Cronaca di un futuro già passato.

Quando si studiava filosofia nelle scuole.

Imagine that you are having your walk in a books’ graveyard. There are moments when you leaf through the pages of a book perceiving an aftertaste sealed within the frame of the page. In this sunny day spent among the dusts of shelves, you run into a chapter, whose title ran something like “Quando si studiava filosofia nelle scuole” or maybe “Cronaca di un futuro già passato.” It goes without saying that you do not speak Italian, but have heard of it, and used even some words sometimes on rare occasions, in any case, you understand immediately that those lines has been written in Italian.

You had spent really a bad day yesterday, worried for nothing and everything, how it happens in autumn to some, and to you always during this time of the year, when the Christmas Holidays are approaching and you are wasted between moments, falling in the scar between the years. There is no reason for you to hurry up. On some level of your unconscious you had deliberately decided to make of this day a sort of threshold night, to open the door and pass through, if it is the case. There is a chair next to the window. The sky is white as ever. So you sit and try to decode the message on the paper. Study, philosophy, chronic, future. It might mean everything. You did not see any dictionary apart from the Latin-Italian, so you decide to grasp it, just because a dictionary is better than nothing. Having found the word “quando” you read: “cum, ubi, ut.” There are many other words, but these are the only conjunctions. Neither of those words suggest anything to you. “Scuola” brings you instead to “ludus, schola” and this makes you immediately realize that “scuola” must mean “school.” These are all the info you could get, half an hour is already gone, removed between the names on the dictionary and thoughts hanging like fake curtains between you and the window. Gray-green meadows outside.

“Quando si studiava filosofia nelle scuole” – you mumble by yourself and not even the space takes note of your saying. The page appears fragile and mute at once, like the sound through your throat, so you take off your glass and read loud again, as if you were able to read Italian: “Quando” – Maybe it’s not a perfect Italian pronunciation but it works quite fine, it sounds good, you wonder what it means. “Quando” – you continue – “si studiava” – you breathe and wait, like if some sense might fall on you at any moment – “filosofia” – you say and it sounds English – “nelle scuole.” You must have said the last word like one could talk a old shoe. It does not make any sense.

It’s six, time of returning, displacing moment. The sky is opaque white, pale like a thought not yet ultimate. Your steps are the only noise in the room, all the others are flattened down by the window – it seems to you.

You have never studied philosophy, but you have often heard about it. One could say that you are simply not confident with philosophy. There are things you learned and others you never did, hard to say why, I guess it just happens. Like playing the piano. Have I ever learned? It never happened, I do not know exactly why, just because I have never had a sister or a grandmother who would play it, or some reason as meaningless. I played basketball instead, exactly because my sister would play, and before her, the Americans had come with chocolates and basketballs which they left in my hometown as a forgotten game or an uncanny footprint, as you prefer. It depends on when and where, “why” does not matter really. What? The way things take. I have always been scared of someone asking me “why?” Reasons and justifications are so close sometimes, and who asked me “why” often wanted to give me or deny some authorization, which I had never asked for. Why wants a lie. I’m much braver with silence.

I studied philosophy in school, though. In August, at the end of August, you discover your new books, not books like any other, but the Books, the one which divide knowledge in subjects, and subjects divide the year in months, exams, Monday to Saturday, and the Sundays apart. These Books, in the beginning enigmatic, would become more and more familiar during the year, till a point when you could have found your book next to the bed in the dark just touching the consistence of the paper. I got my first Book of Philosophy when I entered my eleventh class, it would talk of the Pre-Socratics and Plato and most of it was about Greek thinkers. The cover was green, a shade of pale, which did not change either in the twelfth on in the last class, while the face on it did, but I wouldn’t be able to say how it exactly transformed the cover, or to whom the faces belonged. They must have been philosophers, whatever that means.

I knew that I would have studied philosophy, a bit the way I knew that you learn mathematics and Italian in the school. Religion had always been a suspicious subject, you would never know if you had to study it or could have done without, in any case it was not important, you would never repeat the year because of Religion, everybody knew it. Philosophy was something different, not as important as mathematics, but still a serious subject.

And what was it all about? Is it easy to image a world where one studies philosophy in the school and one world where one does not? The world where one does not study philosophy must struggle quite a lot to imagine the other one, I suspect. One could envision something like: learning science fiction as a compulsory subject in the school. It would make sense, but philosophy is not exactly like science fiction, because it aimed at truth, most of the time. And science fiction is not clearly about truth, most of the time. Or you could think of logic, instrumental thinking, training of rational thought, and it makes sense to waste time with it. But most of the philosophers were talking of something else, most of the time. They were not so concerned with training or logic, most of the time. You still do not have an answer to what it must be like, to study philosophy in the school, and why.

Are there still philosophers nowadays? What do they do? What did they do when they existed? Why had one to study them in the school? Why?

You might sit and wonder, glancing at the window, where the vapor retreats against the sky. The meadows won’t bring you far. Why. You mumble stumbling against your thought, like a slippery of the eyelid to the ceiling. You see dust falling like snowflakes trembling around the lamp. They are not butterflies, are they? They help your thought around. A bee entered the room, God knows from where. You move toward the table, but your thought falls up once again. “Why?” You say to yourselves. You don’t remember.

You might start crying and screaming “why” in the middle of the room now – yes, that is something you can do – and, as it has been said – it would fit well with your personality, but would a cream colored page written in Italian answer to you? Why was it left to you? Why does not it talk English? Only occasional thoughts, like sleeping around in unknown beds, there is not much more than that, which could answer to that “why?”

This generation has never ceased to beckon “whys” to the previous. It’s a “why” which does not have much to do with anything, it returns from nowhere coming from nowhere, this precise spot. Being born.

I am e generation older, having my grandmother died, so I should give in at least one of my “whys.” Were the Books meant to pacify? Can you tell me what you understood? All sounds still too familiar to me.
You read, it’s in Livorno, 1983.

7 novembre e uno sputo

Mia nonna parlava un italiano neutro, senza dialetto, senza ombra d’accento. Tracciarne le origini nel cognome così tanto esplicito sarebbe stata un’arte da cherubini, forse adesso lo è. Niente d’angelico, per l’amor di Dio, e difficilmente Un Dio poteva aver più bastardo San Pietro che lei. Certo, una di quelle persone che ti domandi, che Spalle larghe, che monti ci deve avere il Dio Olimpico. Ogni Domenica in Chiesa, a dispetto delle stagioni, ed ogni giorno il Quotidiano, a dispetto dei giorni. Ha arrampicato scale con un equilibrio sempre più vano, e del polpaccio poco a poco è rimasta sola l’ostinazione. La memoria non tollerava più tanto, negli ultimi anni della brutta mano di carte Nostro Signore ci ha dato. Mi domandavo come sarebbe morta, ed anche se il Golgota non ha tremato, come Microsoft Word invece lascia friggere sopra una linea rossa, soffiava il vento e s’addensavano le nubi sopra all’Ospedale di Livorno, e neppure la faccia iscritta di Mussolini poteva lasciare l’intemperie sul liberty del lungomare. Mio cugino ha attraversato il grigiore su una fragile bicicletta, e posso vedere le mura bianche e solide dell’ospedale sempre vuoto. Come è vuoto il confino. Come sono vuote le tracce d’aereo, e i cieli. Che mia nonna potesse dissolversi, e distendersi, questi sì che sono miracoli. Ancora mi sorprendo a pensare come possa guarire, invece che non c’è più, per poter guarire. Una febbre è svanita, una febbre durata. Un rantolo di tosse, una storia già esperita. “Ti dico tanto la verità, vorrei riportarla a casa.” Fra poche parole. Non poteva finire che in più belle parole, e spero mia mamma lo sappia.

