teandoranges

Not Just Another Pretty Zine ... but MANY Pretty, Pretty Zines: FLY AWAY ZINE MOBILE In Town NOW!

2011-09-22T17:30:00.001-05:00

Before I started blogging in 2007, I seriously, seriously considered becoming a zinester. I researched zines online... printed out pages and pages and pages of DIY advice for zinesters. I experimented with elaborate covers and took copious notes on what I wanted my zine to contain. I found myself on the hellish road to attempted zine perfectionism.

Blogs saved me from myself. I allow myself to be lazy about how and when I write. Nothing feels set in stone on a blog... and I love that. But I still have good intentions of going back down the Zine-hell road. I won't rest peacefully until I do.

Lucky for We... the 8th Annual TwinCities Zinefest is about to inspire us Minnesotans again. I browsed through my first ZineFest last year and this year I'll be woManning a table dedicated to the unique Zine Library Collection/Archives from the MCTC library where I work and am a student. Having come late to the scene, zines still overwhelm me so I look forward to learning more from the people who stop by the booth than my own aborted attempts at being a perfectionist zinester.

Perfectionism and Zines don't belong in the same sentence. Labor of Love and Frustration of Love and Love of Love and Zines do belong in the same sentence.

Fly Away Zine Mobile

Zine Love is no better demonstrated than by the Fly Away Zine Mobile! Debbie will make another Minnesota stop at this Saturday's Twin Cities Zinefest in Powderhorn Park and if you haven't yet, you really, really gotta must see the Zine Mobile with your own eyes. By appointment, Fly Away Zine Mobile and Debbie parked outside my library this past week. I took pictures. But you come visit and climb inside. It's adorable and awesome. Thank you Debbie for sharing with us... and thank you to all drivers, supporters and zine librarians who understand it isn't always about the money... but it is about the pretty, pretty pictures.

While at the Zinefest, please show your love to a bookstore I love : Boneshaker Books. They will love you back.


Bike Zines

DIY zines

Librarians do it best :)


Zine Mobile Ukulele


Polar Bear Zine Mobile Rug

street smART: worth the wait

2011-08-12T15:06:00.000-05:00

One of the best parts of biking, walking and walking the bike (Beatrice), is getting up close and personal with Minneapolis' street art. For those who haven't or can't leisurely tour the good stuff... Bea & I have collected these for you...

THANK YOU, HOTTEA!

And a new street artist... CURSER ? ... helping beautify chain linked construction sites and parking lots. :)

Gem Zen

2011-06-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

Baby Blue
Crystal Clear
Soft Pink
Berger Dandelion Fountain

Zen and the Art of Stacking Abandoned Pride Gems...

street smART: Which came first? PUM or the Egg?

2011-06-26T20:06:00.001-05:00

My neighborhood has been bombed by PUM. If you're notoriously clueless like me, maybe UrbanDictionary can come to your rescue.

At first I was like, hmmm? Is that...?
And then I was like, duh! I have one of those!

Kinda ballsy of PUM to plaster their work on federal property, dontcha think?

I wonder if PUM chose that tag, or if the tag chose PUM. Just maybe, someone out there was blessed with the name Penelope Ursula Moon.

Pure speculation - that's all we've got to work with... but you know what happens when you assume about PUM....

Birthday Suits and Banned Books: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAURICE SENDAK!

2011-06-09T22:53:00.004-05:00

(Background : I'm reading Banned, Censored and Challenged Books for my Summer reading and the 30 Days of Reading challenge via Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis.)

I get it now. I get why so many Christians love to hate Judy Blume and Maurice Sendak.

First a disclaimer for the complainers. Just because I get it, doesn’t mean that I condone it – ie - burning and banning books. It means that I still have a lot of deprogramming to do.

I’m not here to defend whether or not I think an author is worth $20. There are deep emotional attachments to Sendak and Blume out there (separate response for Blume coming soon) – so beware that I have no emotional attachment to them beyond remembering them as authors who were off-limits. And believe me, that is enough.

Sendak: pedophilia and birthday suits. There I said it. If you listen to enough Christian radio and are surrounded by people who legitimately fear dirty old men – it takes about 2 seconds to figure out why Sendak's In the Night Kitchen so often shows up on the banned list. Do I need to spell out that pictures of naked little boys surrounded by creepy old men who want to use him as milk is going to be a huge turn off to a lot of parents out there?

I didn’t even realize until I checked it out that this was the same author as Where the Wild Things Are – another book I haven’t read – because it encouraged bad behavior in children, or something along those lines.

Look how that backfired…

As for In the Night Kitchen - I’d be more concerned about a parent freaking out about the book because of the nudity than a parent who didn't freak out over the nudity.

Why?

Because hopefully little kids don’t understand why parents freak out about things like pedophilia. Also, little kids who get the message that being naked is bad – is unfortunate.

Nevertheless, it's unfortunate when parents are naïve to the fact that we live in a weird, sometimes creepy world - and blessing or a curse - some parents totally don't get why there is controversy over the book. There is a balance there, somewhere – which involves not instilling fear in a child based on the fear of the parent. Parental Fear gets out of hand very quickly.

Speaking of fear, it scares me that I know exactly what is going through the head of parents who ask to have this book removed from libraries and classrooms. Fear rubs off on kids – and in the case of this book, I discovered that I still have that visceral response I was taught to have. As in – WTF Sendak?

But I sure as heck wouldn’t ban it or discourage a child from reading it. The pictures, though Freudian as hell to an adult, are pretty. Pretty pictures are important for growing imaginations… especially when children are trying to work out dark nightmarish thoughts.

How does Focus on the Family approach these banned books?

First off, they believe that banned books are a bunch of overblown hooey – overreactions by liberal librarians.

Second off, they have book reviews down to a system, filed under "Protecting Your Children." Check out the Categories:

Plot Summary
Christian beliefs
Authority roles
Other belief systems
Profanity/Graphic violence
Kissing/Sex/Homosexuality
Awards
Discussion topics - If your children have read this book or someone has read it to them, consider these discussion topics:

Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is not among their online reviews. Neither is Where the Wild Things Are. What does this mean? Probably that you can’t publish every review of every book out there. Or that I'm not looking hard enough.

However, the reaction to In the Night Kitchen by librarians and parents has been so strong against the nudity as described in this article, (Thirty Years without Diapers: Expurgating and Censoring Maurice Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen" by Matthew Heintzelman ), that Focus on the Family probably no longer needs to spend too much time, erm, focusing on it.

If you don’t talk about it, maybe it will go away, right?

Final conclusion? I’m an adult who makes a habit out of poking fun at Freudian slips that peek out below the hemline. I can’t help but read this book from that context – and know that the author was an adult with similar knowledge when writing/illustrating it. I doubt Sendak intended these types of responses... or at least he was smart enough to know that these responses say more about the person having the allergic reaction, than the artwork itself.

Beyond that – I don’t really care. If kids or parents are disturbed by the nudity – let that be an opening for an honest conversation between parent and child. Don’t let it be a reason to censor it by drawing clothes on the boy. And absolutely, don’t let it be a reason to keep this book from other people’s kids.

Happy Coincidence: Maurice Sendak is celebrating his Birthday today-ish, June 10th!

CLEAR AS MUD : The Difference Between Censored, Challenged, or Banned Books

2011-06-02T21:28:00.002-05:00

We Americans are flippant with use the term and idea of Censorship.

Is is censorship when a parent grounds an angst-ridden teenager for saying Fuck, Damn or Shit? Is it censorship when a public or private school administrator refuses to allow the production and performance of Jesus Christ Superstar? Is it censorship if a national bookstore chain refuses to sell The Anarchist Cookbook? Is it censorship when an organized group of citizens ask to have a book removed from the shelves of their public library based on concerns about racism, sexism or witchcraft?

Yes, No, Maybe, KindaSorta? Not necessarily in that order.

Context matters. For the sake of my Summer of Censored, Challenged and Banned Books goal, I want to start to clarify the difference... with the help of ALA | About Banned & Challenged Books, Laws.com 's 3 Facts About Banned Media and Censorship (etc), and Cool Coloradan Librarian James LaRue's 2007 book The New Inquisition....

Censorship?
~~THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF CENSORSHIP~~ when content is removed from the original, stricken from the record, or "may involve the alteration, adjustment, or edit of an activity, product, or service" (law.com).

Additionally, according to LaRue (librarian context) "Censorship is the action by government officials to prohibit or suppress publications or services on the basis of their content" (LaRue 3 - my emphasis).

Banned?
Not allowing material into a country, a library, a home - often because the contents cause extreme discomfort, the potential for chaos or doesn't jive with the preferred intellectual ambiance. There is a lot of crossover between Bans and Censorship but Bans are perhaps more a "prohibition" than censorship according to law.com. The American Library Association (ALA) seems more likely to use the term Banned than Censored. You'll also notice that "prohibit" is used to describe both censorship (LaRue) and banning (law.com).

Challenged?
LaRue page tres: "a request that a government body or official practice censorship" (my emphasis). So - sometimes material that is challenged - just stays that way: nothing official happens beyond a formal complaint or request to have the item removed from a collection. However, if a challenge is successful, and the book is officially removed, then we're dealing with censorship and banning again.

WTF?, It's Summer. Don't Make Me Think!?
This hurts me more than it hurts you. I promise. My brain is on vacation. Part of the reason I've started my summer reading program with children's and juvenile banned books (In the Night Kitchen and Are You There God?....) is to hopefully give my brain a rest.

It is not always useful to get hung up on semantics but I can see why a lot of English majors go into law school. I can also see why not everyone reads dictionaries for fun. The differences matter when push comes to shove but if you want more nuance - check back after next semester when I expect my Censorship class will help turn this mud into mud pies - the edible kind.

Back to page 5 of Sendak's shocking picture book....

