All Hypertexted by Machines of < 3ing Grace

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)
of a                                                                                       

like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were flowers

with spinning blossoms.

"I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace."

Source text: "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" by Richard Brautigan. 

I'm a runner now. Yeah.

Hey you should check out mah other blog, about how I decided I'm a runner and all the hilarity that entails. http://justtoseeifican.blogspot.com/ DO ITTTT. And tell your friends.

When There is Nowhere Else to Go, You Can Only Keep Going.

I move further from cities,
pass open fields,
smell hay and wildflowers.
My hair strikes my face and flutters.

On this empty stretch of 101
a frail shape,
insignificant in the distance,
blocks the road.

I watch your graceful,
already lifeless body
approach
on the narrow highway;
start looking for the shoulder,
beg my boyfriend to swerve.

Pull over.
Stop.
A deer, Mike—

The undercarriage rattles like an earthquake.
You hit the front fender
and your broad downy neck shatters.

I feel your soul roar beneath me.

Your hooves splay unresponsive.

The car leaves a rose petal trail of blood behind as we drive on.

I sit silent for miles, stiffened hand to my lips,
praying to a god I don’t believe in.

I try to find forgiveness
for disturbing you
in your delicate afterlife.

I spend the rest of the drive trying
to hold my mortality
within my sickened stomach.

WTF happened to this tree: A belated blog post.

Once there was a tree with a terrible case of sympathy pains. When a nearby elm was cut down it howled and screamed with the ferocity the elm itself could no longer manage. When a cat used the tree’s mother as a scratching post, the little tree felt scratches up and down its trunk for weeks.

One day someone walking by happened to mention, “Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since Mount Saint Helens erupted. Have you seen the trees up there? Just decimated, man, absolutely wiped out, grey, all leaning one direction… phew. It’s quite a sight.”

The little tree was terrified. It started to shake just thinking of that arboreal carnage. Its branches wobbled like jello and all its leaves fell to the ground. It grew pale, sickened by the destruction it had just heard about, and the once brown skin of the tree faded to a ghostly grey. A small wind blew and the tree, fearing the worst, imagining clouds of ash barreling past it at unparalleled speeds, bent to the wind and could not muster the strength to get up.

That is the story of the little tree that looks like it went through hell.

Impersonal Houses

1. Identity Crisis

Just weeks after I left for college, my parents moved out of the home I grew up in—the home they raised two children in. They left our quiet little street in Seattle, where I learned to walk, skinned my knees, rode my bike up and down the sidewalks…

They moved to a cul de sac in Everett, where every house is grey and every driveway obscured with children’s toys. The streets wind in senseless but aesthetically pleasing ways, joining 82^nd Avenue with 82^nd Street and 82^nd Drive, or something equally confusing. All the streets have the same perfect hedges, the same glowing doorbells at night. I’ve been there dozens of times and still don’t know the way because every house looks like my parents’ house. There are no homes there. I know it’s a tired cliché, but I can never go home again.

2. Substitutes

I once had an approximate home in the Brick:House, a concert venue on Golden Gardens Beach in Seattle. I volunteered there for a few amazing years of my teenage life. It was ancient and scuffed up; we filled it with flea ridden couches and duct tape signs, ate bags of chips and drank hot apple cider. We met bands and formed bands ourselves and went running through the waves in between sets. Then the parks department remodeled it so that people could hold ugly wedding receptions in an ugly concrete room on an ugly grey beach—Seattle’s approximation of a beach. When we re-opened for concerts almost no one came back. My homes away from home after that were wherever I was with whoever my boyfriend was at the time: a traveling source of comfort, familiarity, and love. An approximate husband for my approximate home.

3. Housemates, Never Homemates

There were the hipster girls, fresh out of high school, who did nothing but smoke pot, listen to music, and draw all over everything. I wasn’t at the house much when I lived with them, which wasn’t long at all. When my grades came in the mail they opened the letter, drew on it, and said I couldn’t have it back.

Next was the guy who liked to seem easy-going with his video games and bong, but was really uptight about keeping the kitchen spotless and not having too many people over. When his girlfriend visited and they had sex, my boyfriend and I had to stuff a towel in our air vent (which ran directly from his bedroom to ours) because her must-be-faking-it screams of ecstasy drowned out all conversation. I shifted around uncomfortably, coughing as she got ever louder.

There were the (ex?)drug addicts who still owe me hundreds of dollars in utilities. They thought their marriage was so fucking special even though their room smelled like cat and ferret piss and they fought all the time, their screams rising through the floor boards and he beat her and she cheated on him.

4. Windows

The view from a window is an extension of the house, or home. You don’t own what you see, but you own the precise way you see it. A good friend of mine—Lily, it was you—had a bay window in her dad’s apartment, on something like the thirty-second floor of a building in downtown Seattle. When I sat in that bay window, there was nothing below me except about thirty other bay windows and the city sidewalk 300 feet down. The wind rattled against the glass as if to warn me not to be foolish enough to sit there, dangling thirty-two stories up. Inside, though, with the dusty pink curtains, it was like being on the ground floor of an old home. I could imagine looking out over a lawn, wildflowers sprawling over rocks and tree roots. I don’t really remember the real view—I was nine or so—but I think it might’ve been Puget Sound.

5. Homemaking

There should be a point of clarification between homeless and houseless. There are millions of people who don’t feel at home in the space they occupy, as they wander around their impersonal houses.

I can go for months at a time without a home. I always have a dwelling, a place to sleep or do homework—which is in itself an impossible task if one doesn’t have a home to work in, as it then becomes housework. (I don’t know what that makes chores then, if homework is housework. Maybe that explains why my sink is always full of dirty dishes.) It’s just that I often don’t feel at home in my residence, for one reason or another. I have to pay rent; I don’t own the house. It’s too cluttered in this small space; I can’t breathe. I know homelessness this way.

I’ve outgrown everything that clothed the walls of my old bedroom; I am not that person anymore, but I haven’t grown into someone else. I feel stuck in a transition between homes, a move that is taking far too long. My surroundings don’t look like home to me. They could be anyone’s house. I don’t have the money or, more importantly it seems, the willpower to change the aesthetics of the place I live. Aside from ownership, aside from the quantity of possessions filling the house, what must make it a home for me in the end is visual. I can’t think what poster, what perfect knickknack, what witty doormat would turn my house into my home. I get anxious about it and give up on the whole idea. There is always an excuse to keep myself suspended in this discomfort.

