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America.</blockquote><br />A little hyperbolic, sure, but that's to be expected of a right-wing rant against The Gay Agenda. But Card saves the Big Guns for last. Here are the last two paragraphs, which start with a stirring call to action (in the form of a rhetorical question):<br /><blockquote>How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.<br /><br />Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.</blockquote><br />It's worth remembering the history of the Mormon church. Hell, the history of Christianity, too, why not. The very same page that had Card's blog had a banner on top featuring a quote from the book of John, chapter 13, verse 35, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." The verse immediately preceding it in the bible is the famous one about "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." All this is attributed to Christ even as he contemplates his own death.<br /><br />Mormons, too, were persecuted for loving too much (among other things). Though instead of staying (as a body of believers), or even walking to their death/redemption, as Christ did, they fled, first from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, then Illinois, and finally Utah. In this, then, there are echoes of the Exodus story, featuring a group favored by God, but persecuted by the government.<br /><br />What then, does it mean, that an heir of this religious history finds himself advocating for the destruction of a government that essentially has become <i>too permissive</i>? If indeed he feels persecuted (and I suppose we can grant him that, though it's a stretch to say that Mormons are "persecuted" by a government that recognizes same-sex marriage), should he not surrender to it in humility, secure in his redemption (like Christ), or humbly working to change it through love (like Christ's admonition to his followers), or fleeing to more accommodating vistas (like early Mormons) or even fleeing and waiting for God to show his favor by inflicting plagues and disasters upon the oppressor (like Moses & Co.)? <br /><br />What precedent calls for the imposition of the will of the people onto unfortunate minorities? Democracy, that legacy from the same-sex-loving Greeks.<br /><br />Irony also has Greek roots. It comes from eiron, to dissemble. And there is something rather false about this particular Mormon's rabid and violent opposition to same-sex marriage.<br /><br />*Hat-tip to <a href="http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/08/gay-revolution-but-not-good-kind.html">Joe.My.God.</a> where I found out about this blog postUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-47276276976009365002008-08-08T13:02:00.000-07:002008-08-08T13:10:41.803-07:00Love during wartime<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ6aDaK0sgCPK0-1oeqVRAaxw917_3RU6ddcB3jEGM0Z4KvMQzbV_INQmfWOgfe7x5oz-PsHWS7OG4v6q9QKyKo3qZgWuTrEGw3T2kRHGhGo7gsP7ONZGNrwn5FkKjGeLSiJRVW4uUoLE/s1600-h/view.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ6aDaK0sgCPK0-1oeqVRAaxw917_3RU6ddcB3jEGM0Z4KvMQzbV_INQmfWOgfe7x5oz-PsHWS7OG4v6q9QKyKo3qZgWuTrEGw3T2kRHGhGo7gsP7ONZGNrwn5FkKjGeLSiJRVW4uUoLE/s400/view.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232241567984515474" /></a><br /><br />How close is revenge to reverence? Apparently the new spirituality in America is something not too far removed from weaponry. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The USS New York was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center<br /><br />It is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.<br /><br />Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, 'those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,' recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. 'It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.'<br /><br />Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the 'hair on my neck stood up.' 'It had a big meaning to it for all of us,' he said. 'They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to be back.'<br /><br />The ship's motto? 'Never Forget'</span>mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-16126859912035979472008-08-07T15:58:00.000-07:002008-08-07T16:24:11.867-07:00The Conformist (1970)At a young age a boy is molested by his chauffeur. He shoots him and flees. It is in Italy in the 1930s and Mussolini has been elected dictator. This boy has grown up and, because of his childhood experience, feels radically different from everyone else. He chooses a life of over-compensation. Feeling like an outsider he searches heavily for a life of normalcy: a petty bourgeois wife, a house, a honeymoon in paris. He is so committed to normalcy that he over-commits. Not only is he a fascist, his secret is that he is their assassin and earns a living killing anti-fascists. <br /><br />The film is beautiful of