Roots in Houston

So here I am, again. Back in H-town after quite the fun, fall term in Chicago. It's warm here, if a bit rainy. I've been spending my days watching movies (a lot) and reading (a little). In the literary queue this week are:

- Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (which I've read three times already, but now it's going to be part of my thesis so I've got to read it like a philosophy text)
- Hegel's Phenomenolgie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirt)
- Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks (just fantastic)

And the movies I've already seen are:
- The Sentinel, with Michael Douglas and Kieffer Sutherland (Mom's choice)
- Eight Below, the one about the huskies that get stranded in Antarctica (Bro's Choice)
- The Pursuit of Happyness (pretty good, though, it could have had a better social justice message, you know, the usual rags to riches tale)
- Plus a few Bollywood spectaculars.

Really, I've spent double the time in front of the tube than I have holding a book. But whatever. I don't have a TV in Chicago, so I've got to get my fill now! Time's a ticking! I mean, the books will be there when I haul them back to Chicago, right?

Next week, we head to sunny Phoneix! Where we are planning to have a blast. Then back to Houston to ring in the New Year with the entire crew. Woot!

I hope you all are each having a most excellent December thus far! I leave you with the salutation that the man at the movie theater gave us yesterday as he handed us our tickets and sent us off to enjoy our film:

"We hope you enjoy your seasonal holiday celebrations!"

Flashbacks

My current project is a paper on nationalism and gender in India. Since there's little, if any, space for the touchy-feeley emotional stuff in a philosophy paper, that stuff is going to have to come out here. Bear with me, please.

You know, there's something nice about interrogating events with a critical eye. Looking deeply at the links between unresolved issues and tensions that abound. All that is very intellectually satisfying. Something gets left out of that picture, though. Something equally, if not more, significant. Something you can't grasp via stats and theories. Memory, perhaps. Identity, certainly. Heartbreak, always.

The partition of India affected my family profoundly. My paternal grandfather's family was from Lahore (now in Pakistan) and was made to move to Delhi. My maternal grandfather was a Colonel in the Indian Army during Partition and the wars that followed. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers were the reasons that their families made it out alive.

So, I live on the faultlines of the very events I am interrogating intellectually.
The tensions that abound? I'm steeped in those.
The anger that Indians and Pakistanis have toward each other? I've seen it firsthand.
The ways that we are almost exactly the same? I've seen those firsthand, too.

Then, when I read the recapitulations and pithy theories that try, and try and inevitably fail to capture the horror of a thing like Partition, I'm not really surprised. Strangely, even though my family left India right before the violence exploded again in '84, I have flashbacks. When I read accounts of women jumping into (or being thrown into) wells to prevent capture by "other side's men" and when I hear of the lorries piled up high with people and their life's belongings as they made their way from one side of the border to the other, somehow, I feel like I know how it might have been. Maybe it's the stories of migration and violence I've heard from elders. Maybe it's something else, but somehow, I find myself there, too.

There's been so much violence since then. Wars, famines, bombs: year after year. And then this happened, in Gujarat, just a few years ago.

"On 27 February [2002] , at approximately ten minutes to eight in the morning, the Sabarmati Express pulled out of the Godhra railway station on the last leg of what was to be the most catastrophic rail journeys of post-Partition India. As it left, the train was stoned by an irate mob and some twenty minutes later, a coach had been burned to cinder along with fifty-eight helpless passengers. Who the attackers were and what prompted them to such cruelty are unknown, but the rulers of Gujarat promptly decided all Muslims had to be taught a lesson. 'Retaliation' was swift and merciless, some would even say clinical. Over the next few days, several hundred Muslims were killed in a state-wide carnage that is certain to become a part of our 'past that will not pass.'"
- From, Gujarat: The Making of Tragedy

There are moments in every day, where we could just let the past, pass. Where we could recognize our collective history and not feel anger and hatred. Instead, we could locate our collective suffering. Suffering that crosses every single inch of that man-made border. Of course, we don't do that - we'd have to see each other's humanity. We'd have to see our own humanity.

