surreal peaches

so i am wondering...
if there are some weekends that are predestined to be completely unproductive.
if i can live indefinitely in little postcards and walk the quiet streets of my mind forever
if it is possible to score higher then 71 on a game of bumper bowling (pathetically true.)
if i can consider my imaginary pet turtle my date for my poetry reading (its that or my gloves)
if i will ever get to see NY like a non-NYer, such as getting tickets for a taping of SNL
if there is one reason to support public institutions, as in a radio station (besides ART BELL) worth listening to
if i can ever find it in my heart to like another cheese besides the greek goddess Feta
if i can hang up my limp peacock feathers in exchange for a never ending book...

my mind is running...and i am letting it go as far as it can...
IT is DISTRACTION. noisy head pollution from the million and one things i was supposed to do this weekend, of which, 24 hours later, i have yet to complete one.
I am the P. girl. and i tell myself (meditatively, therapeutically, proactively) today I am embracing my P. Girl factor....
Truth is friends (or myself) i am exhausted. utter exhausto. this anti-social drama queen wants to retire for the evening.... she wants to take off her boots, put away her big hats and bigger bags and just keep walking.... i'm seriously leaning toward Peru at this moment... a roadtrip to ___??
seems like its last kicks for getting engaged before Father Winter sets up shoppe (3 lechayims IS pushing it)...
seems like the Jewish Museum is forever scarred with smells of frying beef (not the place if you are a vegan)
seems to be some kind of epidemic in the air... making you actually want to get out and breathe it
seems that this new version of airborne inspiration is compelling people to take long quiet lonely Sunday walks to the library for absolutely no reason.
gives a whole new definition to flaneur, no?
;)
yeah. i think so too.

So in this stream of sudden consciousness... I am in my poetry groupee mode. Straight up. That's me. Poetry groupee girl. I like books, i like paper, i like ink-stained fingers, and i like being a pretentious coffee sipper writing in a book of bound paper. I like going to foreign cities imagining where Kafka or Joyce may have sat and wrote...I do...I love the world inside my head...the world of Subjective Reality (mostly because its the only one that exists- but that's for another ramble) IT keeps me sane (or insane- which is way more sane). i'm thinking and feeling Charles Bukowski right now (the man forever inscribed on my idle guitar case)... great book of his i found called Slouching Toward Nirvana (see I can relate to that...as my former Vinyassa instructor Vivkan can attest to) anyway tis good stuff. and because i cannot help myself, and because my TWO research papers due tomorrow (that's right not one but TWO) one on Madame Bovary the other on philo. I have not yet even begun in a physical way (its all in my head- wish i could head in MY memory and not computer's), it's 1 am i must be up in 7 hours i have so much to do... and ergo: i am going to share a poem.

writing the good stuff in those early
days of madness and having it all
creep back to me in the mail.
and now being far frmo those early days
and now sometimes writing stuff that is
not so good
and getting accepted
anyhow
which is the way it is when you
get half-a-reputation
and it was that way then
when i saw the writer with reputations
getting crap published
that was nowhere near as good
as my rejected stuff.
but that's just the way the world
is and was
and i see actors still acting
who can no longer act
and comedians still up there
dead on stage.
why do the audiences and the
power-that-be persist
in tolerating
this shit?
i am astonished always at the
stupidity of Humanity but
i shouldn't be, it's always
with us.
which, after all,
keeps giving me more
and more
to write
about.

alright people.... i must confess my creative abilities are limited to paper and ink. At my uncle's big rain blow out pawtee last night (singin' in the rain and all that), some of my imaginatively inclined cousins (thank heavens they reside out of state) and myself made a ventriloquist performance involving only painted yellow partee cups (it's a series about BOB, his path to orthodoxy, his marriage, and his death). Itchee took some great shots, emailed it to me all cut, cropped and cute (so simple yet so difficult), and yet, einstein here, still cannot figure out what in g-d's name she is doing. i'm sorry hunk unc.
for some unknown reason i managed to get roman holiday off and going. goes with my thought at the moment anyway- driving is meditative. i'm convinced. when all else fails roll down the windows, turn up the heat and blast the music you are too embarrassed to tell anyone you listen too. i am officially raising money for my Antique White Vespa....this will exempt you from all further birthday gifts..