Summer 2011 : Reading the Good (Banned, Challenged & Censored) Stuff

2011-05-30T18:55:00.005-05:00

A Spring semester project on censorship has inspired my 2011 summer reading agenda. The books are listed in a variety of sources: ALA | Frequently Challenged Books; a MnCLU 1983 survey titled “A Report of a Survey On Censorship In Public Elementary And High School Libraries And Public Libraries In Minnesota.”; Focus on the Family (FOF) CitizenLink.com; an article on Censorship and Metaphors by Fenice Boyd and Nancy Bailey; The Music Man.

With the majority of the books picked out, I began brainstorming how to blog about it. Then a Minneapolis bookstore, Boneshaker Books*, launched a 30 Days of Reading challenge for June. 30 Days of Reading gave me an initiative to tap into my occasional Type A personality and create a formal plan of action. Wha-lah - Summer 2011 Book Itinerary:

Differences in Definition of Censorship, Challenged and Banned. (June 1^st)

First Book : In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak circa 1970

(Showed up on nearly every Challenged/Banned/Censored list – almost every year. I didn’t know it was a kid’s picture book until I went to the library to pick it up.)

Second Book : Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume circa 1970

(Thanks to my Jesus background and FOF, I have yet to read a single Judy Blume book. Seeing this book on the list of the 1983 survey, about the same time it was denied from my repertoire, inspired a semester-long search digging into censorship via FOF.)

Third Book : The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier circa 1974

(A book I know nothing about other than it shows up on pretty much every banned, challenged book list out there. I remember fellow English Ed majors discussing it back in the day – but I’m pretty clueless.)

Fourth Book : Christine by Stephen King circa 1983

(So many Stephen King to choose from. So little time. Often lists just say “all books” by Stephen King – as they also do to Judy Blume. I chose this one because…. Duh.)

Fifth Book : Briar Rose by Jane Yolen circa 1992

(First heard about it in the article by Bailey and Boyd on Censorship Metaphors. Was BURNED in a homophobic book burning back in the 1990s. Whenever a book about the Holocaust is burned by the Christian Right – brownie points. Yep – that was a really tasteless, multi-layered pun. Something I just discovered?! Yolen references Anne Sexton’s poem by the same title from Sexton’s Transformation collection – a book I kinda, sorta wrote about back in 2008.)

Sixth Book : Animal Farm by George Orwell circa 1946

(This book is the only one actually censored by the government. I’ve balked at reading this one for years. I hope the timing is right.)

Seventh Book : The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam circa 11th Century and 19th Century (Edward FitzGerald's translation)

(My dad was a Music Man – and his favorite musical was – The Music Man. This poem shows up throughout the movie as an example of trashy literature pushed by the town librarian. If you’re lucky and live in the TC – I’m planning a Music Man viewing party with my Library Buds to top off the summer.)

Poetry Alternative – Howl by Allen Ginsberg circa 1956

(A classic. I normally avoid male beatnik writers. Love the women. I roll my eyes at most of the Beat men. Maybe Ginsberg will turn that trend around. O – and it was seized by the government.)

_________________

I don’t expect to finish all of these before the end of June, but follow me through June for daily Tweets or blogs about what I’m reading – and what others are reading. I find reviews pretty boring and often totally useless so I’m going to focus more on reviewing reviews of the books – especially from the vantage point of Focus on the Family. Things might get personal – but I’ll try to keep it Jesus-Free.

FYI: With the exception of George Orwell (1984), I have not yet read any of the books or authors on the list. Yep - I'm a Judy Blume, Stephen King, & Maurice Sendak Virgin.

My biggest challenge? Reading books I may not want to read. I’ve quit forcing books on myself. I highly discourage it. Timing is everything when it comes to reading and love - so I may wander off the chosen path a bit – but I do intend on starting AND finishing the books listed above – before I’m back to reading required reading – on Censorship. Yep – I'm taking a library class dedicated to Censorship next fall!!!

Love and Thanks to Minneapolis Central Library! I couldn’t afford this Summer Reading List without you! Seriously.

*I’m proud to volunteer at Boneshaker Books. If you stumble across this blog series and don’t live close enough to the Minneapolis store to buy books there, you’re going to have to overlook my bias and drool from a distance. If you’re from the TwinCities, get your bloomin’ arse in there and Buy A Book Already!

QUESTIONs :
1. What books are you planning to read, or avoid reading, this summer?
2. What books have you read that you know were at some point censored or banned from a library or your home?

LINKS
Twitter:
teandoranges (moi)
30 Days of Reading
Boneshaker Books

Zen Melts

2011-05-10T21:26:00.000-05:00

Zen and the art of stacking marble-sized hailStones...

tao Yoga - we're only human

2010-12-28T16:05:00.000-06:00

The world wide web is jam-packed with yoga blogs and I’m about to add my own occasional teandoranges column to the sticky mess.

Why? Because I get the urge to write about my yoga practice, and the lack there-of. However I view writing about my yoga pracitce like the Pharisees who prayed in the street and looked down their noses with a hypocritical, holier-than-thou attitude – or like the priests and prophets that pray in the street, weep and wail and tear their clothes proclaiming 'I am not worthy.'

Yep – that's the way I think when I think about blogging about yoga – like the former fundagelical that I am – it falls somewhere between being a spiritual Diva and physical martyr.

I love yoga, and I love it enough to know that as my rolled up mats collected dust bunnies this past year – I knew that eventually I’d come back around to searching for a practice that works for me – as a person who gets bored with routine but gets highs from the blood rushing to my head and addicted to the sensation of ligaments and muscles yawning open.

I love yoga enough to wait for it – and know that when I don’t physically practice – just thinking about my relationship with my practice, my relationship with my body, my relationship with my thoughts IS practice.

A few years ago I took a 235 hour yoga teacher training course. I spread it out over a two year period – and four years later I still have 5-6 hours left before I can fill out the final paper work to be certified. I’m not a hard-core yogi, less strong and less flexible than some, more than others – totally aware that strength and flexibility is not what is important in the end. Yoga is something that will be a part of the rest of my life. I want other people to consider it.

My yoga teaching classes transitioned me to the decision to go back to get a second degree so I can work in and create libraries. Going back to school this last year and a half reminded me how important it is to try to balance all that stuff going on in my head with all that stuff going on in my body.

And attempting the balance has brought me to this point… I’ve practiced yoga three times this last week after about nine months of not touching a mat.

The first day of practice – I just stood at the front of my mat, realizing how much work it is to stand and pay attention to my breath. I stood there spacing out, fidgeting, looking at my winter-fied toes, thinking about blogging, thinking about how long its been, wondering how ujjayi breath sounds to Study Buddy (my cat – yep every yoga blogger talks about their pets:). I stood there for over 5 minutes – not wanting to start something I couldn’t finish.

I finally got around to one Sun Salutation A and a few half-assed poses – and I knew I was in for a good time when a modified Warrior reminded me of the sensation of yawning in my legs… it felt so Good. I knew I’d practice again soon.

2nd practice this week, I fell into a kinda-sorta Ashtanga primary series routine… the kind of thing I do whenever I know I need to practice but don’t want to think too much about what comes next. I forgot to put this pose here and that pose there, skipped a quite a few altogether and rediscovered how stubborn and focused I feel during utthita parsvasahita (standing extended leg) A, B and C and how happy I feel as my knee drops in ardha baddha padmottanasana (half-bound standing lotus)– happy and vulnerable – a strange mix.

Today I decided to do modified half vinyasas between my seated poses – many of which I skipped altogether and made the executive decision to do no inversions beyond a moderated upward bow pose. In all I did maybe 50% of the primary series poses and only the A version of Sun Salutations.

I admitted that blogging about yoga is predictable and probably unnecessary. Looking at the post – I realize that it isn’t much different than writing about what one eats throughout the day. Not too worried about who reads or cares – but am worried, like so many yoga bloggers out there, that my attempt to find balance will require that I kick myself for over or under doing it in my practice.

I’m only human. Only human is more than enough.

hmmm p.s. Humans like to say “I” a lot.

The Stuff You Find in Books - OTHER PEOPLE'S BOOKMARKS

2010-12-26T15:11:00.001-06:00

My library job occasionally requires that I shelf-read... read call numbers on all the book spines within a section and make sure 301.412 Of 101n 1973 sits to the left of 301.412 Of 2n 1973.

I also pull out slips of paper or paperclips and unfold dog-ears. People leave behind class notes, paycheck stubs, bus passes, student IDs, expired coupons galore, sticky post-its, pens and pencils... all of which once-upon-a-time worked as bookmarks.

The most interesting bookmarks so far? A New Orleans style Pattypan squash recipe, a bag of tiny rubber bands for braces and a Thank-You note from a grieving widow to someone who attended her husband's funeral. And some very lovely bookmarks.

I've kept a couple bookmarks. Everything else is recycled.

If you get to the Pattypan squash recipe before I do - Please send me a review!

Pattypan squash New Orleans
(Makes 4 servings)

8 pattypan squash (about 5-inch diameter)
1 1/2 c water
1 large white onion, chopped
1 small bay leaf
1 c crushed cooked tomatoes
1/4 c freshly chopped parsley
1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 c cooked brown or white rice
1/4 c chopped parsley
_____________________________________
1. Cut squash into wedges; simmer inpot with water, onion, and bay leaf until tender. Drain but reserve cooking liquid. Discard bay leaf.

2. Mash vegetables with fork; place in microwave-safe serving dish. Mix in tomatoes, parsley, Tabasco, salt and pepper. Add rice and cooking liquid as needed to keep moist.

3. Stir well, reheat in microwave, and serve garnished with parsley.

I'm a Pattypan virgin. Is there a better way to cook this and avoid the microwave?

GOALS FOR 2010: toilet tags

2010-09-04T10:23:00.008-05:00

This wall is now painted red. fuck the buff.