course and lauded by all accounts. Today, for me what resonates is the way in which normality functions as a decoy of self-hatred. Its simultaneously what is accepted by all and that which is the most impersonal. What experience is necessary or required to let go of that which tells us again and again, we are the problem, the bad person, the guilty? What will absolve us from the pain that we are alone with out hearts broken from the lies we've been told and that we even tell ourselves? What prevents us from giving in, to just playing by the rules, and being happy, if that is how happiness is today offered to us here? Happiness as conformity, as silence. Happiness as similarity. Happiness as unrecognizability. Everything else will be unforgiven and violently despised. Why not capitulate?<br /><br />In the film, the assassin encounters the chauffeur and realizes that he did not kill him. That what he thought his whole life till now was untrue. Perhaps he began to no longer feel guilty for who he was. But the film ends, and we don't know what happens next. It seems, rather, a good place to start a film. What will you do when you realize you've built an entire life based upon a misunderstanding of who you are? What will you next do? What will you see in the mirror that morning? Today, the 'not-normal' has become a kind of conformity. And tradition, although it has its nostalgic appeal, is not to be celebrated without devastating sacrifice. And so we have no protocol for what to do when we realize that who we were in the past is not necessarily the person we are, or even want to be.<br /><br />Of course, these questions suppose an identity of oneself is possible, and I imagine that will make some people cringe. It just seems to me that any question of change requires some identifiable position to set out from without which everything, everything, is for naught.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-6034824880400303462008-07-31T17:13:00.001-07:002008-07-31T17:33:52.157-07:00We had taken a benchWe had finished the semester, stepped out of the last class. The walk on campus after a tough semester finishes must share something emotionally diminished, yet affiliated, to release from prison. Despite however many nights you've been awake, filled with anxiety and determination, despite the total emptiness of barreled exhaustion, everything, all senses are piqued and its common to be in a state of absolute absorption. I had been walking slower than usual in this pocket of dense time. Its the binge and purge ratio of life that has always been the only way i've managed to get anything of value ever done. These dazed, fecund walks were the closest i'd ever get to victory marches.<br /><br />I'd been walking through the Plaza of the Americas and I had my eye on this bench in the corner. It was perhaps the busiest intersection on campus. Everyone was carrying forth, heading or returning from a class, filled with intention. There were still several days of exams left to go. Everyone was rushing and flustered. I had finished; so i only noticed, tranced in this slow motion gait, all the way from the middle of the plaza, I only noticed this bench on the corner. It was empty. It was as empty as me.<br /><br />I reached it as if it had been planned, built, and presented solely for me to sit on. I'd never noticed this bench before. Today it was all there was. I had been walking with my girlfriend at the time. She said, "Here?" This made me laugh for no reason. It was a bench that probably never held anyone seeing as it was located at such a wild crossroad. We sat there for hours, holding hands, making out. The whole world passed by in visible disbelief. People we knew stopped and talked and felt bazaar about any sincere interaction among all the strongly intentioned movement that surrounded us. The bench being there, its presence, caddy-corner to the whole intersection, seemed to validate the whole thing.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-82608659193103386442008-07-29T12:14:00.000-07:002008-07-29T14:30:59.524-07:00You're boring me<span style="font-style:italic;">You die as a hero or live long enough to see yourself as the villain.</span><br /><br />So states the motto of this summer's record breaking blockbuster, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Dark Knight</span>. These are anti-heroic times and we all stand prepared to accept the conundrum of this film that the Joker seems so (politically?) motivated to make crystal clear: he is the freak that represents the greatest product of what the Batman has created or inspired in Gotham. Batman can't kill the Joker without becoming him. The Joker cant kill Batman because he's rather bored by the threats and interests of the run-of-the-mill crime bosses. So the two need each other; love is a battlefield, etc., etc. Relations among the outsiders are even more toxic than relations among the residents. In the process a woman dies and the district attorney becomes Two-Face, further emphasizing the Joker's thesis that the two (good and evil, republican and democrat, entrepreneur and outcast) are one side of the same coin.