Lemon Learners

or: why I think we should permenantely destroy the Capitalist Monster

Ironically, as I am sitting in the BC library, typing this paper on global capitalism and its infrigement upon human equality, there is a promotional commercial being filmed. In response to my inquiries at the reference desk I was informed that the subject is academic related, in fact, an advertisement for a non-CUNY law school. Intrestingly enough, this incident emphasizes the topic of my paper and consequently what Hill refers to as neo-liberal institutions that form current educational policy.

Capitalism is single handedly responsible for the current state of social erosion. 'Free markets' have expanded into all areas of domestic life, creating an unprecedented world of economic imperialism. In truth, the so called 'free-market model' is not free at all, and to argue differently is simply delusional. In reality the 'market model' of today is a system that benefits and extends the 'global coproate market'. Investigation reveals that the top 1% of the richest people in America have the equated financial value of the bottom 95%. In US the ratio of growth inequalities is at a staggering 470-500:1 making living standards in the least developed countries lower than thirty years ago. 300 million people now live on less than a dollar a day. Rigowski and other social commentators argue that organizations like the World Trade Organization and IMF do not exist for the benefit of humanity but as capital playgrounds and "global clubs for the mega- capitalists". Essentially capitalism is a harness by which to control what Noam Chomsky calls the "bewildered masses".

Because today's educational system resembles a giant corporation, students that do not 'fit in' with the hegemonic structure are generally discriminated. School is no longer a place of critical reflection but revolves around 'educational business plans' and 'growth output analysis'. We are in an age of educational decay that is ruled by neutralized test scores. We are not interested in producing maximized students, we want drone-like facotry workers, a desensitized labor force that does nothing but increase the wealth of the wealthy.

Society functions in a state of constant Illusion. Now, more than ever, is there need for class analysis, and yet we see unbelievable complacency. We see, students that do not 'meet the criteria for labor management' deemed 'unteachable' and eventually ousted from the system. If we cannot 'educate' them to wear a McDonald uniform, we question their capital value. We cannot 'produce' a society of malfunctioning workers, or 'lemon learners' to feed the capitalist machine. Pink Floyd had it right "we don't need no education", and Mark Twain's similiar sentiment was right on target: the best students are those that remain untainted by their educational experience. Humanity must stop dictating life by the stock market. As a Marxist (go ahead and build the gallows) I belive that a complete and total return to a social perspective is vital to the continutity of human civilization.

Teachers are essential to growth of capitalism because they ensure the foundation of the entire capitalist system: labor-power. Standardized testing and government policies like the No Child Left Behind Act are contributing to the eventual privitization of schools and what is, the ultimate business arrangement. Already the language of education reflects the business market. Students are bank accounts. They come to school to be 'desposited' with information, despite the fact that education is a commodity that cannot be bought and sold. One can buy the means to an education, but not the autonmous core of learning itself. Education, as an institution, is amongst one of the last social institutions which is genuinely free and accessible to the public. Freedom in the market is a carte blanche that is unanswerable, while in education is precisely the freedom to question and to seek answers. In this vein, the ideal student is the 'lemon learner', constantly questioning, challenging the institutions in which he or she functions.

So why do we resist change? I believe that people truly hold onto to the "american dream" or what we can exchange with a more relevant term I like to call the "walmart fantasy". Why give up capitalism if one day you may be the next multi-billion dollar entrepeneur? What a ludicrous notion. Capitalism is a powerful system that breeds only social irresponsibility. We must enable a transformative approach inspired by a revolutionary pedagogythat fully eradicates the capitalist system. We must utilize every available space for the counter-hegemonic struggle, at the very least we will end the discrimation our 'lemon learners'...

[congratualtions if you've made it thus far... the ball is officially in your court]

damn it! I'm late...I'm late... !!!!

There's a huge swollen lactose dripping from the evening sky... I stared for a while and then waved a greeting to the man on the moon (like some Peggy Anne McKay of a Shel Silverstien poem) because he must be so bored lounging around all night counting stars, and us small people are so hard to really distinguish in the shadow...
mmmhh. well, i've attempted writing something about three times now (it's not writer's block it's writer's conscientiousness- i can't write creatively when i am stuck thinking). Normally i would just walk away for a day, week or month until the Flow returned.... for some reason, i am not respecting the Process at the moment.