Instead, I'll keep writing a philosophy paper, and having flashbacks.

On missing old friends and making new ones

I've made some very dear buddies this quarter. It's true, the saying that going through traumatic events makes people closer. We went through these past few months wracked with insecurity about our academic chops and about whether we've got it in us to be serious scholars. We trudged to class through weeks and weeks of cold, rainy weather with tomes strapped to our backs. We celebrated the small things, because we needed to seek out joy (seeing that it certainly wasn't about to seek US out). We reckoned with words and pages like we couldn't possibly have imagined it was possible to do. We spent hours going over every sentence of a paper, just trying to say something worth saying. We met and fell in love with Chicago. We took comfort in our family, solace in old friends and heart in our new ones.

Last week my dearest UChicago buddies, M and C, and I locked up our bagel-eating, pizza-scarfing, coffee-chugging collegiate selves in our messy closets. Then we dressed up, put on our shiny faces and polished shoes and went to dinner. We ate a four course meal that was indescribably divine. (Pear salad, butternut squash soup, pumpkin risotto, creme brulee.) Here are some photos of our divine dining destination:





Lovely, no? The photos don't do it complete justice. There were orchids in the loo. And freshly crushed mint in the mojito. It was so great to NOT be a student so obiviously exhausted from paper writing exertions. We talked about our biggest hopes for 2007 and our heartfelt accomplishments in 2006. We didn't dwell on the fears. We reveled in possibility. Just what the philosopher ordered.

On the way to dinner, we strolled through Chicago's theater district, right then vowing to make the city a bigger part of our lives next quarter. Maybe not as big a part as the library, but certainly a stronger character in the plot of our UChicago experience.

And let it be known, that though I've made some new buddies. I've never been more greatful to have all of you than I was this year. Yes, that means you. I couldn't have made it even this far without all those "check-in" phone calls, 2-hour instant messaging sessions and just as long late night laments about the pathetic state of academic philosophy. Also to those of you that reminded me that I'm lucky to be here, doing what I love even though it's hard, and that there's nothing I'd rather be doing: thanks. It's just what I needed to hear.

Hugs to you all.

New Gig

I have a new job - as a writer for the website www.RHRealityCheck.org. I'll be posting once a week on relevant and sundry reproductive rights issues. The aim of the website is to serve as a "reality check" against all the (mis)information that abounds in mainstream media on the topics of reproductive rights and health.

I'm pretty excited about the chance to think and write about non-theoretical issues tied and bound to the real, manifest universe at large. You all know that I love philosophy and political theory. It is, after all, the way that I make sense of the world and cope with the traumas inflicted by the newsfeeds that bring devastating images and uncritical thinking into my apartment every day. But sometimes, it feels damn good to see something particularly vile in the news portrayal of an issue and have a legitimate setting in which I can call it out for the shoddy research and reporting that it really is.

Somehow, I think that this new gig is going to bring some much needed balance to my intellectual life, which is currently veering from philosophy into psychoanalytical theory of consciousness. This week the paper du jour is about reason and practical rationality. Next week, gender and violence in India. How the heck did I get myself into this mess? Anyway, that's a question for another day and a different blog post.

My very first post is up here. Check it out and please tell me what you think.

Back

Back after a much needed long weekend away from my desk and out of the library. I didn't do any coursework over the past few days, though I did see Niagara Falls, visit with my extended family in Ontario, drive all over New York State, watch a few excellent tennis matches and eat lots of yummy food. It was great to hang out with Dad and Bro and just relax. Ooh, and I saw the new Bond flick. Recommended - it's dark and twisty and pretty much a riot. Also, Daniel Craig -- thumbs up (it was just time for Pierce to go).

This evening, however, is a different story. I'm back in my little apartment having rice and beans for dinner. Once again, I'm at the computer, with a paper to write, and some Gramsci to read. This week is going to be a doozy, but I'm well rested and ready for the madness.