LEFT COLUMN
Goals for 2010:
1. Grow a vagina (scribbled out)
2. See what fits up there.
3. Blog (scratched out) TWEET (scratched out) friendster
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
(1) LOVE ONE ANOTHER!
4. UNDERPANTS!!
6. BREAK SOMEONE'S HEART
7. Chill. (A little.)
8. grow a pair and start school!
(Have they grown yet?)
17. KEY WEST OR BUST ... BABY.
#1? Nail Keba - she's so hot. No. Really. Keba is fucking smoking hot.
20. purge self of all narcissistic tendencies

RIGHT COLUMN
21. Dance like everyone is watching!
22. Get a life and stop
writing on bathroom walls <<---- HATER
23. Find a Lover
24. GAY'S number in Brazil
24. LOSE MY ANAL
VIRGINITY
26. fuck bad bitches
smoke big blunts
who am i to tell ya,
ya only live once!

When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Librarian...

2010-08-24T12:21:00.005-05:00

... or at the very least work in a library.

I first heard about blogs when applying for grad school in Madison for a MLIS (Masters in Library & Information Sciences). Somewhere in my librarian grad school research I read and got it in my head that a blog would be one way to show MLIS programs that I meant business.

Problem is Hot4Jesus took on a life of its own. By the time I sent in my Madison application I cringed at the possibility of my application and my sacrilegious blog mixing like oil and water. In true Xtine form, I applied to only one program: Madison. I didn’t get accepted. I highly doubt my blogs had anything to do with not getting accepted. I’d been out of college for way too long (though just right for me) and who knows why else – other than Madison is pretty darn competitive and luck would have it that “God” didn’t want me going there anyway.

No – seriously – while looking at other library grad programs I kept hearing rave reviews about a two year Associates program in Minneapolis for Library & Information Technology (LIT). After I sat down with the department head I was sold hook, line and sinker.

I’m starting my second year in the LIT program and absolutely love it. Actually I’m on the two and a half year track. Once again – typical Xtine. Maybe I’ll continue and pursue a Masters. Maybe I won’t. Either way, this summer I started work in the campus library after years of whoring myself out for tips.

Every shift in the stacks makes my head spin - creatively speaking – and I’ve been itching to blog about it. It’s going to take a lot of hard work to get me blogging in such a way that doesn’t make someone blush – so until a more professional library blog phase comes along I’m going to let it all hang out.

Years ago I worked in the Rolvaag Library at St. Olaf College. Back then I was innocent and could barely look anyone in the eye. Soon after graduating, I quit my teaching career to pursue music, the stage, writing and me. It’s taken over ten years but I know that if I had a job shelving books and answering mundane questions for the rest of my life, I’d be a happy camper… especially if I can write about the books, about my love affair with Jesus, about anything under the sun. Maybe someday music.

So here goes... The stuff that inspires me about libraries. The stuff that inspires me about print and images and audio and and and. The stuff that inspires me about helping people find what they are looking for – when we finally work up the courage to search.

I’ll write library posts when I can – and maybe sometimes when I should be doing homework instead.

Bis dann…

POLE ART: a cat in its natural habitat

2010-08-09T14:04:00.007-05:00

Am I the only one who looks at a telephone pole and visualizes the forest it once stood in, the birds of the air that nested and rested in its branches, the whistle of wind between needles?

Nope - finally came across telephone pole art that acknowledges that trees are for climbing and cats know it.

Stuff I'd Do This Weekend - If I Didn't Have to Whore Myself Out For Money

2010-08-06T12:38:00.011-05:00

I plan to make a habit of this. A wish list. A Let's Riot, Minneapolis! List.

If I could, I would:

# 1. Avoid two of the Minneapolis Art Fairs which I can't avoid in Uptown and Loring Park. Instead, on Saturday I would go to.....

The Banquet Hall Backyard Art Sale & Flea Market "located between Loring & Powderhorn art fairs.: Music, grilling, jewelry, screenprints, photography, zines, paintings, pinatas & more!"

Where? 2904 3rd Ave South, Mpls 55408

When? TOMORROW! Saturday, August 7th - 11am - 6pm

For your own sanity and mine - stay off the beaten path this weekend.

# 2. Hang out at the Bedlam Theatre All Weekend Long! I have yet to eat/drink on their rooftop - and with countdown to closing time, I really, really need to. I've done a little volunteering there - love the space and the vibe and the ballziness of their performances. It is also the Fringe Festival this weekend - so I could kill two birds with one show. Which show?

ANIGA ADIGA - which will be performed near the Bedlam at the Mixed Blood Theater... but is a Bedlam production about "what it’s like to be young and East African in Minnesota." If I could - I would imbibe at the Bedlam - get played at the Mixed Blood - then go back to the Bedlam Social again - then hop on the train. Goddamn! I'm going to miss the current Bedlam location - unless it moves closer to me.

Better yet - DONATE YOUR TIME at the Bedlam this weekend or before they move. Email wemakeit@bedlamtheatre.org if you're interested in volunteering.

Break A Leg Fringe Thespians!!!

# 3. Go to North Dakota. There is a niece there I haven't met yet. Enough said.

RED HOT ART FESTIVAL: If You Can't Be Art - Buy Art ... & Vice Versa

2010-07-31T16:17:00.007-05:00

I've bought thrift store and rummage sale junk art. I have pieces of my college roommate's - a studio art major - which I cherish and move everywhere with me. I compulsively photograph graffiti. I visit art museums and avoid galleries. I invested in soft pastels a few years back for my own sanity. I encourage friends who do or should be doing more art - for everyone's sanity. I prefer to bastardize the phrase BUY ART into BE ART - but today - I bought Art for the first time ever at Stevens Square's Red Hot Art Festival in Minneapolis.

I've never taken an Art History class but the artists in my life rubbed off on me and this is the girl who memorized the layout of the P World Book Encyclopedia - because P is for Painting. I like what I like and sometimes I can explain why - and other times not. For instance... would it be fair to ask me to explain why Dadaism makes me salivate but Warhol doesn't? It may be fair but you won't get the answer you're looking for. So ... just sit back and enjoy the pieces I bought. Or not.

And PLEASE! If you live in or around Minneapolis - support this Red Hot Art Festival - and others like it. It sure beats the crap out of next weekend's Uptown "art" Fair. If I have to explain myself there - then you're wasting your time here :)

Worm Killin' Dogs by Chuck U

I've seen his prints out and about in Minneapolis and actually remember writing about it when I should have been doing homework. It is a blast from the 70's - for me - and he mentioned Escher as an influence to the art fair-goers. And note to Chuck: David Macaulay is the artist I couldn't name on the spot.

Chuck gets a Grand Prize ribbon from me - because for whatever reason his was the official first art piece I've bought from an artist EVER! And because his work already inspired daydreams on paper. Tons of work and information on his website: Chuck U.

The Secret Oaks by Ben Boylan (2004)

Ben is moving to the East Coast - so he is selling everything half price. But half-off is not the reason I tracked back to his booth. I like it. A lot. I'm most excited to hang this on my wall. You can see more of his work on the MNartists site and he will eventually have an Etsy site under the name of Everyday Practice. I'll link asap.

Go Back by Mike Mason

Mike tells me I've got the ONLY one of the above ink drawing. :-p He talked of an argument/discussion with a professor that led to this new leaf. The prof dissed drawing from photos and Mike defended his work but also came to a compromise. Clothes from photos. Flesh from real life. There are more in this series and I also have my eye on the orgasmic women False Alarm woodcut print. Hunt it down in his online portfolio.

Why did I not buy from any women artists? I was very tempted to. Charlotte Mann's oceanic/shoreline paintings over architectural floor plans totally float my boat. O god. Sorry. That was a horrible pun. She doesn't have a website yet, but if I trek back over to the Art Fair tomorrow - it will be to buy one of her pieces. Charlotte - keep on keepin' on.

Otherwise - to be honest - some of the art by women was too girly for me - some of it not. I'm not about to go into a dissertation about the male to female ratio of art I bought today. Maybe another time.

Biggest Criticism: Beyond the stuff that is stuff that you can buy elsewhere that doesn't jump out at you... there were too many octopuses, birds, butterflies, human hearts galore (irony), nautical themed, steam-punked, inked and printed animals. I also prefer graffiti to be subversive and on the side of my apartment building... please! And thank you. That is as far as I'll take my lame-ass attempt at being an art critic. I'd hate to discourage anyone from doing more of what they are doing.

Ooops: forgot to mention Devin Johnson's accessories. I bought a pair of earrings for my burgeoning earring collection which have a steam-punk flavor to them - done really, really well - with a lot of thought and love and an eye for history: "The hammers from the chimes of a grandfather clock," he said. I'm going to wear them to work tonight and will pass on further reviews. **

This is far from a comprehensive collection of what is good at the Red Hot Art Festival. Go dig for your own treasures. If you're lucky you'll have background music provided by Tortuga! - a jazz-electro combo. Once that Hammond organ flavored group began it was like I was sitting in my childhood library, drooling over the P Encyclopedia with my dad playing in the background. I will go to see them play - and I encourage you to do so also.The best background noise a girl like me could wish for.

Thank you to DIM Media for reminding me of the festival. I'll write all y'all up in your very own blog post - eventually.

Gotta go before my Study Buddy gets bored with shredding Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground and moves onto my new pretty pictures.

Product Placement Footnote: What Was I Drinking When I Wrote This? Canada Dry Green Tea - i love the colors on the can.

** UPDATE: EVERYONE at work asked about the earrings, loved them and wanted to know where they could buy them. If only all art could be worn.

AMERICAN SWEDISH INSTITUTE: Reminding US That We're All Immigrants & To Be Tourists in Our Own City

2010-07-30T14:24:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time the King of Sweden visited Minnesota. During a parade in his honor there was a shout from the crowd, someone using the King's given name - not his royal name - and the king turned to see a boyhood friend. They tearfully embraced and with emotion exchanged stories from their childhood together.

Or maybe it was the King of Norway, or the Crown Prince of Sweden. Which king? Not sure. Which royal visit to Minnesota? Get back to me on that. Who was shouting from the crowd? My great (great?) grandfather. He had grown up around royalty because his father was the head honcho Royal Mason who built stuff for the Swedish kings.

We all have these flippant stories with murky details about our ancestors - speculations of royal illegitimacy or grandmothers who refuse to talk about where she got her dark eyes.