<br /><br />That this all comes down to the emblematic feature (the coin) of capitalism is probably not a far fetched idea. Those going-steady readers of entre city will recall previous posts on the subject. Anyway, I liked it. And it would be good to hear what others thought, whereas apparently the whole USA is watching it these past two weeks. Or, if you haven't, perhaps you'd like to comment on whether or not you ever get the gripping sense that your emotions are nothing but politics (as the joker and this film seem to suggest.)mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-42034146108824279832008-07-28T13:50:00.000-07:002008-07-28T15:23:00.983-07:00A Fine Romance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtOH8bXoh9g61Rw8VerNQaskbV_7zGvE2I_-XYkgecXhKze5AJYYT2kGO7AZc6z2q0s9Uw2KhR1at4sCabTN3wmY81JOqhgLU3aqPI9-wvFj2SwMAAEtyLJyzn_NNdHcNyLh5r_1mQh6U/s1600-h/641978379_46f3401ae1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtOH8bXoh9g61Rw8VerNQaskbV_7zGvE2I_-XYkgecXhKze5AJYYT2kGO7AZc6z2q0s9Uw2KhR1at4sCabTN3wmY81JOqhgLU3aqPI9-wvFj2SwMAAEtyLJyzn_NNdHcNyLh5r_1mQh6U/s320/641978379_46f3401ae1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228177561741295490" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">If heterosexuals were bailing out of matrimony in droves, at least there was another group standing by to repopulate the ranks, like a new wave of civic-minded immigrants eager to move in and spruce up abandoned neighborhoods with fresh coats of paint and small business loans: soon it becomes the hip place to be and the middle classes all want to move back in.</span><br />- Laura Kipnis in <span style="font-style:italic;">Against Love</span><br /><br />I find Kipnis' gentrification metaphor to be intriguing but problematic. If same-sex couples are the eager new arrivals, the implication is that the religious conservatives unhappy with these "newcomers" to marriage are the "holdouts". <br /><br />This plays into the fallacious idea that there's only so much room in the Marriage neighborhood, and that letting homos in will leave less room for heteros. Kipnis herself disavows this assumption later, calling for a more "imaginative" response to the LGBT community's demands for marriage equality. However, Kipnis does not grapple directly with the gentrification metaphor she invokes, instead half-heartedly mocking the outcome of the controversy using the idiom of space (conservatives wanting to "Keep gays out. Keep heterosexuals in, with electrified fences if necessary"), but ultimately leaving unquestioned the relationship between neighborhoods' residents' responses to gentrification and "conservative" responses to demands for recognition of same-sex marriage.<br /><br />A more apt metaphor might have been one of "white flight," which is a sort of inverse gentrification, where (at least to liberal eyes) the moral opprobrium attaches not to the phenomenon of the financially and socially more powerful groups entering a socially marginalized neighborhood, but rather to those with social power who would flee the neighborhood when they notice its character changing.<br /><br />Rather than constructing religious conservatives as victims and holdouts (which is the rhetoric they use), then, they can be compared to those property owners who couch their racism in the language of "devaluation" of their property by the "wrong kind of people" moving into their neighborhood. Indeed, it is clear from conservative rhetoric that they see marriage as their <span style="font-style:italic;">property</span>, something to be granted or withheld from same-sex couples as they see fit. The metaphor of property values is the one where talk of same-sex marriage "undermining" heterosexual marriage makes sense (after all, who your neighbors are matters, in a racist and homophobic world). Rather than feigning ignorance ("I don't see how same-sex marriage will devalue heterosexual marriage"), let us acknowledge that we know why this "devaluation" is happening, but also call it out as homophobia that drives it.<br /><br />To pretend that there is no risk that property values will drop when "the wrong people" start acquiring homes in a neighborhood is rather foolish. To acknowledge that the <span style="font-style:italic;">reason</span> that they might drop is racism (or xenophobia, or homophobia), and that the mere fact that property values might drop is insufficient justification to place barriers in the way of would be entrants to the neighborhood, now <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> is political integrity.