Let the games begin.

On Encountering Literary Types (read: Why I'd Rather Party with Philosophers)

Picture this:

A swank loft in a hip part of Chicago. Industrio-chic whitewashed stone walls with weathered hard wood floors. Italian beers being served to gaggles of literary aficionados and poets who walk around looking severely disinterested yet obviously searching for approval in every corner of the cornerless room. Men in velvet blazers and some in rad, so-old-its-new vintage 80's bomber jackets. Women in skinny jeans (worn under tulle and taffeta frocks, of course). And a few folks in Bad Religion t-shirts. A man performing digital art by sitting at a computer in the center of the room. And oh-so-many tortoise shell framed spectacles.

And one disgruntled philosopher.

This was my Friday night. I got roped into heading uptown and checking out the 60th anniversary party of the Chicago Review, a premier literary publication based at the University of Chicago. So, I gussied up a bit and went off to see how the poets like to party. Pretentiously. Is the answer, apparently. I did have a couple of interesting conversations though. One was about poetics and rhetoric and another was about the need for more Taco Bells in Chicago. Some of the poets who read their work were good and the live band was pretty much the highlight of the evening's programmed activities. I also got to hone some very important skills.

Here's the thing: When I hang out with my philosophy buddies, we go to Jimmy's and get greasy grilled-cheese sandwiches and a pitcher of pumpkin ale. Then we argue our heads off about Marxism. That, somehow, is significantly more satisfying than tottering around posh lofts with people who fancy themselves Writers. Though I guess it makes for a good story (or two, actually. If you want to hear about some of the incredible pick-up lines I heard last night, you're going to have to call me -- I'll need to do voices and accents.).

So, the lesson of this post is: by all means, go forth and party with writers and poets, just make sure you have plans the next day to sit at the dive bar and argue your head off about Marxism.

You know, to restore balance.

Breaking News

"Parliament on Tuesday voted resoundingly to legalize same-sex marriages in South Africa making the nation the first in Africa and the fifth in the world to remove legal barriers to them, according to advocates. " - NYtimes

And yet, somehow, the idea still persists that the WEST is always the first site of social progress.
Incredible.

Full article here.

Week End

Oh and what a weekend it was.

Ms. S and I had a lovely time, which included, but was not limited to, getting sooopid at Jimmy's, making and eating pancakes while recovering from a night of some serious overindulgence, traipsing around Millennium Park and performing triple lutzes on the Chase Promenade, going all the way to the Art Institute of Chicago to see a paperweight collection (see below), watching X-Men 3 and eating yummy Indian food, Thai food and the Platonic Form of a grilled cheese sandwich (um, though not all at the same time).

Now, that's what I call a weekend.

Here are some photos (thanks, Ms. S, for sharing yo' mad skillz):


Dontcha wanna come and visit me now?

Generation Celebration

After a very long week, during which I turned in a paper, performed a 20 minute presentation about the rise of the Hindu right in India AND conquered my thesis topic proposal, I am ready to kick up my heels (or put them on, as it were) and have a fab weekend. My own personal, mini-celebration, if you will.

Luckily, I'll have the perfect opportunity. Ms. S is coming into town tomorrow, all the way from the Big Apple, to grace me and Chicago-at-large with her presence. We're going to Jimmy's (Local bar, where one can get some Harp and eavesdrop on conversations about rocket science. Really.) tomorrow night. And then we're going to have a very fun and mellow weekend. Some art, some jazz, some baking of cookies and making of pancakes. Some girl-talk. Hot damn, that sounds like a mighty fine weekend, no?

And given that there's obviously a sea-change occurring in the (American, political) world that's enough cause to put one's heels on and then to kick them up.

Here's to all that.

Poetry and Progress

When I'm not partying dressed as a French feminist theorist, I've been spending egregious amounts of time in the library and in the journal stacks thumbing through all manner of philosophy texts and political theory articles. Trying desperately to have an "aha!" moment and being precipitously struck with a topic for my MA thesis.