So i've seen on other blogs (what a fascinatingly windy day this has been) nice pieces on identifying the four spices. No need to waste valuable property in Blogville with an similiar rehash... Granted, we all understand that Sukkoth is a month of social awareness (for better or worse i suppose). We attempt to degenerate the class system that creates communal stratificiation for something a wee bit higher, a tad more welcoming, and essentially the ultimate equalizing. Tho' i know lots of people who dig Sukkoth cuz of its limitless booze, babes (Israelesque intrusion i presume) and boys (invasion of the Hebrews)...each man (and woman) to their own i suppose. [whatever gets you high on the holiday...namastaei]
Shawna, while we were comparing hide-out notes from our respective 7-11 parking lots, had a brilliant notion. In the vein of the Sukkoth festivites, why not cast a Blog Survey? for some reason i am finding myself online quite a bit (not to worry i am in the process of buying a very stimulating turtle to help deal with my insomnia), and while there I am always looking for things to surf Shawna is not always online and Wikpedia has only so much entertaining material.
So, humor me, write away people. intsead of me entertaining you with nonsense like my new BatGurl T shirt or the fact that I drove down the highway with my trunk open for about an hour and pine leaves out the window... what blogs do you like, hate, read repeatedy and why. perchance abandon social inhibition and all the pretentiousness that dicates 'decorous' behavior. nahama- think of it as giving back to the blog community....

Life Inside the Fish

Yom Kippur is like living inside a whale.
Man is like the prophet Jonah, constantly spending so much of life running from G-d. He tells us to go out to the messed-up world and do something and all we fear is the sociological ramifications, financial consequences, and the anxiety of our subconscious/unconscious mental reasoning.
and so... we freak...
As we high-bolt in the opposite direction, we must know, somewhere in that overactive pea sized brain, that we can never escape from His unblinking eye.
So why do we try?
Why does one feel compelled to remove themselves from that which they already know?
It's the process of discovering that which you already know. Finding the light that you already possess.
Jonah, a prophet, found his true G-d in the belly of a fish.
There in that ocean, suspended of time and space, the fleeing holy man understood what it meant to perform His Will.
On Yom Kippur we enter that womb of creation. We are not human. Transcending all things physical, we finally have the opportunity to appreciate the spiritual in its own realm, on a higher dimension of reality.
Tricky part is... when the womb falls or the whale spews you out (depending on where you are in this tale). Back on dry land things aren't quite as simple. Ninveh was one of the largest cities in the world, filled with so many colours, sounds, and flavours that Jonah was sure he couldn't convince them all to return.
We find that after his little whale encounter, he dismissed distraction, and managed to change the course of a huge metropolitian. Not bad for a man recently swallowed by large sea life.
Post- angelic experience we have to change the routine, and lift the habits of reality up a notch. One's got to take that 'just-been-swallowed-by-a-whale' bit and get the sentiment out there...
That way when you have the sudden urge to flee on the first ship to Tarshish there is that experience of inwardness to fall back on. Those brief hours of spiritual meditation that touched the essence of creation and allowed you to breifly feel the enourmity of true purpose.
I guess for some this happens every morning after brushing their teeth...
while for others it requires being literally swallowed by gigantic whales.