<br /><br />Photo: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/intangible/641978379/">The "G" Word</a> by IntangibleArtsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-60315819981148221362008-07-26T11:31:00.001-07:002008-07-26T11:51:03.458-07:00Paintings edge<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvsx1a8J_WMspT4k0Df5PQ-z-PVKJTlLu1ARCsiyq7LdCskWKLTCImTehh7OYao6d6G7VmOSAz44DLKh4UxILcy0XzjCidJGAObUfmToZszOpW-X4WhVf9gZw_mNFHxXjJfBGBSN4ZXI/s1600-h/Jaroneski_30x22_OilPastel_08-v4.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvsx1a8J_WMspT4k0Df5PQ-z-PVKJTlLu1ARCsiyq7LdCskWKLTCImTehh7OYao6d6G7VmOSAz44DLKh4UxILcy0XzjCidJGAObUfmToZszOpW-X4WhVf9gZw_mNFHxXjJfBGBSN4ZXI/s400/Jaroneski_30x22_OilPastel_08-v4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227397192532459202" /></a><br />Those near or in LA today may want to check out the Riverside Art Museum's exhibition of the 2008 <a href="http://artscenecal.com/Announcements/2008/0708/RiversideMsm0708b.html">"Paintings Edge" workshop</a>:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">“The Paintings Edge workshop,” cautions the course catalogue, “is not for beginners.” Every year, as part of the Idyllwild Summer Arts Institute, several dozen professional artists and advanced art students convene in this intensive colloquium in painting – painting techniques, painting subjects, painting ideas.</span><br /><br />The painting above was done by my inspiring friend Kathy who is one of the participants in the workshop. In 2004, Kathy quit her well-paying job as a web designer for Universal Studios in order to devote herself completely to painting all day long. She free-lances her computer skills on the side now, but is mostly altogether found in her studio these days.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-30879232045598402622008-07-25T11:26:00.000-07:002008-07-25T12:19:28.618-07:00Legacy of the Tinman; or Borderline Personality Disorder and Finance Capital<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheddm0IK0EAjlKNsSdnaMzqPh0qzuGX5PPhFtyyT-fmZYGiaYPMZmEwEbNirIZsejeX-UVm-w7I9WdBkjdstpPs9_5h0Od6FRzLZJzzmNKpMTaiPOsluvMLecZhDJTfDPczzF8VLz9kxU/s1600-h/ClarkCenterNight.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheddm0IK0EAjlKNsSdnaMzqPh0qzuGX5PPhFtyyT-fmZYGiaYPMZmEwEbNirIZsejeX-UVm-w7I9WdBkjdstpPs9_5h0Od6FRzLZJzzmNKpMTaiPOsluvMLecZhDJTfDPczzF8VLz9kxU/s400/ClarkCenterNight.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227033451388823218" /></a><br />The founding grant of Stanford University dictates that this institution's expansive acreage can never be sold. The university approached bankruptcy in the 1930s until an engineering professor turned provost found a way to make money off the Stanford's generous land endowment after all. Unable to sell it because of the founder's wishes, he decided to rent it and in the 40s the Stanford industrial Park was born just south of the main quadrangle. Books have been written explaining this decision as the origin of Silicon Valley and Frederick Terman, our innovative provost, is often referred to as its grandfather.<br /><br />When capital shifts from investing in spaces of extraction and production (factories) to spaces interested in the new kinds of profits available in financial transactions themselves a new kind of abstraction is at hand that is far from an academic matter. This fictitious capital or finance capital is absolutely disinterested in content, which becomes a mere marketing pretext, and is now solely concerned with the transformation of land into that which by definition has no use-value.<br /><br />Today this process is synonymous with Silicon Valley, if not globalization itself: faced with the saturation of foreign markets, every region abandons that older industrial kind of production, along with its factories and trained workforce, and takes flight to the more profitable ventures of land speculation. The latter is oriented strictly to the expectation of future value. The goal of production no longer lies in any one specific market, or any specific set of social or individual needs, but rather the free-floating state of strictly performing (abstract, mindless, generic, contentless, bodyless) money relationships. The structural features of this new 'futures' market includes, on the one hand, a frenzied search for more profitable investments, and on the other, a planned obsolescence, disposability, and disinterestedness. Perhaps we have here a historical context for what is anthropomorphized as borderline personality disorder and has its earliest characterization in Frank Oz's "Tinman" (1939). Was all this already available to us to read into last month's blockbuster, <span style="font-style:italic;">Ironman</span>? You let me know.<br /><br />Of course, on entre city hope springs eternal. And leave it to the ever-positive Emily to cheer up my day once again by sending me this video. For let us never forget that there was not only the tinman in the Wizard of Oz, there was also the lion. Please go <a href="http://videos.komando.com/2008/06/26/christian_the_lion/">here and watch</a>.