I've got the papercuts and sallow skin to prove it.

Now, for most people this wouldn't be quite so tough. But I'm basically starting from scratch having been out of school for a while and all the pressure was really starting to get to me.

So I did what I always do when academic frustration sets in: I pulled out my copies of The God Of Small Things by A. Roy, F. G. Lorca's poetry and Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. Poetry, poetry and poetry. Then I made a cup of coffee and settled onto the couch for 3 hours in the middle of the night, when I was at my most frustrated. Somehow, this never fails.

Sho 'nuf, inspiration struck and I'm well on my way to a thesis proposal that I'm thrilled about. I just needed to be reminded of the questions that matter most to me.

I want to write about the concept of recognition using Hegel, feminist theory and critical race theory. Very roughly, the question goes something like: What does it mean to see and be seen by another person? This is all very nebulous as yet, but I'm making progress and finally get back into the swing of being a student. All I needed was some poetry.

I'm actually really enjoying school. I wasn't sure that I would. And those of you that so generously sat around the CLPP office with me while I agonized about it will be happy to know that, even though I miss you like mad, it feels like it's going well here.

Here's to poetry and progress.

Halloween

Okay, you all get one guess to figure out who I dressed up as for the Halloween party on Saturday night.


Think... feminist philosopher (ok, I know).


Think... French.


Got it?


Yes that's right folks.


I poofed up my hair, put on a tweed skirt, and managed some creative lettering with duct-tape so that no one could be confused.


I present to you: Simone de Beauvoir! (with a tan)




You can see the skirt better in this one:




I guess Simone likes cowboys. And yes, that's a criminal priest to my right (there were a lot of people at the party vying for the "Most Tasteless Costume" prize). The fellow next to the cowboy was dressed as a bad paper.

Now that's a good time.

Sunrise

Despite an indulgent (pumpkin ale) Friday evening, I woke up before the sun was up this morning. And I was completely lucid, too. Surprisingly enough.

So, I made a pot of coffee at 6:45am and stood by the window and watched the sun rise. Despite being a chronic insomniac, I haven't seen the sun rise in a long time.

I live on the seventh floor of a building that faces East, towards Lake Michigan. Even though I can't see the water from here, this morning I could see the dense, full, lake clouds. Their edges blazed as the sun came up. At this moment, I realized how absolutely stunning the world is.

Stunning and devastating.

Yesterday, I read that the National Assembly in Nicaragua voted 52-0 to remove therapeutic abortion from the penal code. This amounts to a total ban on abortion. This morning, standing by my window, I realized the horror of that. Funny how something beautiful can remind you so sharply of the sheer brutality in the universe.

When I first started working at Amnesty, I used to have awful nightmares every night about the things I'd heard and read. Then I got tougher. I've read and heard about many terrible things since then, and I rarely have nightmares anymore. I realized that if I'm going to be able to do something about it I'm also going to have to bear witness. So I put on my big-girl mask, wrapped some barbed wire around my heart, and went out into the world pretending that I could handle it. Most days, this works, and I make it through the day just fine.

Some days, though, a marvelous sunrise is all it takes for that mask to come off and the wire to unravel.

Words

So, despite being a humanities student, this evening I decided to do some math. This past week, I've read 4 books, 9 essays and various miscellania, totalling a grand total of approximately 683 pages.

683. Think about it for a minute.

That's a lot of pages, and a lot more words. My entire head is filled with words. Not fun words either. These are words like "vicissitudes," "pictographic," and "totemism."

Normally, I love to read and I don't mind reading academic writing and philosophy, but even I am reaching capacity. I walk around bleary-eyed, with an IV of overpriced-yet-always-crappy campus coffee, carrying heavy books with titles like "Being and Time" and "Identity and Violence." I read on the bus. I read while I'm in line at the grocery. I read at the gym. I'd read while I was sleeping if I could just figure out how to work that out.

