Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Christmas blues
Why do families have such a hard time really getting the holidays?
I love Christmas. Love hearing the players on the subway, smelling Christmas trees outside every Rite Aid. Everything about Christmas - the entire beautiful prefabricated spectacle - makes me want to jump up and down, grab someone I love, find some mistletoe, curl up near the fire with a book and a sibling, and celebrate the holiday cheer. But coming home this year, everything seems to have come off wrong. No tinsel! No tree! Crazy day-before shopping trips! (Not the fun kind, either!) People are anxious in the run-up to Christmas services, and we do nothing but squabble. Then afterwards, we're all so tired that we spend days in front of the television, collapsed in a state of near-total ennui. Cookies are baked, but we still all snap at one another. Presents are opened, but the day goes on -- and then it's gone, and it's suddenly just another day in the cold cold winter, and everything is the same.
I've been watching Firefly and Buffy lately -- Joss Whedon gems! - and trying to figure this out. Throughout the whole series, the "family" in question (in Firefly, the crew of the ship) goes through a whole list of crises, mostly about whether they're going to leave the two fugitives, River and Simon, to be caught by the police. In the culminating episode, one of the crewmen opts to sell them out, but reneges at the last minute. Most of the crew doesn't realize it -- only the captain knows -- but it's a huge deal, because he's sold out the family. Even though he doesn't like them - even though he's kind of the cute renegade, so we expected it all along.
What makes this scene cool, in part, is that River and Simon don't even know -- they think that Jane tried to save them. More to the point, Simon thinks he's now officially 'part of the family' - that Jane went out on a limb to bring them back to the ship. He's thrilled, and feels like he's finally part of the crew - it's not until two or three episodes later that Jane actually just botched the deal to sell them out.
I don't know what exactly I'm saying here. But there's something cool in Simon's reaction -- taking on Jane as his brother, without realizing the irony -- and then being OK with it. In this case, he has to be OK with it -- he's the doctor, yeah, but he's also part of the family. You don't get to ditch your siblings, just because they offer to sell you out to the feds. This is the lesson we learn. So life goes on on Serenity.
More gun fights in space! More sword fights at home.
I haven't talked to my mom all evening, but she came in just a few minutes and said it was nice to have me home.
I love Christmas. Love hearing the players on the subway, smelling Christmas trees outside every Rite Aid. Everything about Christmas - the entire beautiful prefabricated spectacle - makes me want to jump up and down, grab someone I love, find some mistletoe, curl up near the fire with a book and a sibling, and celebrate the holiday cheer. But coming home this year, everything seems to have come off wrong. No tinsel! No tree! Crazy day-before shopping trips! (Not the fun kind, either!) People are anxious in the run-up to Christmas services, and we do nothing but squabble. Then afterwards, we're all so tired that we spend days in front of the television, collapsed in a state of near-total ennui. Cookies are baked, but we still all snap at one another. Presents are opened, but the day goes on -- and then it's gone, and it's suddenly just another day in the cold cold winter, and everything is the same.
I've been watching Firefly and Buffy lately -- Joss Whedon gems! - and trying to figure this out. Throughout the whole series, the "family" in question (in Firefly, the crew of the ship) goes through a whole list of crises, mostly about whether they're going to leave the two fugitives, River and Simon, to be caught by the police. In the culminating episode, one of the crewmen opts to sell them out, but reneges at the last minute. Most of the crew doesn't realize it -- only the captain knows -- but it's a huge deal, because he's sold out the family. Even though he doesn't like them - even though he's kind of the cute renegade, so we expected it all along.
What makes this scene cool, in part, is that River and Simon don't even know -- they think that Jane tried to save them. More to the point, Simon thinks he's now officially 'part of the family' - that Jane went out on a limb to bring them back to the ship. He's thrilled, and feels like he's finally part of the crew - it's not until two or three episodes later that Jane actually just botched the deal to sell them out.
I don't know what exactly I'm saying here. But there's something cool in Simon's reaction -- taking on Jane as his brother, without realizing the irony -- and then being OK with it. In this case, he has to be OK with it -- he's the doctor, yeah, but he's also part of the family. You don't get to ditch your siblings, just because they offer to sell you out to the feds. This is the lesson we learn. So life goes on on Serenity.
More gun fights in space! More sword fights at home.