My visit to the American Swedish Institute yesterday reminded me that it might be fun to take genealogy seriously. While I've toyed with the idea for years, I've also told myself over and over again that our ancestors don't matter. Today matters. Now matters. What's the point in digging up bones? Don't I and all Americans just need to let it all go? The way heritage was described in my family - "She/He was a Proud German." (and pride as one of the greatest evils, mind you). "He/She was a Stubborn Swede." "He/She was a Crazy Norwegian." - it was seldom something to be proud of.

As I toured the museum exhibits a lady came up to me with a survey. She asked me:
1. Is this your first visit to the Swedish Institute?

Yes

2. What brings you to the Museum today?

The Finnish Architects exhibit (My Paradise: Finnish & Finnish American Summer Architecture) but I've been meaning to stop in for quite a while.

3. Are you Swedish?

Yes, partially.

4. In what ways do you celebrate or practice your Swedish heritage?

Um. Hmmm. Ahhhh.... None really.

(she looked disappointed)

Maybe a few recipes?

And then we chatted for a bit.

All I have from Sweden was a crazy stonemason grandfather who told crazy stories. Perhaps when I practice writing I practice my Swedish storytelling heritage... or when I played with legos or puzzles as a kid and salivate over architecture as an adult I celebrate the Swedish Stonemason genes. Or when I obsessively write about religion I celebrate my Swedish Baptist ancestors who preached or claimed to be related to the crazy Christian mystic Swedenborg.

There are no Swedish recipes - I lied about that. My grandmothers passed on German recipes, but no Scandinavian ones. The first time I stuffed my face with Scandinavian food was when my Norwegian college fed us smorgasbord style at Christmas.

Yes, I lied about the recipes.

I overheard the lady telling other volunteers, "The only thing people say they still celebrate about their Swedish heritage is the food."

"Yep. Isn't that too bad? The majority of our visitors say that."

Believe it or not, this post is meant to praise and plug the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. The Museum is housed in the gorgeous Turnblad mansion and they are expanding their space. The mansion is worth visiting just for the sake of the mansion - and if you're into your Swedish or immigrant heritage there are permanent exhibits about Swedish emigration/immigration, a huge painting of Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale, and a well-stocked gift store including books on how we can learn about environmental and socially conscious civic life from modern Scandinavians. I downed two cups of coffee in the Kaffestuga before hopping on my bike to go have a margarita and quesadilla elsewhere. But I will return.

FYI: Hennepin County Libraries offer FREE Museum passes!

In what way do you celebrate or suppress your heritage?

Vintage City Classics: Bling That Makes Me Smile

2010-07-20T23:47:00.004-05:00

Vintage City Classics is a Minneapolis jewelry, accessory and clothing company that recycles old baubles into new jewels. This summer I've been stopping by their studio when I need a girly fix. I dropped off sentimental bits and pieces that were falling apart and returned to pick up re-invented bling: 3 crumbling bracelets turned into a necklace, a reinforced wooden necklace, and my first clip-ons turned into pierced earrings.

There's a story there worthy of Hot4Jesus - but yes - I got my ears pierced for the FIRST TIME EVER last winter! The earrings that convinced me to take the leap from virginal lobes to pagan piercings are gaudy, ghetto gold hoops within hoops with dangling fake pearls. I wore them as clip-ons until my ears screamed to just be pierced already! With the help of Joan, Holly and Jen I bridged the gap between unpierced to all-grown-up and back to girly again.

This Friday Vintage City Classics will display their talents at OutSpoken: Beauties, Bikes & Beats "a bike-centric music and fashion event showcasing the city's growing enthusiasm for urban cycling while supporting local [Minneapolis/Minnesota] artists." I went into their studio this week to throw my hooker cash around and invested in a new key chain for my bike key & bag. I got to see some of their pieces for the OutSpoken event - and if someone doesn't buy the recycled bike tire cascading rubber hearts earrings on Friday (I can't go - I'll be whoring myself out elsewhere) - then I really, really, really want them for my "I'm all grown up" collection.

Thank you Ladies! Your work & art makes me feel instantly girly :) - and makes me smile :)

RELATED PAGES:
Vintage City Classics - Facebook fan-page with links to their twitter and etsy pages
OutSpoken: Beauties, Bikes & Beats - Facebook Event Page describing the event at Red Stag Supper Club in Northeast.

READERS: Do you have a good "when I first got my ears pierced" story?

street smART: I'm so bored, Minneapolis. Let's Riot!

2010-07-10T12:29:00.001-05:00

Stuff to Stop the Boredom in Minneapolis Today. In decreasing levels of interest:

Favorite : RIOT!

Top : Twin Cities Zinefest - to remind myself that I still want/need to publish a zine

Top Half : New Belgium Tour de Fat - already wandered through and checked out boys in tu-tus with fabulous facial hair

Bottom Half : Basilica Block Party - as a musician, music and people standing around watching musicians bores me - and the hell if I would give my money in a round about way to any church remotely affiliated with catholicism

Bottom : Work My Corner

street smART: HOTTEA string theories

2010-07-01T15:07:00.002-05:00

Finally, HOTTEA string tags a telephone pole which makes it easy to photograph. I've photographed his work for over a year, but the string on chain-link fences doesn't show up very well. I've been photographing telephone poles anyway - because I love the mass of nails and staples and left-over posters.

My sticker-artist friend and I like to speculate on what HOTTEA stands for.

My Theory: a round-about way to spell HAUGHTY

Her Theory: he goes by the nickname T - and tags as HOT T(EA) - because she's seen him doing his thing - and he is a hottie :)

General Theory: he doesn't give a fuck about how we interpret his tags.

Happy Midsummer Dreams!

2010-06-25T14:40:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time I played Helena in Shakespeare’s Rom-Com A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I was cast for the part my on-stage experience included Hodel from Fiddler on the Roof and Nancy from Oliver!. Since musical theatre lines are mostly sung I freaked out when I was cast as Helena. Helena had some of the longest monologues and there were no musical cues to remind me of the blocking. How the heck was I going to memorize all those lines?

But I did it, thrived and survived to tell the tale.

Three years earlier, my senior year of college, I had taken my final required English Ed major class: Intro to Shakespeare. I rarely showed up, rarely did more than read the scripts and threw together a few essays and watched the required Kenneth Branagh BBC Shakespeare videos. There is such a thing as too much Kenneth Branagh.

The Prof was horrible and I was overwhelmed with Level Three Education and English classes. Because of missed attendance and assignments I barely passed – but somehow managed a C-. I was embarrassed. I still have nightmares that I DIDN’T pass Intro to Shakespeare and was denied my diploma.

But I managed to kick ass as Helena a few years later. Once you perform Shakespeare, or whoever wrote those plays, you gain a new level of respect for language, movement, rhythm, sound… unlike what is found in musical theatre… and a well-timed grimace and re-adjustment of the bra strap can send the audience howling.

Shakespeare turned me into a “laugh slut.” It’s one thing to get tears or applause after a scene or song, but making people laugh? O fuck… it’s as good as sex.

You say it, then say it again, then write it down, then read it out loud, then read it differently, different inflection, different timing, different perspective, say it, read it, write it, read it, block it, play it.

The words spin and saunter and banter on stage. This is magic. You can’t stop it.

Happy Midsummer!

Raven Reads His Fortune Koan

2010-04-21T19:02:00.005-05:00

A raven landed on a tree branch outside my window with a fortune cookie in his mouth.

Do I want you reading my shit if you don't get it?

Picture above: a murder of crows - which is quite different than an unkindness of ravens. Do you have a preference?

Do I get it?

I hope not.

Crushing on Keats: What Spring can not sing, Autumn can

2010-04-09T21:26:00.007-05:00

I’ve had a crush on John Keats and his assonance since 1995. And I have an earnest college essay to prove it. Keats was one of the first or the first poet (it’s a blur) to move me to tears. Last month I watched Bright Star. I bawled like a baby.

Some of my Keats crush is based in my own experience of growing up country – tv-less, quiet, slow days watching seasons burp, belch and sneeze the earth’s wildness, watching life sprout up around the edges of death. When I first read "To Autumn," the season, the poem that blows all seasonal poems out of the water, when I first read this I was just beginning to realize that sometimes the less said the better, and the more said with my ear to the sound, the better.

If I could taste the words like these... “Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, born aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies (27-29)”… if I could taste the words in my mouth, if I could feel them vibrating in the back of my throat, if my ears tingled without reading it out loud – this was good.

And his letters. I remember pulling the book of letters from the college library stacks and standing there – standing there reading until I had to sit. He knew so much. He knew too much.

What would he have said to Spring, not Autumn, being the official time to observe Poetry? What would he have said about urban bird nests threaded with plastic?
Coleridge and Keats and Whitman - the ménage a trois that held my hand and kissed my neck and stroked my hair – all in the name of lessening my fear of the blatant, lessening my fear of the sensual, lessening my fear of life.

Why do I keep naïve essays about long-standing crushes on dead poets? For the same reason I keep letters back and forth from my first “love” affair with a writer – to remind me that the urgency will pass, that words attempting to describe life and death and first kisses are never frivolous. We can only try to repeat in words what is felt in the chest when we watch a chrysalis split open. We can only try.

Ernest Rhodes: too many walk when they were taught how to fly

2010-02-04T20:42:00.008-06:00

I take Ernest for granted. When I want to have an intelligent conversation at work, I turn to him. He never disappoints. Some of the most helpful conversations I’ve had about Music (heck – about Much More than Music) I’ve had with him. If I could designate a Music Guru for myself, that Guru would be Ernie.

How so?

Does one have to explain why one designates someone as one’s guru?

No. I willingly offer my services as a peripheral disciple.

Doing a lot less to prove that I am talented

I remember the 1st time I saw Ernest perform live. And I remember the 2nd time I danced to him. It’s high time there’s been a 3rd time for me… which will coincide with the Transistor CD release party scheduled for March 13th at Sauce.

Ernest Rhodes is worth far more than being taken-for-granted by Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Midwest. He’s a Wise Guy. He’s a Poet. He’s a Musician. He Inspires.

