a pontification

The man's a philosophy teacher and he's talking about yoga.

Last week it's some new construction projects in the downtown.

The week before: infidelity.

He says,"If a man cheats, it's the woman's fault." It's a convenient, one-line argument and it doesn't cater to the demographics of this particular college. In this city, in western Ukraine. Over 95% of the school are women. It's a pedagogical college; teachers train here. And the teachers here are almost all women. Of course.

He has a captive audience.

When the girl's aren't laughing. "He's so funny," they say.

He tells these 20 year olds, all single to a woman, that they will be the reason their future husbands will cheat. These dolled up models will mush their husbands into the arms of other dolled up models. Their slim, waifish bodies won't be enough to hold their husbands' interest. Nor will their blue satin thongs. Because these women will grow older but a man's appetite remains young.

This teacher--to use a term loosely--leaves an out for all Ukrainian men. When men cheat on these woman--and there is no "ïf" here (pity the faithful man)--these women might look back to a 2007 philosophy class and say, "This was my fault."

And another generation of women are betrayed.
 

Mission Accomplished

3,243 US Soldiers killed.

Mr. Bush, how do you sleep at night?
 

Untitled (Flash Fiction Pt 3)

I turn off the reading light and sit down in the chair by the window. Through it I see a man walking a dog, the kind of dog built for running—long and slender and all muscle. Even in the dark I can tell it's the running kind. Even through my window. The man's cigarette tip glows red out there in the darkness. The dog urinates against a utility box.

Everything is quiet.

Then somewhere near me—behind and to my left, I think—my dead wife moves in the darkness. I feel her as much as I see her, even more so maybe. She's there in the shadows close to me. Right there next to the French china and our wedding picture from 1939. I know it even though I haven't actually turned my head.

Instead I watch the man and his dog recede past the streetlight and beyond toward the cross street. A winking ember follows them.
 

Untitled (Flash Fiction Pt 2)

It has something to do with perspective. It has something to do with being at the very end of things, about cleaning house, about readying for death. If you're young you'll think that is awfully dark. Perspective. Remember?

I push the touchpad buttons until the clock reads 10:20. I push start to set it. It doesn't matter whether it's really 10:32 or actually 10:06. I have no appointments tomorrow. I have no reason to get it right. Time doesn't matter anymore.

The clock reads steady now. The green numerals sit still and outside the car alarm falls silent. Then there's that space, that negative space, which comes in to fill the space of noise now absent. It's an acute silence—like the silence of the grave—that most people don't ever notice: Things are quieter after they've been loud.

It's 10:21 when I decide to leave the kitchen. The apartment is dark except for my reading lamp in the corner illuminating a copy of Harper's. Around me—on either side, just past a few layers of drywall and wallpaper—another forgotten elder is dying. Usually one a week.

Last week Mrs. Fletcher and Mr. Groby both died on Tuesday night, and then Peter from Bingo died Wednesday morning. It was some kind of record. We talked about it during lunch, over pea soup with ham and cheese finger sandwiches, crusts cut off. Over flat Pepsi. Over starched, white table linens. Over walkers and colostomy bags.

But I've forgotten my point. I've forgotten my point.

Around me, someone else dies.

Somehow, all of this is my fault.
 

Untitled (Flash Fiction Pt 1)

Moving into the kitchen I begin to wonder again what I did wrong. Somehow all of this is my fault.

The clock on the stove is flashing and incorrect after suffering an earlier power-outage, but it's my only companion in this dark space at the moment. A green, flashing digital clock—insisting it's 4:24 instead of sometime past 10:00. Four hours and twenty four minutes ago the power came back on.

The stove was resurrected.

Time started over.

I reach for the touchpad on the stove and wonder exactly what time it really is. I need some kind of reference, my wrist watch or the endless ticker on one of those cable news shows people like so much—the ones with people talking over each other so no one really ever hears anything. It would be better if they relaxed a little. You get to be my age and you start to relax about everything. At some point time starts over.

You retire. You lose a wife or two.

You begin to see the big picture.

It's similar to what recovering alcoholics call a "moment of clarity," except it lasts for the rest of your life—which is actually kind of a second life. You get to be my age and you see things clearly. You see all of it, the whole goddamn mess, as something that makes sense.
 

Sole Loyalty

Philip Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist now working for Exxon Mobil, conceded during a congressional hearing yesterday that while he was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality he watered down reports on the adverse effects of man-made emissions on the planet's climate.