So you know what I mean, here's an example. This passage part of an essay I read this week for my Philosophy (with a capital P, meaning, "serious intellectual stuff happens here") Class:

"If a man holds some course of action to be the best one, everything considered, or the right one, or the thing he ought to do, and yet does something else, he acts incontinently. But I would also say he acts incontinently provided he holds some available course of action to be better on the whole than the one he takes; or that, as between some other course of action which he believes open to him and the action he performs, he judges that he ought to perform the other. In other words, comparative judgements suffice for incontinence. We may now characterize an action that reveals weakness of the will or incontinence:

D. In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: (a) the agent does x intentionally; (b) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and (c) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x.

There seem to be incontinent actions in this sense. The difficulty is that their existence challenges another doctrine that has an air of self-evidence: that, in so far as a person acts intentionally he acts, as Aquinas puts it, in the light of some imagined good. This view does not, as it stands, directly contradict the claim that there are incontinent actions. But it is hard to deny that the considerations that recommend this view recommend also a relativized version: in so far as a person acts intentionally he acts in the light of what he imagines (judges) to be the better."

That passage is from an essay by Donald Davidson called, "Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" Um, yeah, I'd say so. I do things all the time that are clearly, in my mind, opposed to my own best interest. Like today, I was eating Thai food for lunch and I came across something that looked like a very spicy pepper. I saw it and thought, "that's probably pretty damn spicy." And you can probably guess what happened next. Yeah, I ate it. My head turned bright red and practically exploded. But whatever, maybe the rest of you are always rational and continent beings.

Now imagine 683 pages very muck akin to the above quoted nonsense.

(Okay, not all of it is that bad. Some of it is actually quite interesting, but I'm going for dramatic effect here.)

See what I mean? My head is full of words and they are starting to lose their meaning. Which is a bad thing since the reason we use words is to convey some sense of meaning. I have no idea what will happen to me in a few weeks when I'll have to stop reading, and write something.

Me and Celine: A Digression

I don't know how many of you already know this about me, it's a well guarded secret: I love Celine Dion.

No, I'm not kidding.

I know, it erodes any faint trace of street-cred I might ever hope to have, but here's the thing: sometimes those ooey, gooey love ballads are just the thing a girl needs. No, again, I'm not kidding.

In an homage to Pop/Dev's 10 reasons tradition, and having just spent a philosophy laden weekend with a Celine soundtrack playing softly in the background, I present to you:

The Top 10 Reasons You Should Run Out and Get a Celine CD:

1. It's not tormented and borderline psychotic "chick-with-a guitar" melodrama. Now, don't get me wrong, Tori and Ani have a special place in my heart, but sometimes a little, "Because you loved me" goes a long way to maintaining slivers of sanity. Love, in Celine's universe, is simple and uncluttered with threats to jump into the nearest ditch.

2. She never uses the terms "bitches" or "hoes."

3. The woman can sing. There's never a bum note. And when I put the on CD loud enough to drown out the sound of my own voice, good lord, I can sing too.

4. The Celine Show. This is related, but slightly different, to Reason #3. She puts on a good show, and whether or not you appreciate her musical stylings you've got to admit that the woman puts it all out there. She really sings her songs with Heart (note the capital H). And there's nothing better than a song sung with Heart.

5. My Heart Will Go On. Even though none of you will admit it, but the song brought tears (or at least a slight misting) to your eyes. Come on, I know it's true.

Celine + doomed romance on the high seas = A Beautiful Thing

6. The one woman (+ a million minions) stage show at Caesar's Palace. Caesar's, people. Where costume changes are measured to the second and awkward dance moves abound. All for a few hundred GW's. Basically, capitalism at its finest. This is the proof of the pudding.

7. This. OMG. CD on Larry King re: Katrina. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but you have to love it.

8. Her quirky Québécois accent. It's particularly fab when it comes through in her songs (the live versions are better for detecting it) and she boldly sings, "becausczhe yooo loourved me."