A Fictional Break-Up That Fused with the Past [A Sestina]

 

Through half-closed blinds, the sun

casts tiger-stripe shadows. I watch myself

in the mirror, offering an apology

for how I push you

away. The blinds shiver, make ripples like water

in lines across my skin.

 

Your fingers trace maps on my skin.

Your eyes glimmer in the sun,

two lakes of glacial water.

I tell you I need time for myself

and it offends you.

The lakes freeze, demand apology.

 

Cool rain pours across faces and apologizes

for blurring mascara onto skin.

I stiffen on the sidewalk, thinking I see you.

I’m mistaken, and clouds part for the sun.

It shines consolingly, though I am not myself.

I step in a puddle. My jeans drink the water.

 

My house is not weather-proofed; water

seeps in under foundation. The landlord mutters apology,

spends all day here resealing. My self-

deprecation gets the best of me and I sneak around, skin

tingling, hoping he thinks I’m not home. Spot the sun

glowing hot and painful in the sky. Think of you.

 

That day I couldn’t get away from you.

People on their balconies, sipping bottled water,

watched our angry faces contort in the sun.

You made useless apologies,

you weren’t comfortable in your skin:

“Don’t leave me by myself.”

 

I have never had to be by myself,

so maybe I didn’t understand you.

By now you’ve washed your skin

of me, the scalding shower water

is a sputtering apology.

Droplets, tears evaporate in the sunlight.

 

I don’t need to explain myself. Water

long since renewed you; you don’t beg for apology.

Our skin won’t touch again beneath this sun.

What else should I be?

Didn’t think I was going to blog today…

I was just thinking about Nirvana, since I recently wrote playing Nirvana on guitar on the Ave when I was 15. Unplugged in New York is my favorite Nirvana album, which I’m sure I could be attacked for as absolute blasphemy by diehards. But I think it’s fucking beautiful.

And I was thinking how the lyrics to All Apologies look so simple and meaningless written out. I looked up the lyrics and it looked so flat I was disappointed. That’s the chief difference between song and poetry for me. Poetry won’t look flat and empty on the page. Songs, even beautiful brilliant ones, often do. The way Kurt sings them gives them some other meaning, I can’t get out of my head

What else should I be…all apologies

I am constantly apologizing to myself and everyone else for who I am and who I used to be, or more specifically how I am not the person I used to be. I’m not trying to make this Kurt Cobain fangirl lyrics analysis time. I don’t know that this has anything to do with what Kurt meant by the song. I’m saying how it affects me. None of that “reading comprehension” bullshit, which is all left up to chance anyway.

Everything’s my fault

What else should I write? I don’t have the right.

In the sun I feel as one.

All in all is all we are.

I’ve looked up multiple sources that all seem to agree that that’s the lyric. “All in all is all we are.” I always heard it as “All we know is all we are,” which is so deliciously ironic and perfect for me, having grown up with the doctrine pounded into my head that knowledge is everything. That you are only as good as how much you know. I have recently stopped wanting to know so much.

I don’t want to know anymore.

I want to see and experience and think without being told.

I could probably finish this blog with “more on this later,” because it went somewhere I didn’t know it was going to go.

I wish I was like you…easily amused.

My untitled, kind of boring memoir

This is the memoir so far, pretty rough, as I’ve written it about the few hours I spent with a guy on the street several years ago. I am WAY open to suggestions, since as I mentioned I think it’s pretty boring, and it really shouldn’t be. The experience wasn’t boring. But I don’t remember a lot. I know for certain I want a more interesting introduction.

***

As an urban teenager, I walked all over the city of Seattle, leaving the shards of my worn-down shoes where they fell. At about fifteen years old I wore my white Keds everywhere, until the time I encased them in black duct tape and they became black Keds. At this age I also always walked like I was in a hurry. It’s a habit I developed from five minute passing periods in middle and high school. No one could make it to class in five minutes if they weren’t speed walking. It just stuck, so I walked everywhere fast and hard, like someone important and tough, though I didn’t really feel either of those things. In my dirty broken Keds I pounded right up to Linley.

Although I lived on an allowance of about thirty dollars a month, plus whatever few dollars my band made from local shows, I gave out change to everyone I could, especially on University Way, otherwise known as The Ave. I lived in Seattle all my life and didn’t even notice that The Ave wasn’t really an avenue until my mid-teens, but I guess “The Way” sounds more like a religious cult than a street, so I can see the rationale. Anyway, I was walking on my most frequented couple of blocks of The Ave when I noticed a plastic cup held out by an attractive young guy with chlorine colored eyes and sawed-off two inch PVC pipe in his stretched ear lobes. The cup read “Jesus loves you, God knows why,” and this must’ve been the first time I ever saw the phrase, because it brought a huge smile to my face. I stopped in front of him and knelt down, digging through my bag to get some change. I asked him how he was, to make small talk as I awkwardly searched for wherever my wallet might have been hiding. He answered that he was alright, seeming surprised that someone (especially a girl out by herself) was talking to him. A homeless man isn’t an unusual sight on The Ave, but they tend to all know each other, and this guy didn’t seem to be from around here. He had probably been sitting out all day in the sun without hearing more than, “Not today, sorry,” or “Here you go,” or saying more than “Thanks,” to a couple of unselfish passers-by. He might’ve even slept in the doorway directly behind him, the entrance to a store that wasn’t there anymore.

I finally fished out something like seventy-five cents and plunked it into his cup. The guy had his guitar out and was strumming a few chords. I asked him if he knew any Nirvana and he said he didn’t think so. I crossed the threshold between the sidewalk of passers-by and the storefront of vagrants and sat down next to the guy, offering a handshake.

“I’m Lucy,” I said with a smile.

He looked at me for a moment, not at all unfriendly but still sort of confused, then smiled back and took my hand.

“Linley,” he said, quickly returning his hand to the guitar.

“I could teach you some Nirvana,” I offered. He passed the guitar my way and I started to play “Pennyroyal Tea.”