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-28245182122276259412008-07-24T14:06:00.000-07:002008-07-24T14:43:25.150-07:00"We're moving too fast"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnV3BwVv4-yoz83QeLcedS3WL1sx3S7oqZj7t4VoRWz5SbMloFd1ndq6ByV9oF0K-jTyTDtunL2jnxJnlmgCNmnkNZUXXjUiCXsY6IWKJAwebnY0KGZ_0HxpL6BsIeguz00F9en8UPTNE/s1600-h/497312470_c6d3a7198d.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnV3BwVv4-yoz83QeLcedS3WL1sx3S7oqZj7t4VoRWz5SbMloFd1ndq6ByV9oF0K-jTyTDtunL2jnxJnlmgCNmnkNZUXXjUiCXsY6IWKJAwebnY0KGZ_0HxpL6BsIeguz00F9en8UPTNE/s320/497312470_c6d3a7198d.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226690910972662162" /></a><br /><br />Talking about this with mordenti, I was gearing up for a skeptical post about the meaning of this phrase, as used in dating. If you've ever been on the receiving end of this or its related phrases (The more direct "let's take things slowly" or the less direct "do you think we're moving too fast?"), you know the feeling. <br /><br />The first response often is to take offense. Which is to say, one immediately starts to wonder how a relationship can move too fast, if it's going in a good direction. <span style="font-style:italic;">Really</span>, one wants to counter, <span style="font-style:italic;">what you're trying to say to me is that you want to go somewhere else, is that it?</span> Because, after all, if the relationship is going right, why not go as fast as you possibly can (just so you can stay still, as the Red Queen might say)?<br /><br />As I was looking for a photograph to accompany this post, however, I found the one above, that amused me and made me think more carefully about the metaphor of movement, and the emotional/interpersonal meanings of speed, direction, and destination, as well as the attendant dangers of going too fast, in the wrong way, or towards the wrong thing.<br /><br /><B>Speed, or "Hold on tight!"</B><br />We know time through observing change. When a lot of change happens in one sphere of our lives while few changes happen in other spheres (for example, riding in a car, I may notice that the scenery undergoes a lot of changes between one breath and the next), we either perceive the first sphere as fast or the second sphere as slow, depending on our perspective. As we who live in the world have noticed, speed is relative.<br /><br />In a relationship, then, if you notice a lot of change (to your routine, perhaps, if you're dating frequently, or to the way you feel every day, if you're constantly thinking about the person or calling them) while other things don't change (your job, your friends, the way you wear your hat), you might feel that the relationship is going too fast.<br /><br />On the other hand, you might say that the rest of your life is going too slowly. I think this accounts for that feeling of being "awake" or "alive" when in a relationship. It's the exhilaration of living at the right "pace".<br /><br />The danger of going too fast, even if you're headed the right way, or to the right destination, is exactly the tension between the different rates of change in the relationship and the rest of your life. Everything else needs to catch up, is the problem. You're in love and setting up a nest, and your family doesn't even know his name (let alone credit history). Or maybe you're now saving your money for a big getaway together, and your friends still think you're going to law school in the fall. Disappointments and tensions proliferate. Things start to fall apart. The rest of your life needs time to get used to this new person, to this new commitment, to the new you. <br /><br />And as we know, it's easier to stretch slowly into place than to tear something and try to mend it.<br /><br />Then there's the uncertainty about directionality.<br /><br /><B>Directionality, or "Hey, quit shifting your weight!"</B><br /><br />Sometimes, in fact, "We're moving too fast!" is an indirect expression of doubt. "I'm not sure I like the direction we're going," is the implied complaint.<br /><br />It doesn't necessarily mean you both don't have the same goal. The problem with moving, is that even when you know where you're going, there's the question of what route to take to get there.<br /><br />Sometimes you just have to pick one. Any one. Consider the direct path from A to B. Now imagine a tree right smack in the middle. It's as good to swerve left as it is to swerve right, but if each person on the bike picks a different way to lean, you end up bruised and broken.<br /><br />So too, in relationships, perhaps. The metaphor strains, but one can imagine a situation where doing anything is better than doing nothing, but where hasty decisions by each party leads to a cancelling out of action. The Gift of the Magi is an extreme example.