Mia nonna, avresti potuto evincere a fatica, è nata a La Spezia, ma aveva le mani colore del treno, almeno per me. Colore del treno nell’inverno, quando sarebbe arrivata ed avrei vinto nel vederla per prima, strappata da Milano. Non c’era altro da sapere: niente di sua madre, o quasi, ma un passato infranto con un sorriso per mia sorella, quando forse è nata anche la nonna che ho conosciuto. Il colore gentile degli occhi, nascosto. Occhi così grandi che rimangono dove sono, presenti e nascosti, di poche parole. Indosso una vestaglia arancione rossa, per tanti anni. I Treni appartenevano a lei, come l’inverno, come certi segreti naturali.

E mia nonna non c’è più. Ci ha lasciato. Come la migliore pietra, non poteva reggere per eterno. Mi ha voluto bene, fra le poche o tante certezze, questa è una. Le sarebbe piaciuta: una pianta, il caffè, il colore verde. Non le piaceva: Berlusconi, la sinistra, vestiti non per bene, ma insomma tutto quello che non era per bene. E difatti la mia più consueta apostrofe era: “Vergogna!” Chissà se a La Spezia hanno tutti gli occhi da mare esacerbato.

Le pentole della cucina sono un arsenale da guerra, e le previsioni del tempo erano la sua prerogativa. Gli ombrelli, una questione sua. Sarebbe arrivata la mattina in bicicletta per competere col giornale di mio padre, è domenica. “Signora,” sarebbe stato a coda bassa e poi a spartirsi il televisore e le parole incrociate. Le ruote della bicicletta ventilate da una rete di fili elasticizzati, e poi l’estate la villa Fabbricotti dove i primi fili della memoria cominciarono a perdersi fra le palme e l’erba. L’estate il mare, Acquaviva, e Pancaldi nel pomeriggio, dove sarei arrivata puntuale per il gelato o il ghiacciolo (“macché ghiacciolo, è acqua!”) in una delle mie scorribande. Prova tu a spiegarglielo che voglio fare il bagno dopo.

Ci scriveranno data di nascita e data di morte, bravi stupidi. Mia nonna non è nata il dodici di Maggio. È nata ai tempi quando ancora s’aspettavano le navi e le bombe cadevano vicino, e mi dispiace che la Carta d’Identità dello Stato Italiano c’abbia cannato tanto a lungo.

(La mia del resto è in Comic).

1+1=

=Stolen Words

Poems by Mz. Zaicik,

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_15df3g42dc

Oh my God!

I cannot believe it!

You are so....

so........

so - - - - - - so.................. polutropos!


What does it mean?
Here for dictionary source:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_14gkn9qjd8

Question a., from a-d of the application to the EGS

a. State how you are prepared to successfully complete a program designed for students stimulated by ideas and not afraid to think for themselves.no chance no way this question looks weird and it’s even the first i should presume there won’t ever be a better candidate than me. is it a serious question. to be honest i like it. i realized only now writing that it’s in english, your mother tongue, i’m talking to the computer, don’t worry, nothing personal is going on between you and me. or maybe not. maybe it’s a trick. this question is a trick if i’m already writing in a language none has mentioned but i understood so it must be natural and this is the way it is. but i’m italian, you, there, listening to me, understood? verstanden hast du? i’m italian. so… what’s the freedom you are giving me? what does it look like? schablone oder kuriosum. oh, nothing important, i can write in English you see, it’s just that i would have felt much more comfortable talking italian. but it’s fine, don’t worry. you are not worried. great. well, i am supposed to articulate and detail my answer. my pleasure. i hope that you are paid quite well because it’s gonna take time, my reply. and my English is also quite crappy so you will need even more time than you supposed giving a look at the paper (is it printed? or are you just looking quite bored and annoyed at the screen?). oh, i would like to know. it’s a rare occasion, this, for me. i’ve got your time in my hands and god knows if i’m not going to waste it. fuck. no, i should not have written “fuck”. i don’t want to give you any legitimation to interrupt the reading. because, believe it or not, am going to write of philosophy in those pages, those, those far away after you, a sea, a sea eating you up into them. i know, i am sure one has to run other more important and other more pleasant businesses than reading me, and an expert like you can judge after two lines if the text is worthy of something or not, and i can tell you now that no, this is not the text you are going to consider good, you might end up feeling a bit sympathetic, if you do not belong to the jealous sort of people who cannot cannot really admit it, but, no, i can tell you, trust me, you are not going to consider it good. but, ehi, this is important, i do not care at all about your judgment, i will feel satisfied if only i will have fucking wasted time in which you might instead have been fucking, while no, sorry, you are here reading this shit. i want to burn your time, give it to the pigs, darlo ai maiali, one says in my mother tongue, because you, people like you sitting on a chair behind a big desk have violently disposed of mine..my own during my last thirty thirty-one years. i wonder who you are. surely not the one who chose the title i am replying to now, or at least i am supposed to. i wonder if you are obliged to read the entire paper or are allowed only to scan it. (leaf through, durchblättern, sfogliare… nice words which will disappear with the books? who knows) i know for sure that as long as i will entertain you talking about your life and my own speculations on your life, as long as i can guess at least something about it, you will keep reading, and that’s my aim. should one say “end” in English? by the way, is it English, your first language? are you not worried that my only worry is that you won’t accomplish your task, you won’t do what you are supposed to do, you won’t fulfill your duty. i am sure you wouldn’t if i were not here writing this rubbish that yet is about you. actually i am already bored. i despair there’s a way to keep you interested and to let you accomplish your task. can i help you somehow? should i write something more specific or be more detailed just to keep company to you during this hard mission? i’m going to tell you why i trust you so little, without knowing you, but before i hope you agree if i take a roundabout for a few minutes, just a few lines. After all everywhere people are getting used to turnabouts, there’s the european union which is giving founding for every turn-about, so that traffic lights are disappearing as during epidemics. And god knows what will happen to the kantian (not cunt, kant-ian, like canto… sing-ing) imperative when none in the world will be able any longer to give the example: dovere per il dovere, even if there are no cars the light is red and therefore you don’t cross the road. i’m getting lost with these turnabouts. oh, i just meant to refer an episode of my childhood. we were planning at school the gita (gita is the annual class excursion, it can take one day but also a week, it depends on the economical kindness of the school): paris, london, barcelona, pisa (twenty minutes from our city… quite convenient…), then, then, the teacher just stopped the screams (of course democratic resolution needed fire spirits) and said: “guys… we can just get on the coach and turn around Piazza della Repubblica for three days… you are gonna be happy so.” that’s it, that’s what i’m trying to do with you, driving you around, but we’ll finally get away. yes. even if you don’t trust me, am telling you that it will be worthy, this short trip of lines, it will result having been worthy of something. no ambitions, no, clearly, it won’t be anything special, nothing good, i’ve already told you, but not so bad as you never supposed. so, where are you? next to me, aren’t you? but it’s nothing original. i’ve already read a few things like this, texts or books (more ambitious) played with this fashion of involving the reader in a direct way, aggressive. well, I am not going to mention the don Chisciotte, or the tradition of homage and dedications, because, even if after all any presumption of knowing something about the reader seems on some level of reception violent, there’s some sort of addressing that’s violent indeed. a month or two ago i was reading a relatively new book where the author was addressing you reader, where you were a woman that, for a long part of the book, one just suspected the author wanted to fuck. but you see, even so there was a “you reader” and a “one reader”, the “you” and the “one”. and i love the one even if i disdain you. but i’m giving you the chance to be the one i love, the reader. both of us know that you don’t feel totally addressed by my words, there’s always some slight slip of the meaning from a word to your face. you know that i cannot know. as a maniac i’m not any good. the naked one in this dialogue is me, the weak one, the one who is expressing, while you are deliberating in incognito, smile, scratch you elbow, yawn. Yawning is empathetic, talking about it you might be really yawning now. but, you see, more than some tricks, there’s not much in my power. The colours of your eyes, i have no idea about the colours of your eyes. my problem has always been the presupposition by the reader that the colours of his eyes had no relevance in my text. the readers always said that my texts were complicated. so, i am satisfying you now, there’s fucking nothing complicated in this text. i guess also my disappointment and rage are quite visible and clear. rage, clear. i spelled it right, i wrote it down. i think that makes it clear. but i will be even more clear. you know what really upset me? the title that has been chosen as letter “a”: a. State how you are prepared to successfully complete a program designed for students stimulated by ideas and not afraid to think for themselves. State what? “stimulated by ideas”. “not afraid to think for themselves”. fuck off, no, seriously, fuck off. I’m giving you what i’ve been supposed to give since i went to school till now, something simple, clear and articulated. Oh. Just give me time and I will argument, motivate each single letter, each single word. I am looking forward. Do you want me to think a bit more for myself? What’s a fucking “myself”? If you ever thought about that crossed sentence to which i am supposed to reply, maybe you would realize why i made my only aim to throw in the rubbish handfuls and handfuls of your already wasted time. because if you looked at it objectively, well, since you must be an übermensch or übersomeone, if you do look at it objectively… No. Stop. I’m wasting words. I do not know if I have got any chance that you’ll ever want to pay a bit of attention to what I’m saying. Will you? ehi. Will you? It’s your son writing. Will you? Your dad. Will you? I fucked your mother ten years ago. Will you? I’m praying. Will you pay a bit of attention to me? To me and to the colours of your eyes? Could you look at the sentence I’m supposed to reply? Can you tell me what I should do? Should I pretend that there is some form of sense in that sentence? There is not. It’s rubbish. It’s clearly rubbish. Do you want me to motivate to you why it’s rubbish? I’m trying. And it’s a paradox. I’m trying to render you back what’s the context of that sentence, I’m contextualizing it. What drove me mad is the fact that your bloody program designed for students stimulated by ideas and not afraid to think for themselves is taking away the last sand, the last beach, the last tent, the last refuge for him who’s really condemned to think for himself. There’s plenty of people condemned to think for themselves. And they are not the ones who either successfully complete a program for students stimulated by ideas and not afraid to think for themselves or even enter the program. because you won’t understand them. you won’t have time to read over the third line. because you will get bored and you are fucking paid how much for what you are doing. so, really, what do you have to do with me? unluckily i have to do something with you, but do not tease me, please, do not offend me, please. don’t write fucking titles like that. both of us know that i will have to accept a compromise if i want to apply, and so… i won’t, even if so far, in a way, i’m doing it, i won’t, and i am telling you bye-bye now, because, now, my dear reader, i will forget and forgive you, and i will dance, and i do not care at all if you won’t be able to follow me and learn the steps, learning is what i am-loving

