Top 10 Tuesday

I don't know about you, but my body is in a small state of exhale as we navigate a new presidential term, become a part of action that opens doors (and shuts them, however) for others, and wow, Biden has a favorite ice cream flavor, believe it or not. You may be in the camp of "finally, a human in the White House!" or "Who gives a shit, he has already taken many jobs--and they're jobs regardless of being temporary. Don't compare how you pay your bills to how someone else does." I see a lot of apples and oranges flying through the air and deciding not to engage or expel energy is the healthy thing for me to do. No, I'm not conservative but also, I often wonder, am I liberal? But no one is forcing me to engage or argue, so I'll continue observing, listening, and trying to understand.

Here are ten things I have been observing, listening, trying to understand, and enjoying this past week.

1. Cancel Culture Debate--I turned in to the Cancel Culture debate between my former professor J.C. Hallman and the conservative New York Times journalist Bret Stephens. Hallman was on the defense of cancel culture as a directive to think before you speak and to experience consequences and Stephens argued that cancel culture prevents useful conversations from occurring--calling the debate that he was having with Hallman an example of this type of conversation. The arguments meander elsewhere, as well, but you get the gist. We all pay a lot of attention to The Internets, but do we really pay attention? And again, with the apples and oranges arguments, the forms of "cancelling" there is online, and to whom, you can't really define such an umbrella term that basically means shutting down a person for, you name it, wearing black face twenty five years ago as a comedy sketch for SNL or for using their first-amendment right (not the part about inciting violence, and I'm not even talking about Trump). I'm currently reading another book that explores the intricacies of not just the internet itself, but the selfs and the identities that are curated there as well as the voyeurs that take it all in. And every voyeur has their own history, their own traumas, their own brain with which to interpret, understand, and to ultimately judge.

2. Amanda Gorman--I forget where I saw it, but there was a graph portraying who got the most attention on Inauguration Day. Amanda Gorman, the Youth Poet Laureate who read her title poem "The Hill We Climb", topped the attention-scale with President Biden at the bottom. Sandwiched between them were the monochromatic Lada Gaga, Vice President Harris, and the rest. Click here to read Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb", the title poem of her upcoming first book of poetry. Much like how President Biden's inaugural speech incited unity, Amanda Gorman's poem has "we" in it a whopping 63 times.

3. Bernie Memes--I think I read that Bernie made a bunch of sweatshirts with his meme on it, sold them all, and donated all the proceeds to Meals on Wheels. Which was your favorite? Here are some of mine.

4. Time with Maddie—When COVID began to render us homebound, bread-baking, and finding ways to market the talents we discovered or re-discovered, I was perfectly fine with not spending time with people or going out anywhere. Besides missing a good movie in the sanctuary of a movie theater, I’m still enjoying the outdoors and able to eat food from my favorite restaurants. Besides family, I only really miss my dear friend Jeannette (who did attend my wedding but the wedding doesn’t count and that is the only time I’ve seen her in the past year) and Maddie. Maddie is the only friend I’ve managed to have a beer with and the only person (besides Brian) with whom I have marveled at mushroom caps and viewed vistas during the pandemic. I didn’t think that I could become more introverted, but I was wrong. I’m okay with being under my rock as well as standing on top of large ones, in wonder. Maddie and I have managed to have small excursions into the woods together during the pandemic, two hikes on the AT in Harrisburg, we imbibed at a brewery, and browsed around in a bookstore full of cats. I'll even admit, that on a few occasions, we got together to do absolutely nothing together, cheers to beers, in front of crime documentaries and even "The Human Centipede". This past weekend, we exchanged Christmas gifts and had some beers as well as booked our campsite for a summer trip to Shenandoah National Park.