"My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," Mr Cooney told the house government reform committee.

(full article)
 

three word names

Register-Guard - Eugene, Oregon

What do you do when someone you knew becomes a three word name? Your John Wayne Bobbit. Your Richard Lee McNair. How do you feel?

You feel numb and dirty and tingly.

It's the whole, "I didn't know he had it in him," thing. The neighbor on the local news station leaning over the fence, gumming his cigarette butt, saying, "I've known his ass fer years. Didn't know he was capable." I've got that kind of slack-jawed, wall-eyed shock coursing through me.

You just never hear someone's full name, unless you hear it uttered dispassionately. A story told to a friend who told a sister who told you. A story, a salient anecdote, with a name. A George Walker Bush kind of name. You've seen the guy in color ink. In black and white. You know the guy, but not really. Three word names aren't given to people you know.

Until they are.

And then you wonder who they ever were at all.

Killing Self

this
ugly duality
ugly

this
broken faith
broken

this
hard love
hard

this
killing self
killing

killing me
 

End The War

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Join Me, Speak Out

Fellow Americans,

Four years after our illegal invasion of Iraq—an unjustified and wholly immoral act of economic colonialism—hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed, more than 3,000 American service members have died, and our treasury continues to be bled dry to service a runaway military-industrial complex.

I mourn the dead and wounded, and I will continue to loudly denounce our behavior in the Middle East and in many other regions of the world. I hold myself responsible for the corruption of my government. I hold you responsible too. I hold all of us, responsible.

This weekend, in major cities throughout the United States, vigils and protests are being held to mark the four year anniversary of an invasion and a war that never should have occurred. I implore you to seek one out and attend it. I implore you to take the very small step of standing up, voicing opposition, and taking action. It really is the least that you and I can do.

If you live in San Diego, a march and rally will take place downtown at 4th and Broadway (1PM, Horton Plaza) on Saturday. Information and fliers are available here: http://www.sdcpj.org/

For those living in other areas of the country, visit http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ or http://www.moveon.org to find an event near you.

Respectfully,
 

The United States of Amnesia

"We live in the United States of Amnesia. Nobody remembers anything past last Monday."

-Gore Vidal
 

the luck of birth

AP Worldstream, Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, Mar 09, 2007

"President Viktor Yushchenko appealed to this ex-Soviet republic's political parties to do more to ensure that Ukraine makes it into the European Union during their political careers.

Yushchenko's call came amid disappointing results in talks with the EU, which has agreed to work toward closer political and economic ties with the nation of 47 million, but stopped short of recognizing it as a future candidate for membership."

The EU distances itself more and more from Ukraine. From further expansion. Earlier hopes of ascension have cooled. Brussels is having enough trouble handling the neophytes it has; it can't add another ball to its juggling act.

So the president makes a claim. "Within a political career." But those things don't run long term over here. We need to think in generations. Generations of people, not politics.

Ukrainians were caught looking through the glass window in front of the sweet shop. They saw the rainbow of confectionery treats. They salivated. A bell over top the door dinged and the Ukrainians I know thought the door was opening.

But no.

They're still out. The Mexico of Europe. (Two million Ukrainians working abroad, most of them illegally; high governmental corruption; no trust in the police force.) Locked out of a better future, as most of my students see it, because of where they were born.

Dasha was born in Ukraine, so her chance of living like the people she sees on television is small. She'll finish high school and go on to get a university degree no other country besides Ukraine will fully recognize.

Which is just as well.

She won't be able to get a visa to go anywhere anyway.
 

?? (Thumbtacks 2)

 

? (Thumbtacks 1)

 

American

It's probably not something you'll want to hear. It's not something I really want to say. But it happens to be true: Sometimes my country makes me sick.

Sometimes the injustice of it—the obvious abandonment of right for wrong—is literally overwhelming. I have to stop. I have to breathe. I have to mute the goddamn television.

I have to remember.

We are a country, if we're worth anything at all, that is about truth and freedom. Are these just platitudes on which we raise our children? Are these lies we tell ourselves? Are these ideals instead delusions?

I cannot understand why people get offended by these kinds of questions but what's worse, I'm wondering why I'm beginning to fear expressing them. Will you tune out and turn on—the latest device, the newest camera, the hottest gaming system? Are we nothing but iPods and Bluetooth? I think in many ways yes; we've forgotten what defines us. We're confused—you and I.