“See, the verse is pretty much just A-minor, G, over and over, and then the chorus…” I strummed, announcing each note as I played it. I taught him this and “All Apologies,” pausing if someone bent to offer some change for his God Knows Why cup. I think my presence was encouraging people. Maybe they thought I was his girlfriend.

After forty-five minutes or so, he said he needed a restroom. This can be an ordeal for homeless people. Shops everywhere require customers to ask for a bathroom key, to stop homeless people from having any dignity about their bodily functions. Then the owners complain that the sidewalks smell like piss. I still had a cup from a bubble tea I got earlier, so I passed it over to him so he could use that shop’s restroom. Meanwhile, though, he had a blanket spread out, a giant blue backpack, a guitar and case, a change cup and a few signs. There was no sense packing all that up to use the restroom, and I guess I’d been hanging out with him long enough to establish that I wasn’t trying to con him out of something or run off with his guitar. He left me in charge of his spot for a few minutes, putting the cup in front of me and handing me a sign to hold in my lap.

OUT OF WORK PORN STAR, NEED CHANGE FOR BEER.

When Linley held this sign, it was ironic and kind of cute, good for a chuckle and a few cents. People have to get creative to have an edge over the “Anything helps, God bless” signs. But I was a fifteen year old girl, and I was definitely feeling strange about holding this sign. At the same time as I have never felt more alone—people defiantly craning their necks to gaze across the street, furrowing their eyebrows at me in disapproval, staring intensely ahead as if to look at me would send me into a fury of begging for spare change—I have also never felt more alive, sitting on a blanket with a plastic cup and a cardboard sign, knowing what it’s like to be on the fringes of society, befriending hot homeless guys on the sidewalk. It’s an experience I knew I would not appreciate for longer than these few hours I had to glance at it. There is nothing glamorous or exciting about homelessness, except in some cases when it’s a lifestyle choice, as I felt might’ve been Linley’s case. But I’m not built for it. I was just glad for the company and the adventure of the afternoon.

He came back out and sat down with me again, relieving me of the awkward sign. We talked about friends and family, my school plans, his money plans. He said he was going downtown the next day to find out about going out on a fishing boat near Alaska, to get off the street for awhile. After another hour or so Linley had enough change to get food, so he packed up everything, hoisted the giant blue backpack onto his back, and we started walking down The Ave for some cheap Asian food. I must have been one of the only people in the world who felt elevated walking down the street with a homeless guy. I felt like we had some special bond after two hours of guitar playing and staring at the shoes of the people walking by. Every time someone shot us a glance and maybe thought we were together, I savored being next to this guy with the swimming pool eyes and dirty face, messy blond hair, giant backpack and guitar leaving no doubts that he didn’t have a bed to stretch out in at night. Maybe only fifteen year olds feel this way about guys like him.

After we finished eating I had a meeting to get to for a concert organization. I wasn’t conscious of my expression but I must have looked sad as we started going to the door, because he stopped and hugged me like he was trying to comfort me.

“You’ll see me again,” his voice vibrated as it passed from his ribcage to mine. I never said I didn’t think I would. It was a lie I wish he didn’t tell, because I believed it.

“Okay Linley,” my voice resonated back between us. “It was good hanging out.”

I went back to The Ave so many times after that. I craned my neck around corners. I looked for those eyes and that enormous blue backpack, the PVC tubes in his ears. I began to think he wasn’t spending more than a day here. I didn’t think he went downtown the next day and I didn’t think he went on a fishing boat. I didn’t think I would see him again and I didn’t know where he went, but I wanted to know why he felt he had to hug me, to say we would see each other again. I never told him I would miss him, or that I’d be looking for him, or that I didn’t want to go to my meeting. Maybe he was going to miss me, but he knew that homeless guys in their twenties shouldn’t hang out with fifteen year old girls. But I missed him all the more for what he said, and how the words passed between our ribcages like a secret.

Floating [A Thought Experiment]

We are in stagnant water. When left to our own devices some of us try to strike up a conversation, to start up the motor, to keep us moving. We might get another 50 yards across the pond but once we arrive there we decide it might be nicer to kill the motor, to just lie back and watch the clouds. Not to take part but to just observe. Tony Prichard is the current of our class, however much he wants us to create our own movement. In his absence we breed mosquitoes on the murky surface of the bog that is student motivation.

It’s true that college does require a degree of self-motivation. In elementary, middle and even high school, a teacher is always breathing down your neck: “Homework is due this day, it must be done in this manner at exactly this time and must say exactly this. If you do not turn in your homework you will be singled out and shot in public.” College isn’t like that. Sure you still get guidelines and rules (some classes more than others) and specific due dates. But if you don’t turn it in, or you don’t follow directions, all you get is a lower GPA. You don’t get a lecture or an argument or detention or anything. Some people can totally handle that.

I can’t handle that, which is part of the reason I’m a fairly self-motivated student, and also one of the students that tries to rev the engine of the boat and get us going. Tony stops talking and I (occasionally) start prodding the class for discussion. But I don’t go so far as to take over. I feel I have opinions to contribute but no ideas to motivate discussion. No ideas to ponder over or inspire a class with. And very few students do. Or they don’t want to voice them. Which is why we’re standing knee-deep in this fucking bog.

Nanotext was the captain of our little boat. He wanted to guide us: assign us specific portions of books and directly reference them in class, give us a rubric and guidelines for Thought Experiment Number One, lead us across the pond of college. Nanotext wanted to dig into our brains and pull out something squishy and bleeding and alive. To get a little graphic, he was the chestburster: living in our bodies and popping out when we least expected it, filling us with horror and dread… but those were things we could USE. We GOT something out of them and we developed new ideas. To continue being graphic, Nanotext impregnated us with ideas, wanted us to give birth to this squirming screaming bloody baby of intellect, context and consideration. And I feel we all had at least one chestburster; at least one squirming squealing squeamish baby in the days of Nanotext.

When he died (which only continues to become a more significant event to me, as the initial occurrence breezed right by), he left us with that wisdom and wanted us to raise the alien, the squishy baby, on our own. We were single mothers and fathers raising our own ideas. But we have been neglectful parents.