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to read the final part, click here:you uh....

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_13hrdg35f6

The Queer Case of a Mermaid

The queer case of a Mermaid tells us of an amazing animal which – so goes the story – and the chronicle confirms – got lost and was seen swimming in the flat waves of the Lake Michigan; the lake: it never was so vast to let the flashing sparkles of its eyes disappear on the horizon. Some on the beach look towards the arising sun, and they think: it is the sea. It is because of this fact that happens every now and then: the fact that there are people who think it is the sea and there are people who have known on the map: it is a lake – it is because of this confusion that other confusions are engendered, like the one I am telling you about.But let us start from the beginning, that, like every beginning, starts from the springs. In the earth of the Americas, where they are knotted together by the pressure of both the oceans on the thin waist, where one should go as soon as he runs out of matches and still wants to make a fire – because the temperature is so high there! – there, from the burning soil is where the ants come from, each with a secret and a button, some with a mouth of butter, and moths come from there and mosquitoes and flies, because there the temperature is so high that it is the right place to cast them, they melt, merge and smelt and then they are born. There are steps of fire there. And there is also a huge pond – some say – but the steam is so thick and the smell so pregnant that neither eyes nor noses ever dared to sound how big, how deep the waters might have ever been.It is from this pond, in the centre of the Americas, where the ground is so narrow that only jumping on the ants’ heads one could pass from South to North and vice versa, in this space of the world where the oceans are almost to win over the continents and break apart the Americas and join together, a crocodile collected his bunch of things and decided to leave. This is a place where people and animals are born and get created – as you prefer – but it is not a place that one can just leave. One was born here and then goes into the world like every ant does and all the other animals, but it is all another matter if an animal, once upon a time, a crocodile, decided to leave in the morning and that is all. There was the thought of him, maybe. Maybe only his tail, maybe the teeth. Maybe there was already something of him, a part of his, or maybe nothing at all, who knows, but the fact is – and that is the story and what trouble – that that day in the morning the crocodile got ready and left.The other animals could well have screamed aloud and long, but hardly he would have heard them despairing after him, he was so perplexed and the forest soft, the moon was pending cream in a light sky, the sun hard and stony, the sky was getting blue. How, how could he have heard them searching for him? He would not want to leave. He was walking along the torrent, and swimming like soap on the splashing waters. Looking at his tail he was wondering if it was as green as the smooth pebbles, and got close to flowers and starrred enchanted and smiled. Flowers, seeing him getting near their petals, near their roots, afraid and scared more than the devil who knows what he did, closed up into their buds, which disguised bright colors and faded down in the mud. Worms folded the leaves as soon as they saw him passing by and disappeared into them, but the crocodile just continued going with the current and happily laughed to every fish and eel he met on the way. Some fishes lost their bones, others the flippers, the luckiest ones just got so scared they spit out and puked the hooks they had in their bellies since long. The crocodile smiled back to all these expressions – he thought – of great joy. And if by chance a red fish in the creek had not become green, or an eel not shortened to the length of half an inch and a blueberry yet, then, seeing his teeth ranging from white pearl on the left to blue black on the right and from right to left from knives-long to pin-acuity stunned every fish would sigh and be swallowed numb into its own last breath. The crocodile wondered why they would go to sleep so abruptly and after such celebrations and although welcoming, none was eventually willing to talk to him. He was curious, had many questions but was not patient enough to stop anywhere. Voices were still crying after him, but he was so perplexed and the forest soft.

....................................................