Tonight 60 Minutes took my breath away with a story about how we—America, home of the brave and land of the free—are tossing away the very Iraqis who at the onset of our (illegal) invasion of their country sided with us, and helped save American lives by providing our military forces with critical intelligence and translation. Now these Iraqis are on their own, and are hunted by the insurgents which have flooded their country since Mission Accomplished. Their families are under threat and their nationality lies in tatters. The countries to which they have fled are hunting them as well, for deportation.

And though America's wisdom led it to accommodate 130,000 Vietnamese refugees in eight months following the fall of Saigon, today we aren't willing to allow these Iraqis asylum. Iraqis who have saved many, many American soldiers' lives.

Something is terribly wrong here and I shouldn't even have to say it. 60 Minutes should never have been able to run this story because it never should have developed. But it has. It has.

And the injustice of it makes me sick. It should make you sick too. It should make all of us, American, sick.

Where there is injustice we must stop it. Where there is acquiescence we must fight it. Where the spirit of freedom, debate, and humanitarianism cowers we must empower it. We must raise ourselves up to what we once were or we must demand apologies from those who indoctrinated us into a system of lies. If we do any less we don't deserve to call ourselves American.

Or America doesn't deserve to persist.

There. I said it.
 

Mood Music

"They knew they were being lied to, but if lies were consistent enough they defined themselves as a credible alternative to the truth. Emotion ruled almost everything, and lies were driven by emotions that were familiar and supportive, while the truth came with hard edges that cut and bruised. They preferred lies and mood music ..."

J G Ballard
Kingdom Come
 

oh yes, that's why.

(Guardian.co.uk Article Link)

Ol' Newt admits to having had an affair, just as he was in the throes of screwing

a man,

former President Bill Clinton for having,

wait for it,

an affair.

With this level of hypocrisy just adding more fuel to the flames:

Bush's bungling of Iraq

Libby's conviction

CIA bungling of the Patriot Act

Walter Reed Hospital

Ann Coulter

A country in the red so deep it's crimson

and on and on

how does anyone support these right-wingers?

How can we stand by

while Clinton is impeached for sex

but no one is even slapped on the wrist

for leaking a CIA operative's name?



Oh yeah,

Britney shaved her head

and sees

the anti-christ.

That's how.
 

An NC-17 Nation

The most frightening revelation in Kirby Dick's recent Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) documentary, "This Film is Not Yet Rated," is the reality that violence is more acceptable in American culture than sex.

There's a lot more in this worthy documentary of course: the fact that the identity of the rating board members is undisclosed; the odd appeals process which involves anonymous panel members including a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian minister; the vagaries of the rating process itself and the complete lack of accountability; the cold fact that, although most Americans find the MPAA movie rating system useful, the ratings are ultimately, simply, the judgment of a handful of "ordinary parents" who's children are in fact often adults themselves.

But the idea that violent acts are more acceptable on screen than lovemaking carries with it dangerous and serious implications. Many of which we see manifested in the cultural, political, and, yes, military identity of America today. The 1960's adage, "Make love not war," seems even more appropriate in light of the growing culture of dysfunctional censorship we find ourselves in today.

A culture of censorship which prefers decapitation, rape and abuse of women (the damsel in distress), glorification of the military, and gratuitous gunplay over the inherent and essential biological and spiritual connection of physical, sexual intimacy is a sick culture indeed.

What are the implications? A populace that glorifies violence is only the start. The real danger here, the dark side few seem able to discern, is that the very thing the MPAA board members (and those who repress sex in its many forms) seek to suppress will ultimately transform into something much more malignant. This is a tragedy when you consider the offender is, simply, pleasure. Human connection. Intimacy. Love.

In fact, by relegating sex to the corner—by refusing to present a true cinematic portrait of it and its profundities—we turn sexual intimacy into something dirty, something secret, something unworthy of glorification. We turn it into rape. We turn it into pedophilia. We turn it into bad.

We raise and promote a culture where Puritanism perverts itself into self-repression, and that self-repression leads to the very acts and behaviors the secret members of the MPAA loathe. We are, it seems to me, turning ourselves into an NC-17 nation in the truest and worst sense. A nation where brutality is couched in patriotism or the thrill of the chase. A nation where sexuality is forced into a dark, secret, perverted, and ugly form—all in the name of decency.

Like so many elements of American culture today, this is a chink in our armor; this might just be our own undoing.
 

Giacobbe

by Andrea Giacobbe