I haven't talked to my mom all evening, but she came in just a few minutes and said it was nice to have me home.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
nick kristof: keeping your faith
In today's New York Times, Nick Kristof writes: "There’s evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family."
WTF? I get the "no children" argument. I also get the "preponderance of disposable income" argument (questionable though it may be) Gays are more charitable, not for a higher mobility of resources - or a generally higher income bracket - but because of -- you guessed it -- lineage!
The new American exceptionalists. Rapacious heirs indeed!
Whatever. Reading the New York Times makes me crazy, but I haven't found a better place to get news. So I spend my time on design websites, downloading pretty pictures. Like this one:
or this one:
and I compulsively make rice, like this.
Occasionally whole days go by in this fashion. This is what it means, I guess, to be young, on stipend, and totally disillusioned with your sense of what you can accomplish in a normal working day.
Back to Kristof: what's second-order weird about this, I guess, is also the suggestion that "individual" giving is somehow different -- or better?! -- than institutionalized giving (i.e giving regularly to church groups and private institutions, volunteering time, rather than one-time charitable giving). I wouldn't be surprised if there's a split here between Democrats and Republicans. Maybe not, though -- depends on where you draw the line. He seems to be talking mostly about individual, tax-deductible donations, which seems to be a pretty limited way to circumscribe "generosity."
Does tithing count as a charitable donation, tax-wise? If I give a $400 donation in the offertory on Sunday, can I put that down for tax exemption? Clearly I CAN, and it must, if religious donations are being categorized along with other forms of charitable giving.
But where do I put this down, if I'm filling out a form? And while we're at it: Can churches also get federal funding (and I'm almost certain they can - especially for missionary / overseas charity work)? Fuck the little man -- what about elected Republicans? Where do their personal donations go? Where does the OMB record this stuff?
My liberal imagination seethes. Power to the gays! Time to go feel guilty, stare at the wall, and think about the children until I get distracted and find something better to read on the internet.
WTF? I get the "no children" argument. I also get the "preponderance of disposable income" argument (questionable though it may be) Gays are more charitable, not for a higher mobility of resources - or a generally higher income bracket - but because of -- you guessed it -- lineage!
The new American exceptionalists. Rapacious heirs indeed!
Whatever. Reading the New York Times makes me crazy, but I haven't found a better place to get news. So I spend my time on design websites, downloading pretty pictures. Like this one:
or this one:
and I compulsively make rice, like this.
Occasionally whole days go by in this fashion. This is what it means, I guess, to be young, on stipend, and totally disillusioned with your sense of what you can accomplish in a normal working day.
Back to Kristof: what's second-order weird about this, I guess, is also the suggestion that "individual" giving is somehow different -- or better?! -- than institutionalized giving (i.e giving regularly to church groups and private institutions, volunteering time, rather than one-time charitable giving). I wouldn't be surprised if there's a split here between Democrats and Republicans. Maybe not, though -- depends on where you draw the line. He seems to be talking mostly about individual, tax-deductible donations, which seems to be a pretty limited way to circumscribe "generosity."
Does tithing count as a charitable donation, tax-wise? If I give a $400 donation in the offertory on Sunday, can I put that down for tax exemption? Clearly I CAN, and it must, if religious donations are being categorized along with other forms of charitable giving.
But where do I put this down, if I'm filling out a form? And while we're at it: Can churches also get federal funding (and I'm almost certain they can - especially for missionary / overseas charity work)? Fuck the little man -- what about elected Republicans? Where do their personal donations go? Where does the OMB record this stuff?
My liberal imagination seethes. Power to the gays! Time to go feel guilty, stare at the wall, and think about the children until I get distracted and find something better to read on the internet.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
3 p.m. - eating rice sticks
Sex with ____ tonight, and my stomach's a mess. Why is that?
It's winter here in New Haven, the snow hasn't come out yet, and the only thing to show for the season is this persistent lack of flavor in the air. Scents, rather. They grind to a halt come November, which makes garbage pickup a bit easier but strips the life out of everything else. Winter makes me miss New York. You can walk anywhere and it's fucking cold, so you put on your headphones and everything unfolds. It's like a big silent movie, walking through traffic, especially. Traffic is weird when there's no sound attached.
