thoughts on the things i've been thinking about lately.

Just watched Blood Diamond with Laura & B and that was really strange. There was definitely a lot of glorified white man but also it was really complex and interesting in other ways. I could analyze this thing to death and I am self-conscious tonight. But so here we go on some other tracks and maybe I'll return to this later, thinking about tragedy and difficulty and trying to do the right thing on my part.

Ok. So reading Savoring the Salt last weekend, I was thinking about the question of creative self-delivery, which is to say the choice to answer "are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?" in the affirmative. And of course I was thinking about it in terms of myself and my own choices, but also in terms of Toni Cade and her choices, decisions, projects, desires, communities, etc. Because both those thoughts/ideas/concepts carry through for me in similar ways or at least at the same time, on parallel tracks.

So Toni Cade's work is very complex because it is so simple, in some ways, and I am so neurotic it's difficult to parse, but it's like that age-centuries-dying-old-problem that you say simple things in academese to make them simpler for stupid academics to understand (nothing personal y'all): to be a good person, you must be kind. to do good community work, you must be creative. to be creative and kind, you must first sort out your shit. to sort out your shit, you need to get over yourself. to get over yourself, you need to get through yourself. to get through yourself, you must get behind, beyond, within, and surround-sound-style. to get surround-sound-soul in your style, you must stop trying so hard. to try so hard that you stop trying so hard.... and so forth.

so i think to myself: yah, ok, this is simple. (we circle back to the self-choices here and i'll return to the academic argument in a second.) ok, sweet. don't be a jerk, try to do the right thing, meditate when your head gets irritating, oh yah and use this chance at xmas to quit smoking and start eating well and living this complete life where you pay shit on time and you register your damn car in the state you freaking live in now for like sixmonths or whatever, susannah, and oh also be sure your cats don't starve because maybe they knocked over the water/food/whatever while you were gone, and sure, yes, you can do this self-sufficiently, you are FINE.

you are FINE and in your FINE, fine, fine position you can qualify to take charge of your situation and build yourself a seriously effective committee change, get this chapter done, defend and build a sort of kickass inaugural discussion thing asap, because that shit is going to be very public and it needs to be sorted really fucking soon. and if you watch Blood Diamond you will see the tremendous ways in which you can work really specifically with the students you know and see to educate them about their own controls and to push the life you have further in the direction of the above (be kind, creative, not douchebaggy, and generous). so do something like that something of the time.

so there. there is the positive. and i don't think i like academic writing that proceeds from the negative. and i don't think i like the irony in that prior sentence! but still and so regardnling: i say to thee: that the problem is not that i and we don't see and practice this, is that we see it, we practice, it, we stumble, we slip up with commas and suchlike, and that we don't determine ourselves to be so creative we can dance through and beyond and past it.

and i'm not getting to the part where i talk about how the "i" and "you" of Toni Cade's being well are quite different, seriously different, than the "i" and "you" i dissect for my own deviousdeviantdecisive purposes, in other words, not so bad to take history and wisdom from all sources, but not so good to insert myself in an "i" and "you" that needs allies, supporters, resourcers, like any other marshalization, not an "i" and "you" that is solid or diffuse.

in other words: white liberal guilt plus two parts reality.

we are royally excited to see and feel thing schanging sjumping sstarting to sjive sjibe spark in the way they and we all need them to. me too. i too, and you too. woo hoo!