The Author has tried to prod us into class discussions. He’s removed the rules and regulations from Parasites and set us free. But we keep leaving our babies under our beds or in the bathtub or on top of the car when we drive off. We’re letting them starve to death or we’re forgetting about them or we’re murdering them. I’m graphic because it’s important. We’re not motivated to be parents; we’re not motivated enough to be diligent students. That is to say, to be teachers for ourselves and each other as well as being students.

Formal education exists primarily because many people don’t instinctively hunger for knowledge. If you removed mandatory primary education, what would we know? How many students would there be? Who would go to school? Now, college isn’t mandatory. Nobody says you have to have a degree to be a citizen. But they might as well say that, because if you don’t have a degree what you have is a minimum wage job and not a lot of respect. So students feel pressured by society, by their parents, by their peers and by their fears (Peers for Fears? That was my stab at Rickels) to march from high school graduation bravely into college, where they promptly party and waste a lot of financial aid, scholarships and parents’ money. True, some students work to put themselves through school, and true some students don’t party, and true many students that do party still get great grades. Some students are rare exceptions to the rule; some students really, really do want to learn.

But.

If they didn’t go to class, pay tuition and feel all the pressures I mentioned. Would they know ANY of this. Would they WANT to learn? And by WANT to learn I really mean, when they wake up in the morning or when they get off work, they go to the library or the museum or their knowledgeable friend, arriving at all this with the mindset of “Teach me, I want to learn”? I would think very few people fit into this category.

And so we march right onto campus, march to our desks, sit down, pull out a blank sheet of paper and a pen (or a laptop), and stare. We write down buzzwords (this will come back again later) and we make flashcards and we cram our short-term memories with facts. We pass the midterm and the final; we burn the notes and forget it; we move on.

Tony, Nanotext and The Author, bless them all, they are pushing us to access our long-term memory. To store something away. To see what sticks. They are all throwing things at us, sticky popcorn balls of theory and creative writing and prompts, and hoping to see us get up and walk out of the classroom COVERED in these things. Just covered, so that students on campus all turn their heads and say “Who are those kids covered in popcorn balls?” And we’ll say, “We’re Tony’s students.”

But I am still standing in this marsh with my legs stuck in the mud. Swarms of mosquitoes waiting to infect me with the Dread Malaria of forgetfulness and dismissal. The farm of my knowledge will be desolate because I didn’t strive to kill every last one of those killers.

“Yes, we’ve got to kill every one in the house” (Disney ’43 - The Winged Scourge).

Actually, at this point, I’m drowning a little in my metaphors, but it’s okay. Long as I can keep my head above water, or muck.

On March 8 we were left alone. Not in the traditional teaching methods of The Author (the “pretend I’m not here” discussion—he inevitably has to rev the motor for us anyway because we get stuck in that damned marsh), but in the real “I’m actually not here” sense. (At least not physically. He was with us on plurk at least some of that time.) And what did we do?

Well. I brought up Thought Experiment #3; wanted to know what people were thinking for it. Surprisingly that lasted conversation stayed afloat for awhile. Then a lot of YouTube videos happened. Some of us kept running back to the helm, trying to steer the boat, but we were going in circles. We were the students outside of a formal education setting. And it was apparent we weren’t all self-motivated.

Now it may not be fair to base that statement off of one day. In fact, I really don’t want that to be taken as a judgment of our characters or our motivation on a grand scale. There’s the undeniable appeal of “The parents are away; PARTY TIME!” that everyone feels. Adults in office buildings are overjoyed when their boss is absent for the day, and they might spend all day playing Minesweeper (which we also watched a YouTube video on)… uh, or they’d probably play WoW. We did actually come back to the topics of the class a little more than I expected. But mostly people wanted to share YouTube videos or chat about social things. Some people wanted to express frustration at the texts (although as a general rule not Filth: the students are digging Filth). Some people expressed feeling stuck knee-deep in the bog of the class as a whole.

I think the death of Nanotext left a lot of students with the sense that their professor had left. There was a lot less direction. Everything was discussion based. Taking notes was difficult. I’ve never taken notes for this class. I can’t fathom how I would.

I mentioned this on March 8, too. When I take notes I am just getting bulletpoints. Things that for a “traditional” class I would expect to be on the multiple-choice test. And that is just simply impossible for this class. I have been on board with “throw things at you and see what sticks” for the whole quarter. Now I admit not as much has stuck as I wish had. But I’m definitely glad I haven’t taken notes.

On the days I’ve brought my laptop to class I mostly sit there staring at the screen, waiting for a plurk update to read. I probably couldn’t tell you a fucking thing about what happened that day. Not a thing. I don’t know how people can concentrate with screens in front of them. I guess it’s an individual thing. That’s why Tony left it up to us. He’s not going to ban screens from the class. It’s not elementary-middle-high school; there is no “If you don’t put that thing away right now it’s going to be mine” (remember that?!). Tony knows that if you can concentrate with screens, that’s great, that’s fine, you’re welcome to it! After all, he does it too. And he knows that if you can’t concentrate with screens, you’re going to have a hell of a time getting anything out of the class. And you’re going to probably have a very dull thought experiment.

I suspect that has something to do with why he declared on March 5 that the students were going to discuss, and he was going to take notes. No one but Tony was allowed to take notes. He even prohibited comments on his notes thread on plurk (Notes for 3/5).

So I control my screen time in Parasites, because I want to get out of these acrid marshes. I want to find some ideas that help me figure out how to start the engine on this boat. I want to hear it (the boat:the engine:my brain:my creativity) roar. And I am writing this Thought Experiment as it goes because I didn’t know what to write about. I find there is nothing better than sitting down and writing when you don’t have any ideas.

You do have ideas.

They’re just a little deeper in the muck, but you always have ideas.

I don’t want to draw in my other two thought experiments to this one. I think this is a cumulative thought experiment without being a reiteration. I sort of feel like they would be concrete bricks tied to my feet holding me down in the muck. And this is an apt metaphor for something that came up in class on March 8 in Tony’s absence.

I told you that buzzwords were going to come back. Well here they are. It was discussed for some time that many students have clung to the buzzwords of this class, in hopes of grasping something concrete (but now they sleep with the fishes). It’s been a giant contest: who can bring up the buzzwords? Who can tie what we’re talking about to “parasites”? How about to “context” or to “interruption”? How about: depending on “context”, “parasites” can be an “interruption”? DING DING DING! You’re our GRAND PRIZE WINNER!