i'm feeling the color amethyst

hmmm.. i suppose it's bad timing to make my observations on my newly concluded marathon... (sans 1 discette).... perchance after the very high high holiday, don't want to lose all my readers with spiritual pornography, no matter how fabulously wonderful... (rick- i believe that term flows, dahl' don't you agree?).
i wish we could reschedule some of these days for later in the spring...shuffle them around a bit, move one to november. It's all in one big lump, rosh hashana, yom kippur, sukkoth, my unmentionable day, and of course my dentist appointment... if lord & taylor has a boot sale now i am officially going to flip.
looks like i'll be flipping...
(just in case you were holding out for some meaningful message- here's a disclaimer i choose to be unintellectual, unintelligent and make no holy references, if you desire to indulge- surf elsewhere)
back to where i was- oh yes, avoiding commentary on marathon-
i can't help myself- it appears to this New Yorker that if you are beautiful, thin, and fabulous (and somehow manage to have 40,000 dollars worth of shoes) you will end up happy...if for some reason you do not fit in any of the above, i'm afraid you are in for disappointment.
i ask you- fairy tales... how do we live with them, how do we live without them??
bummer. guess that does fit in with holiday motif after all,
ladies, gents (for yourself or your women) start wishin for your ruby slippers, glass slippers and manolo blahniks.
For those of you (all three) who attend early am, early pm, late pm.... coffee updates over $4 cups of half filled late's [i am dealing with that situation by the by], updates since: natasha had a weird dream regarding her daughter and a doctor (this daughter is very happy about the dream), i met my dermatologist while sporting a new pet growth (knew i should have gotten that duck or guinea pig while i could have- now i have a pet), i got to save Super Boy Brayan from golden dragons in Superhero Land on 5th street, and finally, i was helping, for at least 15 minutes, making little weird envelopes of chicken (wantons?) Natasha gives me any job related to paper, writing, and ink...
i hear the term metrosexual is out (sorry ruby slipper folks) looks like generation !@#$% [what comes after x,y,z??] is headed for ubersexual (as a result of this new development- my advice is don't visit Germany if you are a woman looking for men).
and oh yes, doughnuts, particularly the lightly glazed kind,
are still delicious.
easy fast. hydrate people. as in water hydrate. forget the fast. its good for your skin.

hey there...

Guess one of the best reminders to update your blog is when you become repulsed looking at it.
Hope everyone's chag was nice...thank the lord of hosts, mine was wonderful (tho' i'd like to propose implimenting dairy meals)... a year sweet like the wonderful organic honeys Rose and Chaya Langerino buy... (i'm told that there's a major market of gourmet and organic honeys)

so i guess, one holiday over...two to go....(i'm calculating how much fish, poultry and booze we consume in this one month) i'm busy looking into vacation options...Peru $321, Puerto Rico $250- hmmm where to go for Thanksgiving?? I was thinking of driving up North and actually attempting to brave the slopes. Despite my deep appreciation for snow and mountains i cannot escape that horrific image of Bridget Jones as she so gracefully crashed down the mountainside...if i do decide to go, i'll warn you all in due advance.

Today was a beautiful day... too warm to wear my new boots and too hot to wear anything but summer clothes. Tricky situation this is, one cannot comfortably wear fall weights nor can they still linger in their thongs. New Yorkers must seriously have a closet for that one week of fall and spring weather.... Based on the observations i conducted from a dreadfully boring class window this morning 63% of those who passed Boylan Hall were wearing bootwear... while the remaining 15% were in sandals and the last 22% some sneaker numbers. This brief moment of seasonal transcience causes me to stand in front of my closet wondering how to wear fall with the remnants of summer and fall without the fallness of the season... this week offers all excessive shoppers (contact me, i want to hire one) a chance to run a bit wild. Freedom of seasonal expression i suppose. For me, a quick glance at the alarm clock settled it, i ended up with loafers, my still uneven black Loom skirt and a blue silk scarf around my neck in a lame attempt to hold my pounding head to my still-sleeping body. life without caffiene is abominable.

Since i've last been in the cyber world i've developed a new addiction. So engrossed am i in this latest obsession, i have taken the liberty of not doing homework or any work related activites till after Columbus Day, or until I make it to the 5th season and see if Carrie ends up with Mr. Biggs. It's fabulous to be totally involved with a soap-opera like, chick-lit story line. so wonderfully typically female. yay. i haven't been this way....hmm...since my last little obsess.

While i am in blab mode- i went to a wonderful recitation this afternoon (with a fast till 7 there was plenty of time to kill). Of course on this rare occassion the English department managed to provide refreshments that i could actually eat (especially that chocolate biscotti i adore). hmmph. The occasion was the 50th anniversay of Allen Ginsberg's reading of "Howl" in San Francisco. This is my most favorite poem ever. Its so physical in verse, I could not move for three minutes afterward. At the risk of sounding pretentious (which i am prepared for here) it incorporates breath, word rhythm and all things fabulous... it's just a mess of brilliance.
here's a bit:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas
and Blak-like tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull...

to my wonderful audience (if you are still out there...if not...i'm totally cool talking to myself of my childhood imaginary friend Mr. Peso) i wish you all successful month (my unmentionable conveinently squashed in there) stay low on the sugar and wheat and come to a spinning class or two...you could be my guest.