<br /><br />Taking things slowly gives more time to check in. "I'm about to pawn my watch to buy some combs for you. Please don't sell your hair or buy me any watch-related gifts." This does mean checking in, however. There's no point going slowly if you're still going to make decisions without consultation.<br /><br />Uncertainty is at the heart of another reason why one might beg for a change of pace.<br /><br /><B>Destination, or "I thought we were just having fun!"</B><br /><br />This is the big one, folks. It hardly needs a lot of explaining (or it needs so much explanation that this blog won't be nearly enough). If you think you may want to get off the ride before you end up somewhere you don't want to be, you're going to ask to slow down, so that when you fling yourself off, you only have to duck and roll for a short while. Also, the walk back is shorter.<br /><br />Photo: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/497312470/">Speed Limit What???</a> by Joe ShlabotnikUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-86214204080131256152008-07-24T10:13:00.000-07:002008-07-24T11:06:29.153-07:00Learning from Las Vegas<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yPsBxBa66DE58GQuVn4-75zqq2T_jExkuCO-bBKEBC21oFJg-EbvdqMx9XYoKDp9odC8D5Jh4T5oT1BaEUUIONjnpR94VA8THdiDRa_l02zGvubGPHjfB816a0qzmc9xVch7vQxyq_k/s1600-h/bellagio_hotel_and_casino_las_vegas_nv.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yPsBxBa66DE58GQuVn4-75zqq2T_jExkuCO-bBKEBC21oFJg-EbvdqMx9XYoKDp9odC8D5Jh4T5oT1BaEUUIONjnpR94VA8THdiDRa_l02zGvubGPHjfB816a0qzmc9xVch7vQxyq_k/s400/bellagio_hotel_and_casino_las_vegas_nv.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226643554941954082" /></a><br />We skipped seeing Batman last night and instead rented "21." Its based on the true story of a team of MIT mathematicians who develop a system to count cards and signal hot decks at blackjack tables. Our protagonist joins the group reluctantly, saying, its only until he earns the $300k its gonna take to fund his way through Harvard medical school. He gets greedy, loses everything, but in the end, ends up using the story of his experience to win the prestigious Robinson Scholarship that ultimately grants him the free ride to Harvard.<br /><br />The subplot finds Cole Williams (Lawrence Fishburn) as the casino pitboss whose job is to rid the Riviera casino of its card counters. His career is on the verge of obsolescence as more and more casinos are opting for that camera that uses face recognition imagery to identify known card cheaters. The pitboss, looking to secure a pension that his job does not offer, makes a deal with our hip protagonist in which he receives $200,000 and more importantly, Mickey (Kevin Spacey), whom, many moons ago, made a killing counting cards on the day Cole took off and therefore costing our pitboss his job at the MGM. Cole has held the grudge nearly a lifetime and our finale involves the day of reckoning for Mickey.<br /><br />Mickey: the MIT professor who organized his most gifted students into a squad capable of bringing down any house in Vegas; the terse genius who used his talents for personal gain; the academic turned entrepreneur. <br /><br />"21" tells an interesting story of how the working class teams up with a subcultural group of young urban professionals in order to beat the system. But the system isnt blackjack, its academia and the seemingly inescapable fact that it functions today without apology as a corporation aimed strictly at knowledge that steamrolls quick and exorbitant amounts of money. Its not Vegas that lacks a soul, its your campus. And it becomes fun to ask why one would set out to 'beat a system' they ultimately wish to join. We'll see our rebel protagonist in class on monday.<br /><br />Despite this cynical social commentary on the Ivy League, 21 taps deep into neoliberal daydreams as the institution happily grants our storyteller his scholarship and the brilliant young mathematician grants, in turn, our worker his pension. There's always someone somewhere making the handout, this film would like us to believe. But is that a hand one should be betting on?mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-33481490528640890422008-07-23T17:15:00.000-07:002008-07-23T17:23:17.388-07:00Virtuously Normal<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwQ7Gry2m9H6LaG95H7NbO7fVbthfdnY0lTZMKyx3SvUlhhKbmO5JjWsp0bRUw8SJSdFK8njhna3Z9zenXob60_ogAku1jI_kvcmBvq4bndSAtVjhTGObHl0qpMoQRiKqsqObWNRmowTg/s1600-h/328229357_d782165918.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwQ7Gry2m9H6LaG95H7NbO7fVbthfdnY0lTZMKyx3SvUlhhKbmO5JjWsp0bRUw8SJSdFK8njhna3Z9zenXob60_ogAku1jI_kvcmBvq4bndSAtVjhTGObHl0qpMoQRiKqsqObWNRmowTg/s320/328229357_d782165918.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226369272752948306" /></a><br /><br /><em>One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.