He is Aware and Awake.

LISTEN UP.

Ernest’s and Justin Staggs’ Transistor video is fantastic. And fucking awesome.

WATCH IT.

The Transistor CD release date in Minneapolis is February 23rd. Keep an eye on ernestrhodes.com for downloading info – or trot to Electric Fetus, Cheapo, Mindstate Distribution or Fifth Element to buy it in the flesh.

Give me all you can
I can handle it

Emily Dickinson Was God

2009-12-28T13:19:00.005-06:00

At her most fertile moment - Emily Dickinson day dreamed me into life.

In my most fertile nightmare - sticky, pliable, inviting - I aborted her.

She never existed.

Now what?

Christine Vyrnon -2009-

Orange Fruit Zen

2009-12-25T15:50:00.009-06:00

Zen and the art of stacking orange fruit during a Minnesota Christmas Blizzard

clementine
mandarin
tangerine (or was it a tangelo?)
pink blood orange
cara cara juicing orange
fuyu persimmon

.... and the pineapple stands alone

street smART: winter Jail roses

2009-12-24T15:31:00.010-06:00

Are the paper roses in a favorite street gallery the last roses of summer? I didn't notice them until after the first snow. Did I miss this collage in its prime?

They are far too hardy to represent the delicate European Christmas rose that inspired the pagan-christian legends of Madelon whose poverty-stricken tears transformed into roses for baby Jesus.

No - these are downtown Minneapolis killer Jail roses with lead in their veins.

I know of no other roses that would wait so patiently for me to notice them - from tapering summer to deep winter. It's about damned time I stopped and stuck my nose in them.

Coffee Koan

2009-08-20T15:56:00.005-05:00

Though I got rid of my car years ago, occassionally I experience an uncontrollable urge to buy crappy coffee from gas stations. As I sip the nondescript liquid, I have visions of driving across the prairie with a full tank of gas, singing along to Buffy Sainte-Marie's "I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again."

The rain is falling lightly on the buildings and the cars
I've said goodbye to city friends, department stores and bars
The lights of town are at my back, my heart is full of stars
And I'm going to be a country girl again.

Does this vision mean that I (A) need a car in my life again, (B) need a vacation, (C) need to switch back to tea, or (D) have really awesome taste in music?

Morning-After Zen

2009-07-30T23:24:00.007-05:00

Zen and the Art of Stacking Bottle Caps the Morning-After Movies in the Park.

MGD

Miller Lite

Sam Adams

Amstel Light

Summit EPA

Summit Pilsner

Bells Oberon

Hardcore Cider

Lost Earring

Cheap Wine
PBR

Neon Green?

Water Bottle

Loring Park

Man Made Gods: RIP Michael Jackson. Forgive Us, For We Know Not What We Do

2009-06-25T19:11:00.015-05:00

Fourth grade. Middle of Winter. Northwestern Minnesota

Still dark outside. Everyone rumbles in. Moon boots yanked off. The prettiest girl takes off her snowflake pompom stocking cap, her permed hair sweaty from the cold and warmth. The cutest boy takes off his puffy red ski jacket, his t-shirt staticy from the dry wind. The poorest boy goes to his desk in the same clothes he’s worn all week with no space age Tropicana juice sack or pudding snack or Doritos in his lunch bag. (i shouldn’t be noticing them but that is all i do... notice them). I’m quiet, wondering if I look ugly or pretty today. I’m in love with a number of these boys and I don’t think they know. I don’t think they notice. Maybe today he will say something unrelated to “pass my paper forward.”

As though the holy spirit passed through the room, a murmur begins about One Man. The popular girls are brazen, loud, and flirtatious about Him. The boys only have loud and large good to say about Him. The quieter ones agree. Twenty-four of them, give or take a few million, one of Him. He is the most beautiful man alive. He is awesome, totally rad. He’s a CARD: cool awesome radical dude. The girls are in love. The boys are in love. Everyone saw Him last night. One of the cute boys has learned His dance. Someone else still wears one, only one, glove. It was only last night that they saw Him and it was totally rad. He is a really good singer and dancer. The cute boy has taken his moon boots off and is in his stockings on the polished wood floor. Middle of winter. He continues his moonbootless walk.

He’s really really cute. He’s really really good. Everyone in unison. The quieter ones agree. All sing His praise. Someone important notices I’m stupefied, just watching, just noticing. Someone important turns to me and asks, “Don’t you think He’s awesome? Isn’t He really cute? Isn’t Michael Jackson rad?”

Michael Jackson? Who in the world is Michael Jackson?

My brain shoots a feverish light as everyone turns to listen to what the important person has to ask and what the quiet girl has to say. A small silence enters, swinging of heads, focus of eyes, hush from exhalation of breath. Somewhere in their childhood wisdom they know, or have heard somewhere, maybe out in the woods, that Still Waters Run Deep, and they kind of want to know what I will say. I snap myself into a strong decision.

Do I think michael jackson is awesome?

“No. I don’t like him. I think he’s dumb.”

Unison exhale inhale. They might gang up on me and moon walk me into the floor. Half the boys’ mouths hang open in shock. Half the girls sneer and one asks me again to make sure they’ve heard right. They chant the routine, “oh my gods” and “I think he’s awesome.” “Oh my God! Did you hear that? She doesn’t like Michael Jackson.”

Their worship and heretical remarks rise to feverish pitch again until the bell rings. Somewhere in the confusion, another girl, semi-popular, semi-quiet, stands near me and says, “I don’t like him either,” mostly to me in support, partly to the class, but they are still in the convulsions of the original shock and working back to their high-pitched praise. They don’t really care what she thinks.

A pleasant, heady turmoil slices through my brain.

One: My announcement gave me two minutes of infamy in a fourth grade classroom. I was the center of attention. The feeling of eyes and emotions focused on me, my words and emotions, sent my heart screaming for more… more of that undivided attention.

Two: I had made it through that episode without having to give any particulars to back up my opinion, an opinion I was now quite proud of and cherished for years to come, even after I knew I had to change my mind about the possible Extreme talents of michael jackson.

Three: I had no idea in heaven, earth, or hell, who they were worshipping. I was glad I had made it through that episode without having to explain any of this, not having to remind them why I didn’t know who he was. I was glad they were too in love with him to pick at my reasons for not loving him. My response had been too much of a rush for me, and them. I didn’t want to explain it away.

I didn’t know who Michael Jackson was because they had something I didn’t. This was 1984, February 29. Do you remember the Grammys when he made a grand appearance? It was channel 11 up in Northwestern MN 8pm CT (???). I don’t remember because we had no TV. I didn’t have a TV. Not for the previous six years. Not for the next twenty years.
And counting.
And counting.

postscript> and then when he burned his hair during the making of a commercial, enmasse they ripped down posters, tossed out albums, said he was stupid, dumb, and meant nothing to them. The god making process come full circle. Offer up another burnt offering to our sacrificial lamb.

RIP Michael Jackson. Forgive us, for we know not what we do.

(((Christine Vyrnon © 2009
... written in 2002, while in the throes of leaving Jesus... an unpublished attempt to understand how we make our own gods, and why we sacrifice these man made gods. further editing may ensue)))

street smART: bombed by love

2009-06-17T15:30:00.007-05:00

"THANK YOU!" to the artist who recently love-bombed my neighborhood.

A few months back, I created a meditation that used my own version of love-bombing. Now I have a daily reminder to revist that meditation.

Who Knew?: apparently the Air Force considered the use of a "love bomb" that would make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to one another. Though I doubt the artist had this in mind, yes, Minneapolis has one of the strongest GLBT communities in the nation. And we're Proud of it.

"Lysistrata." Is it still relevant?

And then the question: if love and sex were less repressed, would there be less war?

I don't know.

bomb away

"stay all day, if you want to"

Fruit Stone Zen

2009-06-15T14:50:00.004-05:00

Zen and the Art of Stacking Fruit Stones.
David Macaulay's "Underground".
Nectarine.
Cherry.
Cherimoya.

Chipped China Zen

2009-06-15T14:33:00.003-05:00

Zen and the Art of Stacking Chipped China from the Ostsee.

Leonard Cohen All The Way From China

2009-05-03T21:17:00.015-05:00

As I speak, the Author of the title of this blog is down the street, on stage, letting it all hang out... and I'm not there to grovel.

Leonard Cohen is in town. I belong to the Leonard Cohen cult.

Some people prefer the Tom Waits cult. Or the Johnny Cash cult. Or the Kurt Cobain cult. Or the Lou Reed cult. Or the Tupac cult. Someday there will be a Randy Travis cult. (o you laugh now... but he who laughs first laughs laughs)

I first learned of Leonard when I belonged to the Jesus cult. I also had recently joined the Nina Simone cult. I'm still a card-carrying member of the Nina Simone cult. The Jesus cult is doing just fine without me.

So my Jesus posse at the time cultishly listened to Jeff Buckley, and being that Jesus people always like to find semi-secular songs that have a semi-christian message to them, we added Cohen's "Hallelujah" to our basement jamming repertoire. Go figure.

At the same time Nina's version of "Suzanne" entered my consciousness. And the rest is herstory.

After I left the Jesus cult, I couldn't get enough of Leonard Cohen as a writer. The friend with whom I briefly started a band (whatever came of 'the zen molesters'?) lent me his copy of "Beautiful Losers" and I never gave it back. He never gave me a copy of the songs we recorded.

Touche.

I read "Strange Music" in place of my Bible. I burned "Suzanne" onto every mix I made for ever lover, friend, sibling who would take a mix from me.

And you know that she's half crazy/but that's why you want to be there.

I posted lyrics to "Hallelujah" above my toilet.

She's touched your perfect body with her mind.

I sometimes forget it's there, but guys who have to stand and take a piss see it. Leonard Cohen would be proud to know that someone occassionally reads his lyrics while taking a piss...

There was a time you let me know

what's really going on below

but now you never show it to me, do you?