9. Poignant lyrics.

Exhibit A:
"...You make me sad
You make me strong
You make me mad
You make me long for you / You make me long for you

You make me live
You make me die
You make me laugh
You make me cry/ You make me cry

You make me live
I hate you
Then I love you
Then I love you
Then I hate you
Then I love you more..."

Who are we kidding? This is the real deal. Poetry as ballad.

And finally...

10. Yes, it's sappy and something you could NEVER mention in sophisticated company, but those sentiments pull on the heartstrings. Just listen to them. Sometimes that sort of unabashed sentimentality conveys exactly how you feel.

I know, overwhelming evidence. What did I tell you?

I think grad school is making me soft. Next week, I'll post something about puppies and babies.

After a long day of Heidegger...

... what a girl needs to do is, throw a dinner party, don't you think?

That's what I thought. So I rounded up a couple of buddies this evening and made pancakes for for us all. Not just any pancakes, mind you. These had chocolate chips in them. In addition to the chips, they were smothered with a strawberry compote that yours truly made. Yes, that's right, I just said strawberry compote. (My MHC readers will be thinking fondly of Sunday brunch in the Rockies, I imagine.)

Oh-the-goodness. Fluffy, chocolatey, strawberry smothered goodness.

We washed it all down with some chai. The real kind, with all the requisite spices, and made Punjabi style (sweet and creamy).

Yum.

Just call me Martha.

Coming Back: Volver

On Tuesday night a friend and I went to see Perdo Almodóvar's new film, Volver. It's out in theaters on November 3, but UChicago got a special, pre-release screening. It was spectacular film noir. Maybe his best (though I loved Hable con Ella and Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios).

It's hard to tell if Volver (meaning, "to return") is a comedy or a tragedy. Life is usually hovering somewhere on the brink between tears and joy, no? He reckons with his roots, as all of us displaced/replaced/misplaced folks are apt to do, by setting it in a village like his hometown and filming it in Spain. It handles death and dying with a tenderness and a lot of humor. And the mostly female cast is made up of full, vibrant and hilarious characters.

Just a great movie experience, overall.

Anyhow, you should all go and see it, and tell me what you think. It's all I can do NOT to put any spoilers here. Then we can talk specifics.

On expositions, tears and being well-adjusted

Today I turned in my first paper, which I'm not allowed to call a "paper." It was about Marx, Hegel and Adam Smith. It's a very specific kind of assignment and the profs are calling it an "analytical exposition." Whatever. If it looks like a duck... It was short and pretty excruciating to write. I heard, through the grapevine, that when the grades come out, a few folks are always found outside the program office in tears. Not tears of joy, either, mind you.

Picture it: Big, tough, graduate-student-masters-of-the-universe, in tears.

If there's anything we felt confident about when we got here, it was that we knew how to write. It's a strange sort of intellectual hazing, I think. But somehow, even though I should be flipping out, I feel pretty calm about the whole thing. A few years away from the insular ivory tower has done me a world of good.

There are real problems out there and there are certainly far more important things to stress about. So there you have it. I'm officially well adjusted.

Of course, the real test will be whether I'm found in tears on grade day.

Ribs (well, corn on the cob) and Blues

Nothing beats hearing a live blues band in Chicago. This weekend I heard Charlie Love and the Silky Smooth Blues Band. Take a listen. Some in our party ate ribs, too. (The veggie options were slim, but the ale and corn on the cob made up for it.) And fyi, according to Charlie, one doesn't "dance" to the blues, one "boogies." And boy did I boogie.

I love this town.

Roots in Chicago

After a long, hot summer in H-town, I'm in Chicago. Being a graduate student. And I'm going to write about it some.

A pal told me a long time ago that I should set up a blog - to keep all my Dears in Western MA in the loop, and I never got around to it til now. Even though I'm supposed to be reading.

Mostly, I need a small (cyber)space to call my own. You know, random musings (I study philosophy, so I have many of those), as well as things I like, love and loathe. You get the picture.

So here's to wasting time, in cyberspace, no less.

Cheers to that and love love to you all.