I have no assumption that this is what Tony wanted us to do. I think it’s only natural that we as students gravitated this way in our endless quest to please the teacher. This is what you wanted, teacher, isn’t it??? To tie all these concepts together in a neat little package wrapped with a bow of buzzwords?

And I’m not innocent here. In fact I’d venture that everyone who has ever spoken up in class at all (or on plurk or on Wave or some other way) has used these buzzwords and felt proud of it. But how many of our connections really meant something, really helped us advance our thinking, and how many of them were just so we could name ourselves the Grand Prize Winner, the Diligent Student of the Day. Can any of us say that these tidy little packages were the best thing we got out of this class?

That is why I say these buzzwords are the concrete bricks tied to our feet holding us down in the mucky stagnant water of student motivation! Even here, even this damn Thought Experiment is absolutely wrought with buzzwords and metaphor and cute little packages! The package metaphor is ITSELF a cute little package!

This is the part of the Thought Experiment where I headdesk.

Okay, so backing up. The simplified no-bullshit version of what I’m saying here is that students as a general rule don’t lead themselves. And leading your own education is ultimately what professors want (to varying degrees; I believe Parasites is an extreme case of this). So there’s a conflict. And I’m just going to play into the buzzwords thing again.

With every parasite there is a struggle, a conflict. Generally, the parasite wants to stay in the host, and the host wants to expel the parasite. What better example than Bruce Robertson. Although the tapeworm readily admits that Robertson is probably a dimwit, he has no greater desire than to remain in Robertson’s bowels, feeding off of his nutrients. The tapeworm is grateful to its host, but the host is so, so ungrateful. Robertson is disgusted by worms. “If you drink whisky you’ll never get worms,” Bruce says on page 64. It’s repeated later. Robertson is all about repetition. When Dr. Rossi confirms Robertson has worms, he readily consumes the chemicals necessary to flush out the tapeworm. Understandably, this pisses the tapeworm off.

“00 no no no no 00 oh no you bastard” (253).

But we come to find out there is more than one worm. And the next worm really isn’t happy that its companion has been flushed. But what impact does the tapeworm have on Bruce? Minor inconvenience. Creepy-crawly feeling; desire to get rid of it. Bruce’s impact on the tapeworm is a life or death matter.

So what have I accomplished here? I’ve acknowledged that students as a general rule are only after the grades. I’ve admitted that this is present in varying degrees and changes depending on a number of factors. I’ve pointed out the futility of buzzwords, then I’ve played into them only to dismiss them again. I guess this only proves that buzzwords really are what we hang on to in a class. We really do need these concrete things to guide us right to the pond floor. Maybe we’re still stuck in this swamp of motivation. But maybe we shuffled our feet a few times. Maybe we grabbed a stick to help us stay afloat and push us a little closer to shore.

Works Cited

“Disney ’43 – The Winged Scourge.” 30 March 2008. YouTube. Web. 12 March 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y68F8YwLWdg

number six. “Notes for 3/5.” plurk. 3 March 2010. Web. 13 March 2010. http://www.plurk.com/p/41e4mp

Welsh, Irvine. Filth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. Print.

Vomitorium of thoughts.

Below is what I hammered out into Microsoft Word in attempts to inspire myself for the thought experiment. I’m having a hard time connecting thoughts or coming up with more ideas to expand on… and I don’t want to get too much into Countess Bathory because I’d love to research her for the longer TE #3.

I appreciate that we are all very busy; any comments are helpful. I’ve got to try to get my butt onto Wave so I don’t look ungrateful/selfish.

****

A fever is the body’s natural defense against illness. That is to say, detected illness. Anything that slips by unnoticed, including many parasites, may not be subject to the unwelcome sauna of the body’s rising temperature.

nerbiotxiste posed the question on plurk: is human pregnancy parasitic? I would say that depends on the host. Unwanted pregnancy is; the baby is feeding but the mother gains nothing, in fact she loses nutrients and confidence and hope. In the case of miscarriage I could argue the pregnancy was parasitic, but the host and the parasite are interchangeable here. Sometimes a mother’s body cannot handle the stress of a baby, and in this case the fetus was parasitic as in an unwanted pregnancy, though the mother might well be devastated by the loss of the child. And sometimes a baby cannot live in the conditions of a mother’s body: perhaps one with an unhealthy lifestyle who over- or under-eats, who is alcoholic, who is addicted to drugs, and in that case I believe the mother is the parasite, taking over the baby’s body.

There are even cases of in-utero (more accurately, in-fallopian) mummification of fetuses. A woman was pregnant and went into labor lasting quite a few days. The pains stopped and the woman never delivered. It was an ectopic pregnancy, but she did not know it. (All this is from http://www.yourdiscovery.com/ontv_shocking/index.shtml) I’ve seen the show; the mother’s immune system treated the fetus as an organ, which sounds pretty docile. I feel her body actually attacked the fetus (likely having died as a result of not coming through the birth canal after several days of effort) as an invader, a parasite, and calcified it to render it useless. The immune system may have acted independently of the mother: whether or not the mother wanted the baby is inconsequential, as her body decided for her, and there may have been no external or internal way to influence that decision. She could have died from the pregnancy or the labor, but the body decided it was going to fight.

Humans are vulnerable creatures. We’re always trying to defend ourselves. It’s not always warranted. A lot of times we miss out on something out of fear or apprehension. Or we try to stop nature by bolstering our defenses. Sometimes this is successful and deemed socially appropriate: if nature gives you cancer you have every right to radiate it into submission. We believe that cancer is not a natural or acceptable part of the life cycle, perhaps because it doesn’t happen to everyone but it does lead to death. Maybe that’s the problem with murderers: murder doesn’t happen to everyone so it isn’t acceptable. Maybe that’s the problem with Countess Bathory: getting old happens to everyone; you can’t just cheat death by bathing in blood. That’s impolite.