I remember when I moved in you,

and the holy dove was moving too,

and every breath we drew was Hallelujah!

Jesus .... Eat Your Heart Out!

Parking Lot Zen

2009-04-22T17:08:00.003-05:00

Zen and the art of stacking stones in abandoned parking lots...

OUR FUTURE: toilet tags

2009-03-26T23:17:00.010-05:00

THIS IS IT?

recession koan: art imitates 3M-Sony-life

2009-03-26T22:11:00.011-05:00

For those who've seen Jean-Luc Godard's "Tout va bien" (1972) and have followed recent reports of bosses kidnapped by striking workers in France:

Does life imitate art, or does Godard manipulate strikes?

respect-for-lease

derelict lyrics:reed llik

2009-03-01T23:27:00.005-06:00

One of my goals
1. to live in an insignificant and pointless town
where people never pull the shades
and double breasted bankers are shot in cold blood
by horses on foot

One of my goals
1. to form a jam band of infinite eternal songs
and the die hard fans who breed in the open air
sacrifice their young to corporate headquarters
guaranteeing future record sales
in my old age

One of my goals
1. to sing battered lyrics
over the loudspeakers of factory outlet lingerie stores
in order to inappropriately interrupt at inopportune moments
the decisions of female warriors seeking asylum
from the persecution of natural lighting

One of my goals
1. to write a psychedelic book
detailing the shocking mendacity of my life thinly veiled in non-fiction
from which Oprah Winfrey will decode
the meaning of the universe
with the help of a scissors and a mouthful of apricot jam

One of my goals
1. to kiss the beautifulone on the corners of his lips
causing him to sink into the underground current of
mourning dove and killdeer birdsongs sung backwards
as we wait for a solar powered subway during a total eclipse

christine vyrnon © 2009

Bill Holm Uncaged

2009-03-01T22:33:00.013-06:00

Bill Holm died this week. Years ago I wrote my first fan letter ever to him… and never sent it. While an undergrad, I attended Bill’s reading-recital. A big burly guy of Icelandic heritage from rural Minnesota, Bill wrote tender and caustic poetry about a landscape for which I refused to be homesick. He read a few concise words about the tundra and then meandered over to the piano to play precise Brahms.

The tundra poetry didn’t choke me up, but the music did.

I don’t think he cared whether or not we liked the music. The music was for him. The words were for us.

At the time I struggled to find a balance between music and writing. Until Bill, I didn’t know that writers could be musicians and musicians could be writers.

I had led a charmed and harsh prairie farm house life to a soundtrack of my sister's piano: Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Rachmaninoff. We were an unsettled family of musicians pulling the grass apart/ to place our fingers on God’s heart (Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence 201-202).

Underneath aborted fan mail to male writers with rural souls is my mother’s mantra: “Write what you know. Write what you know. Write what you know.”

What do I know? It’s just as difficult to find antonyms to music as to write synonyms for what I think I know.

Is writing about the logical loop of thoughts on a page or the pressure of the pen in a hand that cramps? Is piano music about concise precision or the bounce of the keys under the fingers, the bounce of sound in a house in the middle of nowhere? Is singing about vocal emotional prowess or the resonance of the sound vibrating through a living breathing body? Is all art, sound, word about manipulating the emotions of others or jolting and soothing one’s own psyche?

I quit caring about small rural life. I suppress dreadfully poignant bullshit observations of what it means to grow up rural. Leaving rural life boils down to understanding what a caged wild animal must endure. I was on the verge of caged animal madness when I saw Bill Holm. His music calmed me.

Now I cage the music.

I live on a concrete island surrounded by a river of rumbling cars, as close to the heart of a City as I can stomach. Yet every day I look west and see a mirage of wheat and corn and grass and snow.

I know out in Bill Holm’s landscape there will always be a window open to a room with a piano… a concert of Chopin for an audience of combines and cows.

Bill Holm's Website

FUCK THE BUFF: toilet tags

2008-11-22T11:33:00.008-06:00

I'll show you my tag if you show me yours.

Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Sexton, and Cinderella walk into a bar...

2008-11-16T20:15:00.011-06:00

In 1971 Kurt Vonnegut wrote a 4 page preface to Anne Sexton’s book of Grimm Brothers themed poems “Transformations.” It’s darn near the best 4 pages of Vonnegut I’ve read.

I know nothing about Anne. Perhaps this isn’t the best book to make a first impression. But this is the Sexton book that crossed my path first

Enough about Anne Sexton.

I respect books that come to me. I’m not much for forcing myself on a book. Sometimes I try. Usually these passes at incompatible books results in an awkward span of years and dust settling before I can throw it out or feel comfortable slipping my fingers between its pages again.

Sometimes I like books to court me. Sometimes I like making the first move on a book. Sometimes set-ups work. That’s how I first met Pynchon and Doris Lessing.

(end of love-life metaphor. deepest apologies.)

“Transformations” found me while I stood in front of the one dollar shelf at Arise bookstore.

If you want to avoid being watched closely for terrorist activity, don’t go to the Arise bookstore. Do go to the Arise bookstore if you don’t live a paranoid life.

So Kurt-baby wrote this perfectly irreverent and irrelevant preface, complete with a hand-drawn graph. Every inch of the preface is pure ___________ (fill in the blank).

While we're on the subject of filling in the blanks, I tell people I’ll teach again when I reach my 60s. Assuming my longevity genes kick in, I've extended the "someday-i'll-teach-again" deadline to my 70s. Vonnegut knows how to boil things down, as his preface does to one of my reasons for not teaching:
___________
How do I explain these poems? Not at all. I quit teaching in colleges because it seemed criminal to explain works of art. The crisis in my teaching career came, in fact, when I faced an audience which expected me to explain Dubliners by James Joyce.

I was game. I’d read the book. But when I opened my big mouth, no sounds came out.

__________

Why do we literary/artist people feel so inclined to review and explain works of art?

I’m not in the position to answer that. I’m the person reviewing reviews.

There was a time I collected Norman Rockwell books while secretly harboring an obsession with Francis Bacon’s “Pope Innocent X” series.

Take Danielle Steele: fuck her. But who am I to withhold Steele from the bus driver lady waiting for kids to fill her up?

Nobody.

Take half the white male dead chauvinistic authors out there: fuck ‘em. But if that’s all a person is ready for, am I in any position to deny dead white male authors a fair trial by jury of their peers?

No comment.

Speaking of dead white male authors, Vonnegut one-ups Sexton more than once in his smarty-pants preface. He throws us a trivia bone gleaned from an encyclopedia.

FYI: Originally “Cinderella” was written in French. In the translation from French to English, “the word vair was mistaken for verre so that Cinderella’s fur slippers become glass.”

Or so he says. We’re going to have to take his word for it.

All my life, I, and 75 percent of the female population, has been brainwashed by Disney and the Grimm Brothers that all a girl needs to attract forever-after male attention is the right pair of glass slippers.

Thanks to Vonnegut washing the scales from my eyes, I’m calling BULLSHIT!

I love calling Bullshit.

No, I don’t own a pair of Uggs. But from here on out, I will feel ever more justified to bitch and complain about the fucked up things women do to their feet for the sake of an ever-after.

All this time we could have been wearing fur-lined slippers. What a shame.

The other night I wore silvery heels to a party, danced in them well past midnight and nearly passed out when I took them off.

What did I hope to accomplish by wearing those pseudo-glass slippers? If you don’t call bullshit on me, I’ll call it on myself.

I know Kurt-baby would.

When You Fuck Around With Henry Miller, Do You Spit or Swallow?

2008-10-22T01:13:00.012-05:00

Henry Miller's politically incorrect genius (pig) weighs heavily on my cyber tongue. And so I ask you, with Henry Miller pig on the brain and in my veins:

Do you spit or swallow-- your Life?

Do you nonchalantly suck on it, lick it, or butterfly kiss it?

Or do you finger fuck your throat and flush it down?

Or do you just look at it?

Your bullshit life.

_________________________

Years ago I tainted the original Brassai "Paris Prostitute..." photo with the lyrics of the Andrew Sisters, and added a pair of red, fuck-me-pumps. This photo has been tainted without permission. It's about time Brassai and Miller made out on this blog.

Speaking of bullshit, there's no particular reason for choosing this passage from Tropic of Cancer, other than it's one of many worth reading, again:

"Going back in a flash over the women I've known. It's like a chain which I've forged out of my own misery. Each one bound to the other. A fear of living separate, of staying born. The door of the womb always on the latch. Dread and longing. Deep in the blood the pull of paradise. The beyond. Always the beyond. It must have all started with the navel. They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap on the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift, a ship without a rudder. You look at the stars and then you look at your navel. You grow eyes everywhere-- in the armpits, between the lips, in the roots of your hair, on the soles of your feet. What is distant becomes near, what is near becomes distant. Inner-outer, a constant flux, a shedding of skins, a turning inside out. You drift like that for years and years, until you find yourself in a dead center, and there you slowly rot, slowly crumble to pieces, get dispersed again. Only your name remains."

--Going back to all the men and lives I've known--

Finding Satori, Bypassing Diva-hood

2008-10-13T00:16:00.012-05:00

Some people get high on airplane glue, on laundry detergent- complicated stuff. My satori is this: the zen experience of spreading butter. You can look. The knife disappears. The bread disappears. The butter disappears. What remains is the repeated gesture of the hand… a movement. And space. It is emptiness.

-Gorodish (Richard Bohringer)
DIVA (1982)
___________________
In the middle of Gorodish’s blue loft is a giant jigsaw puzzle derived from Hokusai’s The Great Wave. The surrealism of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s movie masterpiece became apparent when I realized that the mounds of jigsaw pieces for the king-bed sized puzzle would never fit in the notebook sized box at Gorodish’s feet.

Puzzles have long been one of my own satori: a form of meditation, creativity, and path to enlightenment. Once the puzzle is completed, you destroy and restore it to its original chaos in a box.