(To continue click on the link. Hug)

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_10c9mtpkgv

All of it: http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddgv5zhn_0c95kjwg5

The Application of Page Pavlov

Application to the EGS by Page Pavlov

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_116rn9pmgb

A state within a state

A review of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine

‘Everything you never wanted to know but to enter the present century, asked…’

The movement of history unfolds unmistakably between the pages, in fact shocking, of the Shock Doctrine. The shock that comes from reading it, is not the shock ‘treatment’ developed with CIA funding that is documented in this fearless work. Rather, it is the shock of staring in the face of your own present as it unfolds in the movement of history and finding yourself indelibly marked.

Perhaps in 2009 the book, now almost 3 years old, is not in need of another review after being on the New York Times Bestseller and while of baby-age already translated into 27 languages. And yet, I couldn’t help myself: it’s significance as for me personally, so for Americans and for the global community is so great, as Rachel Maddow signals when singling it out as the most important work to come out from American publishing in years. In saying the global community, I do not hint at any homogenizing cultural gesture, but rather the pregnant fact of the each-day-increasing economic and otherwise interwoven state of the world, which is ours.

There is historicism and then there is history, as Walter Benjamin never tired of delving into; there are stories of the select few, which, no matter how many protests they themselves make, are withering relics always already sold on selling boredom and hence, anti-history to generations of minds. Then there is history in itself, writhing alive and burning, not only the mind, but the very selfhood of the people part of whom they (yes, they, as plurality of living history) always are.

Naomi Klein’s work is not only an integral part of the latter, and as such living and necessary for survival history must, it not only tells in painstaking and breathlessly courageous detail our history, it also points the ways ahead, warning, arming and showing us an already existing direction in which, as a people, we can rebuild a different path.

Undoubtedly, we should know more than the names of the countries where United States has in the last half century supported violent upheaval. But this explosive current history, although discussed and protested, is often so overwhelming for increasingly disempowered global citizens, themselves often rootless, it can be difficult to make sense of. This is precisely the function of the brazen lies told by too many politicians and/as corporate profiteers. If we know our history, we must do everything to change its course.

Argentina, Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua and Uruguay

to mention those discussed in the Shock Doctrine. The trajectory here is one torture, sponsored not only by the CIA, but other giants of the U.S. government and for-profits, whose peculiar feature is the overcoming of distinctions between physical, economic and psychological torture, that never leaves out American citizens.

I admit that I am the kind of sometimes student, part-time instructor, activist and writer that cannot bear the news to such an extent that despite my piecemeal academic knowledge, I grossly lack being comprehensively informed about the state of the world today, and yesterday, not to mention (even if I dream) the future. I fear irremeably and not always consciously that knowing too much (and too little) about the problems will paralyze instead of aiding my ability to respond. I’ll save the suspicious and too obvious comments about the growing numbers of people who feel precisely this way, despite levels of education. Klein’s work is a wake-up call, specifically for this tentative us, including so many artists and poets.

Her writing presents the cold-bloodedness of our too recent historic events in a way one can comprehend, while not being able to deny, and then again from which we can begin to act, instead of simple reeling in shame and shock. This is perhaps the most significant factor, which breaks the very chains they are designed to create: shock – an “accidental by-product” of the hapless state of the world today, but the intended effect of the dominant contemporary politico-economic doctrine, as Klein shows.

The metaphor here, is not a metaphor at all, it is rather a direct, documented relation of metonymic implementation. From its very birth in the mental hospital’s shock lab of Doctor Ewen Cameron – in Montreal, funded by the CIA — to its openly documented use in Iraq, shock treatment has been used as a new torture technique.

Along the way, we get a glimpse, also via the self-description and understanding of the doers, of these tactics, developed not from a similar but the same origin, into economic policy measures from Moscow to New Orleans designed to shock people into regression: disorienting and debilitating, so that our land and what little wealth we might have can be stolen by the super rich. No matter the repetitions or the denials, human beings cannot avoid being struck by the unacceptability of torture for profit. And yet, in the disaster capitalism complex, Klein’s apt phrase for contemporary global corporatism, there is more than just insult added to injury.

The victims are required to pay for their torture.[1]

There is an intentionality in the use of torture, unabashedly disregarding laws, directly for profit by the American government, as well as American and international corporations, the marriage of which is documented here by Klein, that is enough not only to indict and condemn corporatism once and for all, but to chill the blood of any human being able to think through the events around them. Despite evidence to the contrary, Americans have a conscience.

Klein combs through the hurricanes and wars of unthinkably plain gruesome truths, and let’s numbers and facts tell a story that’s as inciting to think through as it is simple.[2]

“A 2007 study calculated that the number of terrorist attacks since the start of the Iraq war had increased sevenfold” (539). This is no surprise when “the Red Cross has said that U.S. military officials have admitted that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the detentions in Iraq were ‘mistakes’” (468).

When the war began, I helped plan the biggest protest in my small college town they’d seen in 18 years, and after the bombs started dropping, hopeless, guilty and miserable, I gave up paying attention. I felt implicated, guilty. Klein’s sobering break down of the systematicity of exploitation revives my ability to pay attention if not pursue the same issues again:

“The Iraqi commandos, originally trained by [U.S. commander James] Steele, were officially working under Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior, which had insisted…that is ‘does not allow any human rights abuses of prisoners….’ But in November 2005, 173 Iraqis were discovered in an Interior Ministry dungeon, some tortured so badly that their skin was falling off, others with drill marks in their skulls and teeth and nails removed…not everyone made it out alive…” (471).

Naturally, we the people, want immunity from the crimes our government and corporations profit from. (I went as far as Berlin.) And despite the mounting crimes, somehow we’re different?

“A right-wing journal in the U.S. pronounced Blackwater ‘al Queda for the good guys.’…Wherever the disaster capitalism complex has landed, it has produced a proliferation or armed groupings outside the state. That is hardly a surprise: when countries are rebuilt by the people who don’t believe in governments, the states they build are invariably weak, creating a market for alternative security forces, whether Hezbollah, Blackwater, the Mahdi Army or the gang down the street in New Orleans…(90 percent of Blackwater’s revenues come from state contracts.)” And that state is ours. “The actual state, meanwhile, has lost the ability to perform its core functions without the help of contractors…When Katrina hit, FEMA had to hire a contractor to award contracts to contractors” (527). This is not the end of the problem but just the beginning, the most damning effect of emergency services privatization, in the U.S. as around the world, is that it just does not do its job in providing services to those most in need, as Klein documents throughout the book.

The account in these pages traces the violent birth of disaster capitalism, that is the contemporary state of corporatism feeding on violence, nature and man-made alike. Unlike “shock treatment,” our current history is chilling to the mind and boiling to the blood at once. Klein, at first perhaps surprisingly, asserts that some disasters such as 9/11 are not planned by insiders, because they have no need. The current path we have been steered onto is one that generates disasters without necessary planning by those who profit from it, no conspiracy required.[3] Profiteering from misery seems to have no bounds, while alongside its scale, a private state arises that, however ignorantly, looks more and more as a case of life imitating Orwellian art (forgive the now necessary cliché.)

“The emergence of this parallel privatized infrastructure reaches far beyond policing. When the contractor infrastructure build up during the Bush years is looked at as a whole, what is seen is a fully articulated state-within-a-state that is as muscular and capable as the actual state is frail and feeble. This corporate shadow state has been built almost exclusively with public resources…Yet the vast infrastructure is all privately owned and controlled. The citizens who have funded it have absolutely no claim to this parallel economy or its resources” (527).