Defense has a lot to do with ego too. I mean, why defend something you don’t care about? I swear that during his eulogy to nanotext, the_author said something along the lines of “Sacrificing yourself for a bad cause is useless.” But I absolutely can’t find it and I’m drowning in fortune cookies. So maybe I just made it up. I suppose it’s reasonable that being immersed in aphorisms would cause me to hallucinate ones that aren’t even there. My ego just told me, give the_author credit for that one… you don’t have to win everything. Anyway, my point being, we care for our own wellbeing far beyond survival. We buy clothes we LIKE, not just whatever is available. We live in houses we DESIGN or REDECORATE, not just whatever’s there. We don’t want to get old so we buy MAKE-UP or get SURGERY or BATHE IN THE BLOOD OF VIRGINS. It’s all an ego trip.

Things that go bleh in the night.

Things are getting tense on plurk. Self-expression is starting to get in the way. We are at each other’s throats like vampires, feeding off of everything the other says. Sometimes we are nourished by the blood we suck out of these expressions. Sometimes we are left with a bitter taste in our mouths. This plurk was not what we expected.

Ultimately, everyone likes to be in control. Most everyone likes to be in control of themselves and some like to have control of others. This can be subtle, by performing an act that incites others to react, or it can be more direct, as calling someone out by name. And all the time I keep coming back to Rickels, “no vampirism without the desire to be vampirized”. Truer words were never spoken.

Given that social networking is about ego (whether your own ego, part of your ego, or an alter ego), people prefer to post what will get a reaction. Even if the post is somewhat secretive in nature, and the plurker doesn’t want to reveal the ulterior motive for the plurk, s/he still wants the plurk world to react to her/his joyangerfrustrationsadnesselationsuccessfailurebeautypower. It’s a necessity to see your own emotions reflected back at you. It’s necessary to see that others react and sympathize with your situation. Otherwise, why would you post it in a public forum? Wouldn’t you just have a private journal?

Of course lucemart is not absolved of this sin either. She’s been known to post things in order to get a reaction. In fact, this blog post desperately seeks a reaction. We are all guilty of it, and as we know from Rickels the sinners are doomed to return as vampires. Plurk in the middle of the night is a different world. PVP. Plurker v. plurker. But vampires don’t dare walk in the daylight. The comforting silence of the plurklulls bolsters our confidence. Privacy becomes public.

It’s a plurker v. plurker world out there, people. Tread carefully. One plurker’s amusement is another plurker’s aggravation, and since we aren’t all on Skype, intonation is not a factor. An innocent plurk can become an attack without this context. Beware the bleh. It leaves you especially susceptible to misinterpretation. I suggest following my lead and hanging garlic around you as you plurk at night. Might want to keep a wooden stake handy, too.

Desire to be vampirized.

Vampirism in the media was once Nosferatu. Ugly and detestable and well, parasitic. Undesirable.

Enter Tom Cruise as a vampire; enter Twilight. I’m probably missing a wide range of other examples because I never really fell into the vampire thing. Enter the vampire as something lustful, something taboo but just so forbidden that you can’t stop wanting it. Rickels points out the common thread that began with Stoker’s novel, “the vampire can enter a home or household by invitation only. No vampirism without the desire to be vampirized” (19).

This desire must be what made the switch from ugly vampire to ridiculously good-looking vampire so natural. If you have to invite him in anyway… well, who would invite Nosferatu into their home? He might as well be hot.

The thing is that the blood-sucking has become so sexualized that what we’re drawn to aren’t really vampires. They’re just hot guys with sharp teeth and a blood fetish, which is of course always practiced through lusty neck-biting (or vicious hickey). Rickels mentions there are numerous places on the body where blood could be sucked; historically it was often through the ear, if you can imagine such a thing. But I don’t think they’d want Edward Cullen sucking Bella’s brain out through her ear canal. Unless ear fetishes are the new “in” thing.

Something happened that made that change. We talked in class about how things can be so ugly that they’re cute again. That we exercise this power over things we hate or fear, turning them into something to admire. Maybe so we don’t all feel so small and insignificant.

Then there’s Rickels’ quotation of Barber, on page 2 of The Vampire Lectures. It explains that the people likely to return as vampires are “different, unpopular or great sinners”. I’ve been watching the Canadian sci-fi series Sanctuary on Netflix, and in the middle of the first season we are introduced to our first vampiric character: Nikola Tesla (of Tesla coil fame). Although Tesla made great contributions to electrical and mechanical development, he allegedly had a very eccentric personality and a tendency to exaggerate or make weighty claims, which eventually distanced him from the scientific community. He and Edison butted heads in their community constantly. Tesla was dIfferent; unpopular. Good choice for a vampire, Sanctuary.

And what of a Christian reaction to this vampire culture of sinners and rejects? Well, I read through several Christian blogs commenting on Twilight, and it seemed that the problems weren’t with the unholiness of the idea of a vampire. The bigger problems were the moral implications of Bella and Edward’s love. To me that seems to show a greater acceptance of the culture, even when the bloggers are disapproving, because the Harry Potter scandal seemed to be all about how wizardry is ungodly. Here, the reaction is: “okay, he’s a vampire, whatever, that’s fine because his Dad’s a Christian in the movie and they have good intentions, but BELLA IS A WHORE!” Feminism, meet Christianity. Shake hands.

Maybe the lack of Christian (or at least Catholic) opposition to portrayals of vampirism has something to do with communion…? I mean, objectively, the ultimate form of blood-sucking is drinking the blood of Jesus Christ, now, isn’t it? There is “no vampirism without the desire to be vampirized” (Rickels 19). That has so many implications that I don’t think I can even get into it here. People might send mobs with torches to my apartment.

Thus, he masters men.

Our class discussion on February 5 about the parasitism of humanity with regards to itself, animals, nature, etc. sparked so much contemplation in me that I came home and immediately began to type this blog entry. Since I'm covering the Vietnam War in another one of my classes, the YouTube video about the Air Force pilot in Vietnam was unfortunately nothing new.

A classmate pointed out that if he were to run into this guy on the street, he wouldn't be afraid of the pilot. The things he's saying are rather grotesque, but are not cause for concern to the everyday American. This pilot is fixated on a particular target (his idea of a parasite): Victor Charlie, Viet Cong, Vietnamese people. And the point that faded from my mind as I was trying to speak in class was this: It is easy to kill the target if your target is homogeneous and inhuman.

Examples can be found from most wars worldwide. Since wars are often between people of different nationalities, races, cultures, tribes, etc. it is a common tactic to dehumanize the target by turning them into a caricature or an animal. This propaganda poster from 1942 depicts a Japanese person terrorizing an innocent young blonde woman… but this isn't a Japanese person at all. At first glance it looks rather like an ape, and it even has claws.