That's where I am now: New Haven. Cultivating something like domesticity -- which is strange. Recording life in an academic town, when school's been out for awhile. I walked by Toad's today and bought coffee at the store, and just kind of sat around for a bit. Maybe this makes me an attractive stranger? Sitting in a corner, nursing coffee, listening to people talk. Reading bits and pieces of Toderov, trying to figure out what he actually means when he talks about things being uncanny, as opposed to - what does he say? Marvelous. The only place I've ever felt like the term "uncanny" actually meant anything is in war pictures. Looking at bodies, and realizing that you don't actually know how to deal with dismemberment. Disarticulation. Not knowing what to say, but knowing what to do when you can't find the head. That's uncanny.
My friend Sharon sends me bits of war journalism every now and then -- that's what I think about, when I read this stuff, and don't quite know how to take it. Lots of tough guys sitting in bars -- the last outpost of expatriate life, sitting around and laughing it up on someone else's front. Hemingway, having a fucking ball, gradually drinking himself into a stupor because they won't print his stories. But I don't actually know anything about these things. The point is to send back these totally cynical lines, on how people don't care, and how the stories get churned into Africa fodder, fetishized, clucked at. I read them, like anyone else. But I'm not there, you know? I don't get to witness - I'm not even black. How can I know what to feel? And why bother reporting on it, if I can't know?
___ keeps sneaking out at night. Not out of the house - just out into the kitchen. Sometimes she sleeps on the floor, but mostly she just makes insane amounts of coffee. Three o'clock in the morning, and she's up making mocha. She says she's trying to shift over to an entirely nocturnal schedule -- that if she can time it right, she'll stay up all through the plane ride to Japan and not even be jetlagged. She's going to Japan in a month, and every day she goes to sleep twenty minutes later. I don't know how this helps, because she always wakes up at three anyway, and can't get back to bed, so goes to make coffee. But whatever - she says it works for her.
She's going to Japan. I don't know when this became a thing.
It's winter here in New Haven, the snow hasn't come out yet, and the only thing to show for the season is this persistent lack of flavor in the air. Scents, rather. They grind to a halt come November, which makes garbage pickup a bit easier but strips the life out of everything else. Winter makes me miss New York. You can walk anywhere and it's fucking cold, so you put on your headphones and everything unfolds. It's like a big silent movie, walking through traffic, especially. Traffic is weird when there's no sound attached.
That's where I am now: New Haven. Cultivating something like domesticity -- which is strange. Recording life in an academic town, when school's been out for awhile. I walked by Toad's today and bought coffee at the store, and just kind of sat around for a bit. Maybe this makes me an attractive stranger? Sitting in a corner, nursing coffee, listening to people talk. Reading bits and pieces of Toderov, trying to figure out what he actually means when he talks about things being uncanny, as opposed to - what does he say? Marvelous. The only place I've ever felt like the term "uncanny" actually meant anything is in war pictures. Looking at bodies, and realizing that you don't actually know how to deal with dismemberment. Disarticulation. Not knowing what to say, but knowing what to do when you can't find the head. That's uncanny.
My friend Sharon sends me bits of war journalism every now and then -- that's what I think about, when I read this stuff, and don't quite know how to take it. Lots of tough guys sitting in bars -- the last outpost of expatriate life, sitting around and laughing it up on someone else's front. Hemingway, having a fucking ball, gradually drinking himself into a stupor because they won't print his stories. But I don't actually know anything about these things. The point is to send back these totally cynical lines, on how people don't care, and how the stories get churned into Africa fodder, fetishized, clucked at. I read them, like anyone else. But I'm not there, you know? I don't get to witness - I'm not even black. How can I know what to feel? And why bother reporting on it, if I can't know?
___ keeps sneaking out at night. Not out of the house - just out into the kitchen. Sometimes she sleeps on the floor, but mostly she just makes insane amounts of coffee. Three o'clock in the morning, and she's up making mocha. She says she's trying to shift over to an entirely nocturnal schedule -- that if she can time it right, she'll stay up all through the plane ride to Japan and not even be jetlagged. She's going to Japan in a month, and every day she goes to sleep twenty minutes later. I don't know how this helps, because she always wakes up at three anyway, and can't get back to bed, so goes to make coffee. But whatever - she says it works for her.
She's going to Japan. I don't know when this became a thing.
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