Klein would never stop here; and she does not. Instead, she discusses the successful resistances, small and large that have been mounted by people healing from shock around the world, as it inevitably occurs, perhaps after a few years, perhaps after 30 or more. Some of us however, have no claim to hope. And so, with only the faint wish of spreading the word and thought and…much more I have no right to hope for, I end where we should begin.
“We leave an imprint each time we enter into a history.” W. Benjamin[4]

[1] (All quotations refer to the Shock Doctrine, unless otherwise specified.) After documenting the mass torture of the juntas brought to power in Latin America with U.S. support, in chapter 8, “Crisis works,” Klein sums up several examples:
“The newly liberated country [Argentina] was rigged to detonate, thanks to the planting of a so-called debt bomb. As part of what the outgoing junta had termed a ‘dignified transition’ to democracy, Washington insisted that the new government agree to pay off the debts amassed by the generals. During junta rule, Argentina’s external debt had ballooned from $7.9 billion the year before the coup to $45 billion at the time of the handover—debts owed to the IMF, The World Bank, the U.S. Export-Bank and private banks based in the U.S. It was much the same across the region. In Uruguay, the junta took a debt of half a billion dollars when it seized power and expanded it to $5 billion, a huge load in a country of only 3 million people. In Brazil, the most dramatic case, the generals, who came to power in 1964 promising financial order, managed to take the debt from $3 billion to $103 billion in 1985. By the mid-eighties, several economists had observed that a true hyperinflation crisis simulates the effects of a military war – spreading fear and confusion, creating refugees and causing large loss of life” (196).

[2] Let’s play a game. Guess how much tax payer money one paramilitary corporation, Lockheed Martin, got in the year 2005 alone?
$25 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars, more than the entire legislative branch of government combined (p.537).

[3] Natural disasters are up 430 percent since 1975 (p.539).

[4] The Arcades Project. p. 516

Martinotto, Martino, Giannicolino & friends

In attesa di disegni...
la storia (abbozzata) di above mentioned heroes! Qui:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_8cxg9jzc9

Media Production

E se cliccate qui:
(klick klick)

Vorschalg:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_7d7zc4bhv

: si apre un progetto nuovo nuovo di zecca e pulce...

zaicik jumping in winter in berlin...

...carrots, sellery, potatoes!

Caro, tanto caro Berlusoni

Buongiorno...,
tanto per non dimenticarsi del nostro amato, caro,
tanto Caro, Caro Berlus... prrrr... oni,
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_6hgw6b6c4
(R)apporti benvenuti!

AGAINST NATURAL RELIGIONS, EVOLUTIONISM AND ESCHATHOLOGY:

“Why does one sneeze? Why humans have two legs and two arms? Why being instead of nothing?”

“So that you can analyze it.”

20 minutes and three seconds

"Translati... an... th... Hop... o... languag..."
Only for lazy monkeys:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_4cfdjzpfc

Longer final version:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_5hqdsc82q

Esperanza

Translation and the Hope of Language –
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddq3n9sm_3fm92jhgr

A long time apart from now, or may be not so terribly long, after all, there’s a place. In feeling it resembled a small village, though in truth its inhabitants had given up with any kind of census. They knew, someone somewhere out there knew exactly… In appearance the town resembled something you might see in a smart-aleck post card: a spoof of a picturesque European villa, in contemporary architecture. Does something come to mind? Perhaps the phrase itself rings a bit comic, like healthy fast food. The buildings one sees on the streets beginning to dominate blocks, looking all squares, sharp angles. The inhabited versions, cheap, of all metal and glass sky scrapers, which sport bricks or cement in place of glass, that somehow, anyhow, looks plastic. May be it’s the unnatural bright colors, like in Berlin, or the pale ones in south Italy. One wonders if the colors only take away the relief of obscurity for the eye.

Esperanza. Esperanza. Her name moved around her, this way and that, like a new thing. Walking barefoot, there were only images in her mind. And words, like images, bright and crisp on her tongue. She had no intention to speak them aloud, but sometimes they spoke. People smiled, as they’d always had. Some nicer than others. Those woman’s front teeth, for example. They, themselves, told many stories about victories and lack and riches. The sun shone through in patches, though there were no trees, which Esperanza didn’t really notice, and the rays appeared to her to be playing with her. She chased them. Jumped with the stray cats and dogs and rats and geckos out of the way of the sun only to try to jump into their path the next moment. The words that escaped from her might remind one of butterflies, suddenly flying out of a seemingly closed bud, or birds, moving in a …. from the top of a tree, or a fox coming out of her hole in the middle of winter snow. Neither causal nor accidental, intentional nor directionless, they moved like the visualization of a song across the way. At least, so it felt, without seems, to Esperanza...

Birthday Happy!!

29 giugno 2009

Caro Berlusconi,

Oggi Le scrivo la prima lettera. Come era prima consueto pregare o esprimere un desiderio a nostro signore, prima ed ora ancora ci si lava la mattina le ascelle o i piedi, così, con tanta simile consuetudine comincio oggi a scriverle una lettera al giorno, per un anno intero. Vi saranno contenuti i miei desideri e i miei sogni, un po’ di rabbia e le tante esperienze quotidiane. Come i bambini alle fate, le esprimo per prima cosa i miei tre desideri ed il primo forte forte: vorrei tanto che Lei non muoia prima che questo progetto veda luce. Sarebbe un disastro. Non che aspiri alla Mondadori, che eppure non disdegnerei. Vorrei solo che questo figlio non sia infelice, una raccolta di lettere mai arrivate. Ogni scrittore si deve porre il problema del suo interlocutore, io che scrittrice non sono mi limito col problema del mio destinatario.

Menu: Caprese

Oma to Oma: Summer’s First Song

-- For my tzaitchik to grow, fast annd radiant, and hop up springing!

Come now, naked girl, take your clothes, leaves,
rays, tie them ‘round your waist and neck,
like a good girl.

Come summer now, naked one, strolling ‘bout
the ground like a home emptied of shame,
and all eyes filled with salut
fly to you settling on your bare skin
like one-day butterflies.

Come now, naked summer, give the green
its yellow due and the bees their fuzzy hew
and the fruit their bright luster
so the plants’ stems grow strong and tall
to support the weight of a full harvest.

Come now, summer, naked girl unharmed
strolling unscathed the roads and long days’
nights, greeted just by benevolent cheers,
wrapped only in the the light’s long arms
protected as if by swords unneeded, the rays
melt into braids hanging low-down, south
around the body, tickling just a bit the back and breast.

And no man will say a rude word to your passing,
sweet girl, for the words in his throat
will turn into birds and fearing to chocke
he will throw them up in a funny wordlessness
and each time thence he opens his mouth for
an incompetent insult, his jaws will snap
so hard and tight, they won’t open again for a fortnight.

And moving unabated, your eyes will bless
the dirty and the humble (children), waiting
and calling you with all the muster
a gentle othermother can bestow:
my naked summer!

stanleys

Judd 1

I found Foucault's Preface to Transgression! At the following:

http://books.google.de/books?id=OMRWM0-gSnMC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=a+preface+to+transgression+foucault&source=bl&ots=-l05Jaw-ds&sig=PT1ZhUKAguVsatwrgqbd0857lN0&hl=en&ei=dlI-SoOBIpKH_Aao57WdAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6

Helllloooo....

Maya! Eliza! Come out come out wherever you are! We tried to email you two days ago Maya but haven't heard back. Then we looked at what we thought was your new email address and well, we're not sure if we're reading it correctly but I sent an email to your old hotmail as well..... WE MISS YOU!