"…history hides the fact that man is the universal parasite, that everything and everyone around him is a hospitable space. Plants and animals are always his hosts; man is always necessarily their guest. Always taking, never giving. He bends the logic of exchange and of giving in his favor when he is dealing with nature as a whole. When he is dealing with his kind, he continues to do so; he wants to be the parasite of man as well. And his kind want to be so too. Hence rivalry. Hence the sudden, explosive perception of animal humanity, hence the world of animals of the fables. If my kind were cattle, calves, pigs and poultry, I could quietly maintain with them the same relations I have with nature. Such is the peaceful dream of my contemporaries, descendants, and ancestors" (Serres 24-5).

Man bends logic in his favor. If logic told him that all men were created equal, he would bend the logic to determine that his enemy is not a man at all, but a beast. And men and beasts are not created equal. The aggressive human parasite here views all enemies as lesser beings, whether or not they are truly human. This sort of powerful reasoning is what allows for war. If your target is not an equal, it is easy to destroy. If you refer to everything as targets instead of people, it's easier to carry out your job. "The one who plays the position plays the relations between subjects; thus, he masters men" (Serres 38). But who is the parasite: the soldier or the people being bombed? That's context, but I've been over that already; you get the idea.

We also talked in class about the Animal Planet/Discovery Channel mentality of portraying animals as beautiful and somewhat sacred creatures. I brought up the point that in the media, this is how we convince ourselves that humanity is not a brutal parasite: see, we make these touching shows about animals; we LOVE nature! But in reality we go out and hunt, trap, kill all of these animals. There are certain exceptions for certain religions or nationalities (in India the cow is sacred, and in the United States we would never harm an eagle), but for the most part we feed on nature completely. We aren't just a parasite with which animals and the rest of humanity can coexist. No, we're determined to kill and feed off of them: we're parasitoid to our chosen targets, be they fellow human or otherwise.

And yet, if we listen to the screaming humanity buried in us, we can stop the parasite from within. If we disallow brainwashing, disallow those who "play the position" to dictate our actions, we could regain compassion. The following is a short passage from the book Why Are We In Vietnam? by Norman Mailer, which on the surface has nothing to do with war and Vietnam, but in its narrative of hunting in the wilderness of Alaska, you start to see parallels. That is, if you can understand what the fuck the narrator, D.J., is saying. The book is fraught with racism (it was written around the time of the war and is partly about D.J.'s closed-minded middle-aged Texan father). Each time they describe an animal, they relate it to a human of a non-white ethnicity performing some stereotyped action. This ties in with the war propaganda I mentioned earlier. I've only included part of a sentence because frankly, a sentence can go on for pages in this book. Plus D.J. talks in the third person, and there are a lot of typos and a lot of colloquialisms.

"…if you good, you're up there, up above Master Mountain Goat, and when you start to shoot on him, he does a step dance like an old Negro heel-and-toe tap man falling down stairs or flying up them, and the first animal D.J. got in Alaska was a mountain goat at two hundred and fifty yards, and with one shot, animal stood on its nose for one long beast of a second, and then did a running dying dance for fifty yards down the rocks like a fakir sprinting through flaming coals, and when he died, Wham! the pain of his exploding heart shot like an arrow into D.J.'s heart, and the animals had gotten him, they were talking all around him now, communicating the unspoken unseen unmeasurable electromagnetism and wave of all the psychic circuits of all the wild of Alaska, and he was only part of them, and part he was of gasoline of Texas, the asshole sulfur smell of money-oil clinging to the copter…" (Mailer 99-100).

"…it wasn't until that night when he was in the bunkhouse back at Dolly Ding Bat that D.J. relaxed enough to remember that goat picking his way up and down rocks like a slow motion of a skier through slalom, his legs and ass swinging opposite ways, carefree, like take one leg away, I'll do it on the other, and it hit D.J. with a second blow on his heart from the exploding heart of the goat and he sat up in bed…" (Mailer 101-2). This time he relates the goat to an athlete or soldier: something he respects rather than scorns. Hopefully we'll all start to feel that way with animals, and likewise stop relating other races and other humans to animals that are only there for us to kill.

Levels of Narration

Several class sessions ago, Tony posed the question, “Who are we when we write?” We’ve discussed our multiple identities between plurk, Facebook, MySpace, even Blackboard or just printed words on a page. Depending on our level of trust, we either take these means of social networking seriously (truthfully?) or we don’t. The example was used that someone might post: “I was so hammered last night.” It is our interpretation whether we believe that individual was actually drunk, they were lying and looking for attention, or they meant something else entirely.

Some people think that social networking sites are all about ego: bragging about who you scored with, “camwhoring” your new haircut, or trashing other people. There’s even a subsidiary of icanhascheezburger.com called failbooking.com, wherein people share ridiculous Facebook status updates, or the ultimate burn someone pulled on someone else through their social networking identity. This showmanship is a careful balance of ego and embarrassment (although it is delightfully amusing, so long as you don’t recognize your own post on there).

On the other hand, there is the issue of modesty. Perhaps the same people who find social networking sites to be egotistical don’t even use them, or have a strong aversion to them. Perhaps they don’t update often, only have up one or two pictures, and never brag about anything or fish for compliments. Perhaps this in its own way is just an expression of ego: “I’m too sophisticated for this kind of thing.”

The tomcat Murr is the perfect example of how one being can clearly exhibit both ego and modesty. The Author’s Preface shows Murr “bashfully” questioning his merit as a writer (“Shall I, can I, hold my own before the stern tribunal of criticism?”) and signing the note “Murr (Étudiant en belles lettres)”, or “Murr (Student of literature)”, a modest title admitting the cat’s limited knowledge. The adjacent Foreward (Suppressed by the author) shows Murr’s more honest view of his subsequent autobiography. In it, Murr dictates that the reader should find him to be a fully charming and intelligent cat, and even “worship [him] a little.” Instead of his earlier bashful confession that harsh criticism may arise and he begs a kind thought from the reader to console him, Murr now reminds the reader that he has claws and knows how to use them. He signs this scathing Foreward “Murr (Homme de lettres très renommé)”, or “Murr (Very famous man of letters)”. His student status has disappeared and left behind omniscience. Of course, the egotistical Foreward was supposedly not meant to be published, while egotistical status updates are often quite intentional.