Like a pre-determined, modernized sand mandala, jigsaw puzzles take shape in order to be destroyed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Consider our world of cameras. How does the act of recording and immediately revisiting static moments take us away from being eternally Present? How does the study of non-attachment and photography collide? How often do we, in our everyday life, photograph mandalas of sand: relationships, dogmas, art, words?

Arguably, graffiti and tagging are industrial versions of sand mandalas. Stenciled works of art and free hand tags often disappear overnight under whitewash and graffiti fighting technology. Once the ownership realm detects a "defacement of property" the grim beauty inevitably disappears. What are my motives behind photographing temporary urban art? What is gained, and what is lost, in the act of photographing graffiti?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In college, artist friends turned an old building scheduled for demolition into a work of temporary landscape art. They brought the outside inside. They hung tree branch mobiles in the halls. They turned found-items from the attic into sculptures. They encouraged brave students on a well-behaved campus to scribble permanent marker ideas on crumbling plaster. The building became a haven of risk and rebelliousness. Knowing full well that whatever beauty, décor and drama we brought to the structure would be destroyed by the wrecking ball, we blossomed during the doomed building's swan song.

Though I remember the picture and words I drew, I don’t have the need to repeat them here. It was a cathartic expression of non-attachment and non-permanence.

Occasionally I wallow in the glow of canonized art on museum walls and relax into the shadows of architectural enlightenment. Nevertheless, I developed an undeniable thirst for the un-recordable, a fascination with art that invites destruction, whether the walls of rotting buildings or private, non-recorded concerts.

While I attempt to digest the complexities of the Situationists and satori, in honor of bypassing my own diva-hood, I write on digital walls as a personal practice of non-attachment.
_____________________________
Words of the Diva (Wilhemina Wiggen Fernandez) at the press conference regarding her unwillingness to be recorded: I sing out of passion. And I can’t sing alone. I need my public. A concert is a privileged moment for the artist and the audience. Music: it comes and it goes. Don’t try to keep it.
....
Journalist: So you are against making art a business?

Diva: Not at all, but business should adapt to art, not the other way around.

Recycled Discussion Question from the Self-Help Aisle

2008-09-17T23:26:00.004-05:00

WHY DO GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE?

Koans: Poetic Pathways of the Mind

2008-09-11T13:43:00.011-05:00

Koans: a common example is Hakiun Ekaku's "Two hands clap and there is a sound; What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

As a product of western logical and rational thought, I used to pat myself on the back, because I KNEW and could demonstrate the answer to the "one-hand-clapping" question.

You can do it yourself: Just slap your four fingers against the palm of the same hand.

Problem solved. Logic wins. What's the big deal?

The first time I heard this koan was from a buddhist writing professor. My answer to the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping exposed the pathways of my brain which didn't allow the absence of right or wrong answers. Ironically, those were the days I still threw logic out the window in favor of Christian myth and dogma. Such a logical answer revealed a mind that craved concrete, rational answers.

And that is the purpose of koans, whether used casually or during the practice of hard-core Zen meditation. They push and conjole the brain into new areas. The realization one settles on, or doesn't settle on, unveils the Present state of mind. Traditionally, if the answer matches the master's answer, one has gained a certain level of enlightenment.

For the purpose of Practice, I've left out the commentary that accompanies the following koan:

Goso said "A buffalo passes by the window. His head, horns, and four legs all go past. But why can't the tail pass too?" Case (koan) 38 from "The Gateless Gate"

O'Daly's introduction to Neruda's "The Book of Questions" suggests, "Neruda believed the inner quest was never-ending, that on some level what we learned was forgotten, so that we might learn it again.

Is forgetting the past in favor of the present a blessing or irony at its best?

Tough-Love & Fair Warnings: Playing Devil's Advocate

2008-09-01T16:06:00.020-05:00

Fair Warning: I’m about to use swear words.

DILLINGER FOUR!!! FUCK YEAH!!!

Seasonal laryngitis kept me from interviewing anyone at Minneapolis' nonpartisan “Liberty Parade” Rally yesterday. * In lieu of silence, I’d like to digitally scream, “Dillinger Four Fucking Rocks!”

D4= Putting the “F” Back in “Art”: a favorite of mine from their “Situationist Comedy” Album

“Forgive me
For a second I thought we were eye to eye
My mistake
I shouldn’t have faked it
And now it’s cheers to a waste of time
I don’t remember asking your permission
To have my own goddamn opinion
And if this is how it goes
At all of your shows
Please point me to the exit
What a circus of clowns we are
Politicians could learn some tricks here
It’s hard to see past all the stars
Please point me to the beer
This routine’s back on the rise
Drop a name and cut it down to size
Check out my new dance
I call it THE WALK AWAY”

Fair Warning: I’m about to quote Joni Mitchell.

“I look at love from both sides now.” The same with politics. I've been on both sides. I love and respect people on both sides. I have my preferences, but I’m not blind to the common ground both parties share.

And guess what is located on the common-ground real-estate of both parties?

They both share the same porta-potty.

Fair Warning: I feel obliged to ream Democrats a new one, all in the name of tough-love.

The Democrats, for whom I more-or-less bat, are well on their way of not taking the Republicans seriously. They are so gung-ho about how McCain has shot himself in the foot with the Palin VP pick, that they are in danger of being blinded by the rather large splinter in their own eye.

How so?

AGEISM: DON’T GO THERE!!!! Rise above. Democrats are doing themselves no favors by pointing and laughing at how old John McCain is. I know it is the wave of the future for the young to belittle the old, but with so many baby boomers headed toward healthy, productive later years, if the democrats make too big a deal out of McCain’s age, this might turn off a lot of his peers.

I’ve seen men drop dead at the age of 40. I’ve also seen women in their intellectual prime in their 70’s and 80’s.

From what I can tell, there is NO evidence that McCain does not have his wits, and health, about him. His age is a concern, but it should not be the primary focus. If anything, the age-ist rhetoric coming from the Democrats might alienate quite a few voters.

HYPOCRITICAL SEXISM: I know Palin is hard-core pro-life. The Republicans will love this. True, it is a bit hypocritical for her to be pro-life, yet pro-choice about family and career. Meanwhile, just as Hillary supporters watched sexism come out of the woodwork from followers of both parties, I suspect that we will continue to see sexism… from both parties. Democrats still have a thing or two to learn about their own double standards. The less sexist rhetoric coming from the democrats, the better.

And for every Democrat who claims they are not sexist, I’d like to suggest that EVERYONE is sexist… and racist… and hypocritical… to some degree. Me included. Once we stop examining our thoughts and actions, once we start taking the easy road of Goodie-Two-Shoes, and slap the Label Of Enlightenment on our foreheads, the sooner we’re going to fall flat on our faces.

Though the Republicans may have their work cut out for them on the feminist and racial front, this does NOT mean that the Democrats are home free.

INEXPERIENCE: For the next 2 months, the Democrats and Republicans will be playing a game of Hot Potato on this issue. Both sides have reason to squirm. It could be a toss-up.

DEMOCRATS are SMART/ REPUBLICANS are STUPID Argument: This, imo, is one of the most embarrassing arguments used by the Democrats. Guess what? The Republicans say, and believe, the same thing about Democrats. I know there are statistics out there that show that Democrats hold more and higher degrees than Republicans. I’m not aware of any statistics which compare their IQs. Though Republicans may openly cling to Creationism, this does not make them stupid.

FYI Aside to fellow atheists: calling ppl who are creationists STUPID does not help our cause either.
****************************

Who has more to loose in this election? Debatable. The Republicans are being forced to soften their image. Nothing wrong with that. If Democrats continue to suggest it is mere pandering to the middle (which both sides do, btw), they just MIGHT find out how apropos the following oldey, but a goodey, is: Pride Goes Before The Fall.

Fair Warning?
May the best team win.

And if all else fails, ask yourself: "WWD4D?"

*Apologies for all subjects of the pictures who I did not get names from. If this is a problem, please let me know. Also, the drumset accompanying the D4 lyrics... is NOT their drumset. My camera was on strike for their set.

AAA: Ahimsa And Anarchists

2008-08-31T10:26:00.002-05:00

-dedicated to ND.

For years I've been drawn to the idea of anarchy. I have much to learn, but I do know, that though many reasonable factions of anarchism exist, the one that the media loves to dramatize, and the police love to hate, is the stereotype of anarchy that supposedly would go so far as to try to break up the RNC with balloons full of urine and heavy duty bike locks.

I have a heavy, industrial-strength bicycle lock... and a toilet. Should I be worried? Are those helicopters above for me or the RNC skyline?

Both sides will have a lot of explaining to do. I'm curious to see if this will be more of an embarrassment for the notoriously corrupt Mpls police (what institution isn't corrupt?) or members of the anarchist bent RNC Welcoming Committee.

Anarchy is both demonized by the mainstream and romanticized by its staunch adherents. I know that the true intentions behind anarchy are much more tame and admirable than the 5o'clock news would like us to believe.

Since I left the church, and Jesus, I have not allowed myself to join any group, whether mainstream liberal politics, or clandestine rebels with a cause... both of which have been a temptation. But whenever I attend something that has 2 or 3 ppl gathered in the Name of Something, I find myself back in church again.

Same shit, different venue.

I lied: I do carry a library card. And a yoga card.

I will follow and perhaps even pursue this story as it develops. I will continue to educate myself on not only anarchy (which is about as utopian as you can get) but the history of nonviolence.

When Jesus rip roared, crazy mad through the temple, tipping over the tables of money changers and cheap trinkets from the West Bank capitalists, Jesus demonstrated his anticapitalist tendencies.

Better yet, perhaps Jesus was not only an Anarchist, but his very own AntiChrist.

***************************************
The following article is derived from a research paper I wrote for a yoga teacher program.

***************************************

AHIMSA: Imagining the Future History of NonViolence

In the study of ahimsa one finds multiple translations of an ancient eastern idea offered to the modern western mind. According to Sri Swami Satchidananda interpretation of Patangali’s Yoga Sutras, “Himsa means to cause pain; ahimsa not to cause pain. Killing is different from causing pain. Causing pain can be even more harmful than killing. Even by your words, even by your thought, you can cause pain."