Oh so much has been going on. I am officially out of a job on July 1st. Yep, the economy is tanking and I'll be jobless! I'm secretly really excited. I'm thinking about moving to Costa Rica or maybe South Korea first (they pay really well and I can pay off some of my bills) and then Costa Rica?

How is everything in Germany? I want some more pictures! Of your new place! Of the outside.....GERMANY and my friends!

xoxo

Bike The Drive 2009...just a few pics

Random-ness in Chicago...

Someone lost their teeth downtown (Apr 14, 2009)

Lots & lots of seagulls 

at Belmont Harbor

(May 2009)

I saw these guys at North Ave Beach (May 12, 2009). Wish i had filmed more!  Hahaha

 

Hi Maya and Elisa!!!

Riding my bike at Montrose Harbor.  05-14-2009

Dead lips: lipstick alert for those who wear it

Recently a lipstick brand called 'Red Earth'
Decreased their prices from$67 to $9.90.
It contained lead..
Lead is a chemical which causes cancer.
The lipstick brands that contain lead are:
CHRISTIAN DIOR LANCÔME CLINIQUE Y..S.L ESTEE LAUDER
SHISEIDO

RED EARTH (Lip Gloss)
CHANEL (Lip Conditioner)
MARKET AMERICA-MOTNES LIPSTICK.
The higher the lead content,
The greater the chance of causing cancer.
After doing a test on lipsticks,
It was found that the Y.S.L. LipstickContained the most amount of lead.

Watch out for those lipsticksWhich are supposed to stay longer.
If your lipstick stays longer, it isBecause of the higher content of lead.

Here is the test you can do yourself:

1.. Put some lipstick on your hand.
2.. Use a Gold ring to scratch on the lipstick. n3.. If the lipstick colour changes to black, Then you know the lipstick contains lead.

Please send this information to all your girlfriends,

Wives and female family members.

This information is being circulated at

Walter Reed Army Medical Centre

Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer,

Especially breast cancer

Quanto pesa una parola? A quanto viaggia? Vola o nuota? Cammina? Segue una bussola o va alla ventura? Sa quando arriva o si gira e torna indietro? Balla sulle punte? Affoga o si salva? Capriola capriola capriola. Salta? Di schiena o rischia la faccia? Arriva in cravatta, canotta o si presenta tradotta? Quante dita per prenderla? Non casca dalla punta della lingua? Si trita in un linguaggio? Si specchia sparisce? Un cane l´annusa? Un pesce ci piscia sopra? Il vento la spalma come pane sulle dita? E le briciole del non detto? Rimane nei sogni? Rima? Pesa cosi´ tanto che un capezzolo non la tiene? Cosi´ poco? Lenta scende? Una parola una sola parola? O mille? Dove vanno? Vanno sempre assieme? Si scindono? Fa male? Tornano? Sulla schiena. Schiena? Un orecchio? ß? Un bacio? Quante mani per portare una parola? Quante braccia per trascinare una parola? Quante dita per sollevare una parola? Quante saliva per non dire una parola? Quante ciglia, di parola in parola? Quante parole porta un verso? E d´animale? Le parola d´un poeta sono piu´ leggere? Sono sassi o sono serpi? Sono porte? Non si muovono? Cosa si sa d´una parola solo una desiderata? Dov´e´? Qual e´?

Aaaahhhh.....

Ok, I've been gone. Mexico was amazing. I'm seriously considering moving there for a year. I have loads of pics. I'll try to pick the best ones so as not to be that person whom opens their wallet only to unfold seventy pictures of their dogs and kids. Yea, the pics are all amazing to me but that's cuz I was there. Obviously. Maya, your letter is in the front of my bag and I fully plan on writing back, snail mail style. It's a lost art, and one I truly enjoy. Hope all is well. Sorry didn't make it to your last party Oli, I know, lame. And I hate to admit that all I did was sit on my ass doing nothing. Shame on me. Hope Germany is awesome will post more later.

bike on bike action

this bike reminded me of you...of your old banana yellow variety that you loved so much. i found it while parking mine in the school of the art institute bike parking lot. it was tempting me in my exit. i hope you find another replacement in berlin. and someone to ride with of course! miss you maya much much!

Billions and Billions

No, I do not mean to reference Carl Seagan and his wonderful book on the universe, but yet the hundreds of billions of dollars about to be handed out. Americans are once again being lead by fear. "If we do not do something quick it will be a financial catastrophe!" Finance and the Banking system is not an act of God, were one day there is a hurricane and another clear skies, but is a reflection of choices made by humans. There are architects and think tanks that pull strings to get reactions, there are massive interests and egos at play here. Has there ever truly been a "free market" where supply and demand have respectfully guided value? There is an inherent problem with Capitalism. To capitalize, one must seemingly have something or someone to take advantage of, does this not seem a problem? Also, every developed nation expects there to be a growth of their GDP every quarter. How can this be sustainable? When Ed Bernays figured that if companies were to market towards human kinds subconscious he did us all a massive disservice by ushering in the age of consumerism.

Ok, I just drove 11 hours straight and should get some rest. I have a long day of Kung Fu in the morning...

Be well

Work in progress, intro. part 1

"How must democracy be undemocratic?"
Introduction:
In the best of the possible worlds, there was once upon a time: a democracy. It literally means: government of the people, i.e. people govern. Although none is directly people, many can be one of them. The word to designate that entity which is named “people” in English has got equivalents in other languages: il popolo, le peuple, das Volk, die Leute, el pueblo, Народ… The question about who can be one of the people is not tautological, since there are and have always been exceptions. It is not enough to be one in order to be one of the people, rather there are many criteria of selection, so for example, just to mention those likely to be most relevant: one must belong to one or at most two peoples in order to be one of the people. It goes with it that then there are beings, who do not respect this exclusiveness of belonging, that do not belong to any people. To belong to more than two peoples means not to belong to any of them. So the first demand people require is respect for a principle of exclusiveness. I will not concentrate on the case of double citizenship, the phenomenon which justifies the belonging to two different peoples, and which involves special agreements between nations yet, rather here I will focus only on the one-people-belonging, i.e. people-belonging.
There are adjectives strong enough to become firstly nouns. So for example, there are people who are tall. There are people who are fat. Yet this does not make of them principally “the talls” or “the fats.” But there are people that are gay. There are people who are criminal. There are people who are mad. And this is often enough to make of them “gays,” “criminals” and “madmen.” As there are people who are black, and that makes “blacks” of them. Then there are people who are disabled, and they are “the disabled.” There are blonde [women], and there are “blondes”, and then “brunettes.” The line between a word being mainly an adjective or mainly a noun is weak. But certainly there is a time for every society in which some adjectives become strongly nouns and they stop designating the plurality of the individual in order to determine him or her as one of a people. Nationality determinations belong to such second way of designation. If in many languages the use of capital letters marks a difference, like for example the Italian “francese” and “Francese” (“he is francese” and “he is a Francese”), the English capitalization of the adjective makes it clear that the adjective works as strongly as a noun: “he is French.” Often the adjective has got a noun variant, like “Jewish” and “Jew.” In different historical times and in different places, people decide who, inside themselves, are not belonging to them as people, since these people belong also to another sort of people: for example “the gays,” “the criminals,” “the madmen.” Other nouns to define people are the ones relative to gender, age, skin color and health conditions. Some have already been mentioned. So we have got men and women, a young guy is a youth, for old age instead there is only “elderly people” in English, but we have got “sick” that can easily become: “a patient.” Being drug-addicted, one becomes immediately a drug-addict. Examples are endless.
The difference between meeting a gay and a tall person in the street is the same which lies between determining one as such (as a gay) and qualifying and pluralizing one (as someone that is tall); it is the same difference between chaining someone as one of a people (the gay population: the population of gays), and pluralizing the spectrum of variants one can represent: being tall and short, skinny and beautiful, and beautifully fat. There is a time in which the oscillation between being gay and being a gay is so heavily pounding on the side of the noun that a gay can even be considered belonging to another people (the gays), so not respecting the first criteria for “being one of the people” that is “being one of only one people,” fidelity to the people, and therefore be excluded from people.
There is a time in which the oscillation between being gay and being a gay is so heavily pounding on the side of the noun that a person can be considered to belong to the gays, at the exclusion of being one of the people. So not respecting the first criteria for “being one of the people” that is “being one of only one people,” fidelity to the people, can mean an expulsion from humanity in the sense of intelligibility and human rights.