Then again, sometimes not.

Ego vs. modesty online gets another layer of interest when we examine “jk”. My feeling is that it’s a clarification of modesty or embarrassment about whatever was just said. Or, as nerbiotxiste put it, “i retract”. It indicates something perhaps you wish you had not said. I think that everything attached to “jk” was meant to be said. If you truly had a secret you wanted no one to know, you would have had the glimmer of foresight not to say it. “Jk” just clarifies that this was something you maybe wouldn’t say to that person face-to-face (in rl), so if you cover it with the notion that you were “just kidding,” it’s a little easier to reveal. “The previous statement leaves me uncomfortably vulnerable.”

I don’t think anyone takes “jk” for its literal translation of “just kidding” anymore. You should be careful if you say something like, “i just killed my neighbor. jk!” I don’t think people will be convinced that you didn’t really do that… or at least that you aren’t planning to. Incidently, “just killed” is the same acronym as “just kidding.”

Delving deeper into our split techno-personas, nanotext guided us in an experiment. On January 22, the class experienced what it was like when nanotext took over the teaching position of Tony Prichard. Participation was hesitant and uncertain. Some showed up to cyberclass from their desks on their laptops or phones. Some from the 2:30 class were able to participate through this method of teaching. nanotext is a facet of Tony, just as lucemart is a facet of me. Some students responded in a way that questioned nanotext’s “instructor” status more than the same students may have questioned Tony’s “instructor” status in the physical realm of our class. awritedesign wondered “if no one is talking because they have completely lost the flow of the ideas nanotext is proposing.” But who would have raised their hand and said aloud with their own vocal chords, “Tony, I have no idea what you’re talking about”?

Who are we when we blog? Who are we when we plurk? Who are we when we tweet? When we [Google]wave? When we… FB? (Is there a verb for Facebook? Is it just update?) Are we honest, modest, egotistical, false? Are any of these things wrong or right? Can anyone make that judgment?

How to do things with Parasites.

In Austin's How to do things with Words, he argues that:

"…a performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloquy. … Language in such circumstances is in special ways—intelligibly—used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal use—ways which fall under the doctrine of the etiolations of language" (23).

Austin here seems to acknowledge the place fiction and creativity hold in language by bestowing them with his honor of intelligible use, but then categorizes them as parasitic, an "etiolation". Whether you believe playwrights live in harmony with language or use language to their own advantage, thus enfeebling the "serious" usage of language, is all a matter of context.

Context, point of view, and opinion all similarly contribute to the ways in which we view all parasites, be they language, technology, or biology. The movies we've seen thusfar during our class are perfect examples, and the clips linked below will help to solidify my point.

1. In Shivers, and in Aliens, the parasite is a disgusting being that needs to feed off of humans to survive. It impedes human development, and is in general working towards the destruction of humanity: humanity needs to defend itself by destroying the parasite.
   
2. In Shivers, and in Aliens, the parasite is a fascinating creature that adapts through all kinds of adverse situations in order to survive. It seeks out a host with great precision and discrimination, looking for adequate shelter. As Tony pointed out, from the point of view of the aliens, the chestbursting scene in the movie Aliens is like a home movie of birth. Also, in Shivers, humanity is actually better off with the parasite: happier and freer, as they drive off calmly to spread the parasite (or symbiotic being?) to the outside world.
   

Most of us hold a negative connotation in our heads when we hear the word "parasite." I tend to think of something a lot smaller than the creatures in those two movies; usually something small enough to course through your bloodstream. It shuts down your organs. It makes you sick. It makes you insane.

But Radiolab's show on parasites provides insight to the idea that a parasite can be harmful or beneficial, depending on your point of view. They analyze the intricate ways in which parasites spread (a good example is the nematode, which disguises itself as a berry by swelling up and reddening the rear of an ant: birds eat the ant and fly away, spreading the parasite through excrement as they travel) and the benefits of parasites (Jasper Lawrence's discovery and subsequent business surrounding the medical use of infecting oneself with hookworm to treat a variety of ailments from allergies to multiple sclerosis). They praise the blood fluke's lifelong monogamy, which certainly rivals the capability of many humans. They marvel at the advanced inner workings of Toxoplasma gondii—a parasite found in cat droppings—on the brain: is it possible that humans infected with "Toxo" are actually in love with cats, the way Toxo trains rats to respond sexually to feline smells? That brings a new consideration to anyone we know who's a "cat person"…

Of course, along with the praise comes a degree of reservation. Hookworm gnaws away at your insides, causing diarrhea, intestinal cramping and anemia. Toxo is thought to contribute to schizophrenia in humans, and can be harmful or fatal to fetuses if a pregnant woman is exposed. A study cited in the Radiolab episode even seemed to show that Toxo-infected people have a lowered sense of risk and are more likely to die in car accidents!

And Toxo isn't the only pet-related parasite we have. The flea is another example of something most people have absolutely no tolerance for, much less an affinity. Fleas are a carrier of Bubonic Plague (using our good friends the rats once more), a parasite, a bloodsucker. And yet…

Barry Sanders in Colors/Puce explains how the flea in French culture is actually closely linked to feelings of love and sexuality. Avoir la puce à l'orreile; to have a flea in one's ear; to itch or yearn for someone. And today the color puce, originally named for resembling the purple-red stain left behind when one kills a flea, is thought of as disgusting, even a different color than it once originally meant… a parasite in our Crayola box?

For some, the benefits of parasites seem to outweight the risks. Lawrence's business is still around, and he says many of his customers have reported remarkable improvement in their ailments. And as shown by icanhascheezburger.com, humans can't stay away from cats even knowing what Toxo could do to them. And knowing how prevalent parasites are—after all, bacteria is everywhere, so are parasites, and not even hand sanitizer can save us from that—it's kind of an uphill battle trying to eliminate them from our lives. Besides, modern science is working to ensure that we can make parasites work for us.

So read and believe the performatives in plays and poems! Extend your arm to that mosquito, pet that flea-ridden dog, don't shy away from the litter box! Those parasites might be just what you've been searching for.