</em>- Zarathustra, as portrayed by Nietzsche.<br /><br />If you picked one virtue to live your life by, which would it be? Often it seems that the single virtue adored by many Americans is to be average, to be "normal", to be just like you. I'm Okay, You're Okay.<br /><br />I think my virtue would be Hospitality.<br /><br />Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginieland/328229357/">Giotto : Saint François prêche aux oiseaux , XIIIè s.</a> by ginieland.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-36781904917519075362008-07-23T12:13:00.000-07:002008-07-23T12:31:44.089-07:00Drive, gamble, and dieJason wanted to go to a casino so we found one online: Lucky Chances. Its in Colma, just outside South San Francisco. I have to say I was impressed by the nonchalance of the urban planning of this city: entire blocks of car dealerships lined one after the other, then an enormous cemetery called Cypress Gardens, and then across the street, Lucky Chances casino. "Drive, gamble, or die," suggested Colma. <br /><br />Inside a hundred card tables are assymetrically dispersed around a huge warehouse the size of Costco. Twelve people to a table with their money stacked into colored chips. A dry-erase board shows the long list of names waiting to join a table. We were there 20 minutes before being seated. Mind you, this was a Tuesday night around 7:30.<br /><br />Most were still in their work uniforms: a nurse, a plumber, a maintenance man, an auto-mechanic. They held their cards like a grudge against the world. Kings and queens facing knaves and dreams. In Colma things are unabashedly clear. By 8:30, Jason lost $50 to the Texas hold'em table; we walked out just in time to catch the pink sunset on Cypress Gardens.mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-83990428591369258602008-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:002008-07-22T16:35:23.294-07:00Garlic is as good as 10 mothersThe 30th annual <a href="http://gilroygarlicfestival.com">Gilroy Garlic Festival</a> is this weekend and im not missing it for anything. Although it will always be second in my eyes to the Castroville Artichoke festival. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Whether you are a first-time visitor or a “seasoned” veteran, the Gilroy Garlic Festival is always a fun and fragrant experience. Over 3 million honored guests have made the pilgrimage. Please join us in celebrating this palate-pleasing herb at the 30th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, July 25-27. Always the last full weekend in July!</span>mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-88779133691885106962008-07-21T11:12:00.000-07:002008-07-21T11:22:46.197-07:00Love AbidesA week has passed in silence on entre but lets flip the record over now. The ends where it begins. An enormous thank you to all of those who kept me afloat this week when drowning seemed almost certain: Monica, Ming, Mike, Mom, my brother. I feel strangely capable today and its got everything to do with you all. A book was handed to me early last week, Hanif Kureishi's <span style="font-style:italic;">Intimacy</span>. I devoured it whole and I've over 10 million words to say about it to anyone whose read it, or not. But let's be brief and ease into it. All of us, everyone close to me, we are much better at promiscuity than we are at "families," but lets celebrate and raise glasses to this, rather than play their smug game of assuming thats the only way to live. And Kureishi writes this:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent--no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist.</span>mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4542596256145720681.post-46385139001557192012008-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:002008-07-15T13:33:44.325-07:00Support the UCSF StrikeHere is a post from <a href="http://http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/com/755395673.html">Craigslist</a> made by the striking workers outside UCSF that will be there until Friday and would like your support:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />AFSCME employees of the University Of California state wide (ucsf in San Francicco) has gone on strike. We trying to get a contract. We have been without a contract for over 7 months. IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE SCABS THAT CROSSED OUR LINE TODAY, then stay home Tuesday. Don't cross our line please. The job you save might be your own. We are not over paid goverment workers. Over 90% of the service works statewide at uc get some kind of goverment help. While they build and build big new big buildings and the managment gives themselves more and more money. We get the shaft. HELP US DON'T CROSS THE LINE. CALL UC TELL THEM TO SETTLE WITH US.<br />Thank you a worker.</span>mordentihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09211697026410085072noreply@blogger.com0