There are times of alliances, in which prejudices are confined and do not mouth into the most ferocious denial of rights: as it is the case today in many parts of the world, where, to remain with our example: gays cannot get married but at least are not burned with fennel to make the smell of flesh more bearable. These might be considered inter-people alliances (like it is the case with different nations sometimes) between people and the population of gays; they find some sort of arrangement.
The making of nouns came parallel with the making of Americans, and the Christians, and so on. Religious designations are other examples of the strength with which an adjective meant to pluralize ends up determining someone as such. Also children do not vote, and here age comes into play to determine what we see when we look at someone, because there is a big difference between seeing a youth and a young person, between seeing a gay and someone who is gay, there is that above mentioned difference: the same which makes it sound weird “seeing a tall” but common “seeing a gay”.
Then there are mothers, and brothers, players, engineers, prostitutes, husbands, readers. Social relations and jobs, activities and entertainments are other areas for other examples of nouns which determine someone as such. “Driver,” “audience.” Different historical times and different places not only create new words but also determine when an adjective becomes mainly a noun: so one can suppose that “doorkeeper” had not had any meaning before the action of opening the door became routinised in the figure of the one who repetitively does that gesture. The description of an action becomes instituted in the noun which determines the one who acts. A dustman is someone who dusts, and yet there have always been people who dusted. At one point the action of dusting becomes determining in the subject who acts. This might happen because of the specialization of work, or for many thousands of other reasons. In any case an incidence of factors come together to determine whom we see when we see someone. So for example, the way we see a gay in the street, we might also see a dustman. Before there were peasants, now pickers. The one who picked fruit (and “picking” was a pluralizing description of a person’s activity) becomes a fruit-picker. Consequently one might understand that at any moment fruit-pickers and dustmen might be considered belonging to some other sort of people, like workers or the population of the exploited and have not any right to vote any longer. So it might have been the case when there were dukes, barons and peasants.
Then we have mentioned mothers and brothers, we might add children, then we have the swear words like “idiot,” “dickhead,” “bastard,” “coward” and so on. One who is idiotic easily becomes an idiot. As far as familiar or social relations are concerned there are endless numbers of words: “friend,” “neighbor,” “acquaintance”… Following our exampliologic (this word must be used) procedure, we might consider for example the weight of the noun “mother,” which describes the status of someone who had previously already been determined as “a woman,” on the person who is so designated or potentially so designated. Feminist critiques pointed out that “mothers” are people as well, and if they have never been excluded from voting because of their being mothers as such, nonetheless their belonging to the people of the mothers precluded them from social participation. If we consider the noun “child” we immediately realize how intimately it determines the person it designates, so that for example we cannot imagine to substitute it with any other expression, unless we use some redundant formulation like “a really young person.” Children also do not vote. As we meet a gay in the street, in the same way we meet a child.
I did not pretend having written more than a random list of examples; I tried to archive them as best I could, just for the pleasure of reading in them some sort of order, but it does not want to have any pseudo scientific basis: it just aimed to a narrative outline. However, as we read and rethought the obliqueness, prevalence and significance of the multiplicity hidden behind the name of democracy worldwide, we decided to join in expanding the discussion disarticulating “democracy” in all its names, all of them given to what was originally supposed to be democratic with practico-theoretical considerations.
....

A reminder that....Yes We Can!

Today, of course, is the day we observe Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. I think each of us is actively promoting and striving for civil rights in our own manner. Let's remember that nothing is impossible, all is created equally....and that we should love.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.   -1st Corinthians 13:4-7

Video courtesy of Dipdive.com

Excerpt 2

"A queer perspective replies to the question "what is common?" with an answer that appears accidental, extraneous, unessential at first sight: "that they liked one another." Yet the right of expression must be safeguarded much more as the "right to be listened to" than as the "right to talk." If a positive mythical Right can determine the latter, the safekeeping of the former falls into the task of the Human Rights. Therefore their task is essentially revolutionary. Therefore the imprescriptible right to be listened to implies reawakening the historical indexes in language. Therefore what is common is neither here nor there but in the queer liking-likeness which can abruptly emerge. "

(From: Review of The Construction of Queer Culture in India...)
http://www.wbenjamin.org/santucci.html

Pretty Little Things

Lending a little color to the eyes. I'm lovin the video blogs! Ha ha especially Oli tryin to make it onto that surf board. Classic. I only have pics of Maya n Twon like this but if anyone else wants a suped up version of themselves all technicolor, it's real easy for me to do on my camera. Email me a pic! chicagostaci@gmail.com. Enjoy.

miami!

miami!

back back back from miami i am full in love. in love with the ocean and perhaps even the sand. yet the lifestyle seems a bit slowed, dulled even something i think maybe maladaptive for me. a hindrance that would start at annoyance and when time passed an ache would manifest. and no victoria not one of my psychosomatic ails you constantly accuse of being 'plagued all day' (you remind me of myself as

ignatius in confederacy of the dunces

(im really into the fictitious right now (and plays also)). but back to this ache it would inhibit my natural erratic fastness that may remain still at times, at times. But an absolute stillness that is imposed is a lifestyle norm. reading

streetcar named desire (plays are fabulous one day reads)

on the beach, with my brother staring outward next to me, the repetition of sounds that no longer had autonomy, the monotony of the beach culture and this simple rhythm and awful awful repetition of barbie as beauty and ken for that matter, eerily enough there was something synonymous with blanche and i together there. that ache. not just in being but rather in the wanting of out.

sidenote: finally a newly added member of this blog, some gmail issues. seriously! hihihihi all. not to you vic i live with you. but everyone else that i dont see as frequently. also i havent really read the posts so ill get on that.