5. Daisy Lafarge--I love learning new people. Daisy Lafarge is a wild-haired PhD student from the UK who also happens to be a poet. Well before COVID-19, she was studying infection and writing her first book of poetry "Life Without Air", inspired by the French biologist of fermentation, Louis Pasteur. I have not yet read the book but certainly look forward to getting my paws on it. Besides fermentation, art-making, and poetry-writing, she also writes essays for Granta, a UK-based literary journal that I love. Enjoy this poem:

"How to Leave a Marriage"

To begin with I watched the dentist’s

receptionist select a four-hour video

of sea turtles on YouTube. It was a minor

lesson in vapid pacifism for the waiting room,

while lesser pain waited calmly in machines

of the neighbouring rooms. I composed

many emails, and emails arrived from friends

like soft rain. From the city I contemplated

the tenacity of peatland, and marvelled at plants

endemic to bogs. Meantime the fuchsias grew

fatter, the innards of eclairs sopping over, summer

abundance of lipids. I couldn’t go near them

and crossed the road with my nostrils

aborted; I was done dying under banners

for sensations that weren’t mine. I was trying

to remember the stages of putrefaction. Once

an ex-friend criticised another for always writing

the same poem, which wasn’t meant kindly

but became a kind of anointing. All this

and more was coming up with the fuchsias

like sweet bile. I was at the mercy of merycism

and momentarily happy, walking the hills three

hours a day, just to ruminate. Consciously or not

asking the leaves how to undo a life, but

the moral thus far is that the colour green

can’t devolve an ego back to its bare cells, no

matter how viscid you feel. It’s more parasitic,

as Weil said of divine love, another mother’s

eggs laid in you so you have to keep coming back

to feed them, and that’s how we all get vicariously

fed. Colour is what we are visited by. Ovipositing,

I waggled my doubt beneath a family of magpies.

Didn’t count them because I feared nuclearity and

moreso the gauzy bloom of consciousness, mine

or anyone’s. Don’t you ever feel like evolution over-

cooked. On the 12th day I reached the labyrinth

on the side of the hill, long grassed over, so you can’t

see your options, let alone the way. The sun was stamping

symbols of bygone industry behind my eyelids,

solar hammer and anvil, solar shovel and smog.

The insects were all flying west, away from the sputum

they flung from. I took notes, which the insects duly

amended. I had stopped worrying about analogy

because when he said we are flies sprung from the carcass

of the universe, I knew he meant it. He’d found a way to listen

to the grasses self-seeded in the crown of his head,

no shitting. I thought if I talked to him long enough

maybe I would too, though I was wary of men and hoped

I would be forever, however grassy. It’s not figurative

to believe that the seasons drip-feed us teleology.

Romance is the hole we’re tripped into filling.

Love is the name we gave it.

I pulled many plants up by their roots, and the sap from the roots was sour.

I staked my alignment with the organically bitter.

I walked past the bushes panting, I mean, the bushes were panting,

and the clouds went crimeless with acrimony

6. She Had Some Horses--And of course I'm currently reading poetry from the poet who read at Obama's inauguration. Joy Harjo, the current Poet Laureate, the first Native American one at that. I’m in the process of reading through one of her books and came across her lovely poem “She Had Some Horses”. I want to eventually write my own rendering of the poem.

I. She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their

bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet

in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made

them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren't afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped

bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, "horse."

She had horses who called themselves, "spirit," and kept

their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who

carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her

bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

7. Textures--Enjoy these random textures I captured while on walks the past seven days

8. VAST--I discovered the rock band VAST (Visual Audio Sensory Theater) when I was in college, immediately after hearing what I to this day call "The Cello Song" (It's actually called "Flames"). I've been revisiting their music and thought I'd share.

9. This meme--No explanation needed

10. What Kind of Woman--I enjoyed sitting down in a book store and reading a couple of books this past weekend, particularly Kate Baer's What Kind of Woman. I'll admit, I don't quite enjoy browsing the poetry section at the book store because it's being taken over by pint-sized poems written by Instagrammers. Not that I disapprove of poetry in any form--whatever is getting out there and influencing people and connecting with people is great. It's just that a lot of those poets are too far into their own navel. It's either young women writing about their heart ache, young women writing about vulnerability or invincibility, or men writing about women as if they're tortured, sensitive goddesses. This is all well and good but they get old fast. Kate Baer's poetry was a nice relief as I skimmed through the thinnest, quick-read volumes of poetry that I can find.