Gandhi offers a quick definition of ahimsa to Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi as “the avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."

The Chinese word closest to nonviolence from Taoism is “teh”: the virtue of not fighting. The Tao te Ching encourages the peaceful warrior: “The skillful knight is not warlike. The skilled strategist is never angry. He who is skilled in overcoming his enemies does not join battle."

Debates occur over the line between pacifism and nonviolence. In Mark Kurlansky's Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea, we're reminded that “most religions and philosophies that reject violence do not encourage passiveness but activism by other means – nonviolence." He clarifies the difference between pacifism and nonviolence in reference to Jesus’ teachings:

Pacifism is passive; but nonviolence is active. Pacifism is harmless and therefore easier to accept than nonviolence, which is dangerous. When Jesus Christ said that a victim should turn the other cheek, he was preaching pacifism. But when he said that an enemy should be won
over through the power of love, he was preaching nonviolence. (*see footnote)

Gandhi created a new word to describe nonviolent action or “holding on to truth”: satyagraha. He said, “the first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating." This aspect of Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of ahimsa refers to nonviolent resistance or activism. In his exploration of satyagraha as a form of nonviolence, he drew heavily on the ideas passed down from the Jains, Jesus, and Tolstoy.

Ahimsa, as “the avoidance of violence” appears in the Hindu Upanishads around 800 BC. The Jains, an ancient sect of Hinduism, practiced ahimsa to the point of vegetarianism and veganism. Some Jains refuse to eat any plant that will lose its life if they were to uproot it such as onions and garlic. The Jains, who think of ahimsa as “the root virtue,” greatly influenced Gandhi.

Before Jesus presented the well-publicized Golden Rule, the idea of ‘doing unto others, as you would have them do unto you,’ had already transformed the minds of ancient philosophers. An earlier version of the Golden Rule is found in the following text: “This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you” (Mahabharata 5, 15, 17).

Yet another precursor to Jesus includes a Babylonian Jew, Hillel, who when provoked to prove his knowledge of the Torah responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. The rest is commentary on this. Go and study.” Finally, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount includes the oft quoted Golden Rule.

This one example of the history behind the Golden Rule provides one way to trace the roots of our modern comprehension of nonviolence. The history of nonviolence among early Muslims and Christians, include sects such as the Bogomills and others considered to be the first conscientious objectors.

Some sects tended toward beliefs in reincarnation and vegetarianism, a Buddhist style of Christianity. Other famous western groups who advanced the practice of nonviolence include the Cathars, Anabaptists, and Quakers. Early American colonists practiced creative, nonviolent resistance. Some Abolitionists approached slavery through nonviolent activism.

Following in these footsteps are many great movements: the Suffragists; Civil Rights; PETA; the downfall of the Soviet Union; the end to South African Apartheid; examples of countries refusing to persecute the Jews during Nazi rule; and individuals such as Tolstoy, Bayard Rustin, Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Petra Kelly, and perhaps even Cindy Sheehan.

In Thomas Merton’s introduction to Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolence, Merton suggests that “to punish and destroy the oppressor is merely to initiate a new cycle of violence and oppression."

Kurlansky documents the destruction of 1960’s nonviolent groups such as the SDS and Civil Rights movements as they branched off into the Weather Underground and Black Panthers, movements that turned their backs on nonviolent approaches:

First there is the lesson that violence always comes with a rational explanation and that explanation, usually expressed in lofty terms, is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails… But another lesson from the Weather Underground is that violence is a virus that infects. Both the movements and their enemies understand that if violence could be planted in a group, it would spread and eventually destroy the movement.

Westerners have been brought up to believe that humans are prone to violence and therefore should not expect to live in a nonviolent world. But in responding to these old patterns of thinking preached from the pulpit or argued by western philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Kurlansky asks the question, “is the source of violence not human nature…. but a lack of imagination?”

The beat poet Diane di Prima answered in her poem “Rant”:

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT.

As a solution to violence, there are many examples of how ahimsa worked, followed by many examples of the suppression of nonviolent activism. Gandhi did not expect all people to be capable of always reacting in a nonviolent manner to violence.

My understanding of Gandhi’s response, is that not everyone can approach all situations of injustice with a pure, loving heart, though that should be a goal of the dedicated satyagrahi, someone dedicated to living nonviolently. He suggests that love will stand up to and is capable of defeating evil.

He doesn’t expect everyone to have the capacity to practice such a pure level of nonviolence. He leaves no question that someone who approaches ahimsa or satyagraha in a hypocritical manner will not experience the benefits of such a practice. Gandhi suggests that the heart must be pure in its intent before nonviolence will work effectively.

Phillip Moffitt’s Yoga Journal article on “Violence Against Self” provides an excellent foundation to approach ahimsa from the inside out. Instead of looking for ways to discourage nonviolence in the larger world, we have to learn to replace inner/personal violence with multi-faceted ahimsa.

If the individual doesn’t practice ahimsa on her self, she can not be expected to share ahimsa effectively with her community.

Thinking of groups like The Weather Underground, I ask myself, in what way is violence “planted” in our minds and goes on to infect our bodies?

I was brought up to believe that humans are incapable of anything but screwing things up, especially those who don’t have Jesus or the Hebrew God on their side. My upbringing argued that it is natural to be violent and evil and only Jesus’ love can reverse that hellish tendency. The argument goes that once we destroy all decency and moral barriers by rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, things will get so gory that the only solution will be for him to come and start things over from scratch. Countless prayers and sermons end with, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.”

Increasingly, as I unlearn and discard old patterns of belief and pessimism, I turn to the unforeseeable future with less fear and more optimism. It is a poor choice to wait around for things to get so bad that someone special has to come along and fix it all.

I believe it unwise for people to excuse violence and abuse, or overlook harm to people or the environment as an inevitable trend. I believe it is unwise to bury anger, frustration, helplessness, and powerlessness deep in the core of our bodies until it screams to be let out by any means necessary.

Buried himsa, violence hidden away in our bodies, push people to either the point of implosion, or explosion. Sometimes innocents get hurt.

I believe we are destined to find creative, honest outlets to our anger. I believe we, as individuals, as a human gene pool, are capable of finding effective nonviolent solutions to fear and anger.

Gandhi points out the connection between violence and fear when he says, “he who has not overcome all fear cannot practice ahimsa to perfection.”

What would it take to teach each generation new ways to not internalize other peoples’ anger and fear?

*citations and bibliography available upon request

"She broke my heart": Feminism in the 21st Century

2008-08-26T14:26:00.001-05:00

"Roy Den Holannder's War On Feminism" by Meghan Daum, along with a few crumbs, found its way into my lap this morning:
*****
In a news release, Roy Den Hollander, who's best known for suing Manhattan nightclubs because they offered free or discounted Ladies Night drinks to women, claimed the university could not use government money, such as federal financial aid, to fund its Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Women's studies courses, he maintained, discriminate against men and are therefore in violation of the 5th and 14th amendments. He also called Columbia a "bastion of bigotry against men ... [that has] thrown its influence and prestige into violating the rights of men by offering a women's studies program but no men's studies program."
*****
The article goes on to divulge that Mr. Hollander went through "a bitter divorce from a woman he says turned out to be 'a Russian mafia prostitute.'"

Feminism: a kettle of worms I've been itching to open up and hammer out the details. My english major afforded me the time to mix metaphors ... atrociously, but not time to take any "Women's Studies" classes.

Growing up evangelical fundamentalist, feminism was damned near a dirty word. Today, I call myself a feminist and embrace all the demonization and evolution of that word.

A Christian can call themselves Christian before, during, and after premarital sex while smoking a joint and practicing karma sutra. Christian also describes the submissive, abstaining, skirt-wearing, don’t drink, don’t smoke, don't dance persuasion. When an idea is good and has potential to change the world for everyone, regardless of class, race, or sex, everyone wants to claim membership.

And just like Christianity, the longer an idea like Feminism gets kicked around, the messier things get.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of reasons for women to demonize and stereotype men. We’ve spent decades trying to find the balance between being pathetic, submissive Victims versus full blown, proud-to-be Bitches. Every cultural fight worth fighting argues that no one should be forced to choose between being either a slut or a sweetie.

In all fairness, we’ve come far enough to admit that there are plenty of men out there misused in all sorts of disgusting and subtle ways by women. It may still be a man's world, but that doesn't mean women are off the hook. Let’s face it, male or female, if you don’t have a daddy issue, then you probably have a mommy issue.

Living in the “Shy Man Capitol” of the US, I have no doubt men can be as passive-aggressive as any stereotypical, put-upon woman.

What goes around comes around.

Which brings me back to Ray. I also live in the "almost" Beer Drinking Capital of the US (bow to Milwaukee). Funny how the two titles compliment each other.

I’ll give Ray the benefit of the doubt on his argument against “Ladies' Night Out” drink specials.Think about it: how much more sexist can we get? Why should we make exceptions for women to drink for free… just because we have vaginas???

I’m fully aware that alcohol can help in the seduction process. However, I’d rather see both men and women grow a set of balls that function drunk or sober, than rely on the “Ladies' Night” freebies to circumvent the mating, or enlightenment, process.

(yes... we women have balls... they are just internally located:)

Ladies: What makes us so worthy of free drinks? Though it is tempting to put ourselves on pedestals/high-heels just to feel as though we are on equal footing with men in the dive bars, I think it’s time to put Ladies’ Night Out drink specials out to pasture.

I'm sure there are plenty of creative, less sexist ways to lure women into public intoxication. Any ideas?

In all seriousness: Read the article. I’m a fan of Meghan Daum. Meanwhile, Ray probably needs to hang out with a therapist, and I DON’T agree with his argument that “Women’s Studies” disenfranchise the male population by forming a vagina religion.

To what extent are his arguments legitimate? To what extent does he need to CTFO (chill the fuck out)?

If all else fails, ask yourself: WWJJD?

WWJJD?

2008-08-26T13:47:00.001-05:00

What Would James Joyce Do?