Video Footage on Estayci's Birthday (Jan. 9)

Christmas Tree Burning at Schwarzerkanal Jan. 15th!

schwarzerkanal.bleibt!
wood/ queerbeograd / christmastree burning> > donnerstag 8.1.09> we make wood from 10h - 15/16h tomorrow> would be great if people have time to join> > wir machen morgen von 10h - 15h/16h holz> wär toll, wenn welche zeit haben zu helfen> > > donnerstag/thursday 15.1.09 18h wagenplatz schwarzer kanal> > Christmas Tree Burning Party. Wir wissen, ihr wartet schon das ganze Jahr drauf: jetzt ist es wieder so weit. Keine Müdigkeit vortäuschen, Tannenbäume sammeln und zum Christmastree burning mitbringen. Auf euch wartet: Karaoke im beheizten Wagen, hot alc und non alcohol drinks, Party. Soli for antiracist. > 18h vokü/ food> 19h talk with activists from queer belgrad collective / Gespräch mit Aktivist_innen vom Queer Belgrad Kollektiv

Translation and the hope of language

Benjamin suggests in 1917 with On the Program of the Coming Philosophy that language should replace the Kantian forms of a priori intuition. He also establishes the conditions for a reworking of the concept of time, which the concepts of tempo (of reading and script) and of hope replace, while the transcendental becomes historical. Literally tempo and hope are considered as indexes for the representation of the dialectical image; tempo and hope, that are detached and independent from the realm of possibility (be it transcendental or deconstructionist). The temporal exit from/by the -pressure [ex-pression] of the image consists of historical hope, that is never hope of possibilities, rather on this point of view hopeless. Hope is the tempo of reading and script that is also the tempo of the dialectical image. This paper/presentation aims at the experience of the terrain of hope, that’s the core which cherishes an affirmative and positive treatment of education, traditions, culture in general and that hinders a tradition that is a catastrophe. Since this terrain does not lie in language in general, rather only in language as long as language is in translation, then for the sake of its experience some considerations will be made upon the happy and lucky position between Paris, Hauptstadt des XIX Jahrhunderts / Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle and the English (Paris - Capital of the 19th Century; Paris -1968; 1978; Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century -1999) and Russian (Париж - столица XIX века -1990; Париж, столица девятнадцатого столетия -1996) translations.
(Submitted for the Benjamin conference in Berlin in the fall of 2009)

Happy Birthday, Estayci!!!

Today is my birthday. I am the quintessential 33. I thought of that sentence before pondering the definition of the word “quintessential.

quintessential:
representing the perfect example of a class or quality
Of the nature of a quintessence (in all senses)
adj. Having the nature of the most typical instance; pure and concentrated in nature....

I’m not sure if this applies, but I’ve been hearing whispers of a woman’s full expression coming to fruition around this age in particular....hence my interpretation of my inadvertent use of the word “quintessential” applying to becoming the perfect example of a class......of a woman. (Insert lame cliche) only time will tell.

Furthermore, I’m not sure if this theory relates to physical (sex) or psychological and emotional. In any event, I’m not having any sex (not by my choice OF COURSE) right now and my emotions and psychological well being is less than stellar right now, not to say I accept that as a permanent position......I gather I’m in between actualizing my potential and being stuck in the structured life I’ve been living for the last ten years. From the moment I was born (I believe there were some concerns or complications though I should really ask my mother about that), I have literally conquered feats I was told I could not conquer. While I continue to accomplish small things here and there, the bigger desires are scary and less accomplished. Love, passionate career, travel the world. I decided to treat myself to a book today. And I left Borders (sorry Maya....it had to be done today.) in hand with “Tales of a Female Nomad”. If I don’t leave and take my trek across the globe (or Asia and South America to be specific) sometime within the next two years, I give all of you full permission to kick my ass, call my boss and tell him I quit for me, deplete my bank account and buy me a one way ticket to the destination of your choice and force me onto an airplane and say ciao.

Ok enough with all the sappy theoretical esoterical blutherings coming from my brain this morning. Chicago is snowy, more snow on the way. Antwon and I were delighted to see this blog and I’m even MORE delighted that MAYA figured it out. In fact MAYA, you’ve added more things to this blog than I have on my own blog. I have yet to sit down and figure out how to add video, pictures, put links down the side. GOOD FUCKING ROCKSTAR *i-don’t-know-how-to-use-the-internet* job Belvina! :) (I’m allowed to curse on here right? ha ha)

I’ll leave you with something......funny? informative? I don’t know what to call it..........but on Facebook there are advertisements down the side of every page. This was one of them today:

Talk live to a Muslim, get free Quran, discuss Islam, ask questions or invite a Muslim speaker. Call 800-662-ISLAM. www.GainPeace.com

p.s. The pic is from New Years Eve! I'm going to have a field day taking pictures and posting them on here for you. Don't worry, I'll just include links so as not to bombard. Hey, does anyone know how you can shorten a post so it's only like four sentences of the intro and then a link at the end something to the effect of "click here for more" ????

Ah, loved faces in Boystown!

Halloween 09 in Chic.

Indovina Chi?

Riso in Berlino: Ivana, Nico and Stef teach and film the Belvinos

Excerpts

i thought of you both and imagined reading these pages aloud to you. from the latest chapter in a book of cognitive dissonance and blood-brain barriers. (The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell).
"I suppose events are simply a sort of annotation of our feelings - the one might be deduced from the other. Time carries us (boldly imagining that we are discrete egos modeling our own personal futures) - time carries us forward by the momentum of those feelings inside us which we ourselves are least conscious." (192)
"The cicadas are throbbing in the great planes, and the summer Mediterranean lies before me in all its magnetic blueness. Somewhere out there, beyond the mauve throbbing line of the horizon lies Africa, lies Alexandria, maintaining its tenuous grasp on one's affections through memories which are already refunding them-selves slowly into forgetfulness; memory of friends, of incidents long past. The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the outlines - so that sometimes I wonder whether these pages record the actions of real human beings; or whether this is not simply the story of a few inanimate objects which precipitated drama around them - i mean a black patch, a watch-key and a couple of dispossessed wedding-rings...
Soon it will be evening and the clear night sky will be dusted thickly with summer stars. I shall be here, as always, smoking by the water. I have decided to leave Clea's last letter unanswered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silences according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?" (194-195)

January 5 Happy Monday!

Salut!
sun salutate in the morning stretching to coax out the lazy bed-wallowing yellow beast. Here, there is snow too! And right now we live by the canals, where the water is running on ice and we skate on our shoes near the swans and the birds holding hands so's to fall together...if falling happens.
Busily looking for apartments and jobs, studying German with sprinkles of russian and italian. Asja, 2.5 years old, Livorno, Italy, calls to talk often, so while German seems a priority, Italian is also ringing.....
Well, we shall make a signs for all the objects in German, Italian, Russian and French. Will they mix-up-the letters and the sounds or help re-member the complementarity and insufficiency of a language alone?
We we we...but just me here, in this nice room we are going to have to leave soon, which is a bit scary, but so may be jumping over an ocean, and who's counting?
Everyone here is very nice so far. Last night Tina made a big dinner with pesto her mother made (though not by hand with mortar? like Oli) and it was yummmmy! Ebba lives in the back and her lover Kristen stays often. I don't know Ebba almost at all. She's young (20's) and from Sweden (which I always confuse with Switzerland, stupid donkey me). Stefania and Nicoletta live in the next room. Stefania sings and cooks simultaneously, or sows (sp?) on stage. Nicoletta is a cook. They are lovely together. I see them jumping and hugging on New Year's Eve on the street. They made an instructional video of how to cook risotto above. Tina just came back from her sister's wedding in Italy and showed us the video of Italian line dancing! We are considering learning...
Dante is a big 11 year old black whoof whoof who is also a guest this week and I'm not too afraid. Whoohoo! Sorry for the rambles. More structure coming soon? Emailing you now for your thoughts and anythings. Misses and huggggggs.