Time has me by the throat today.
Perhaps it is because it is Sunday, the saddest day, chased relentlessly by history, lost love, death, and unrealized hopes.
I am very sad to be leaving and feel almost I shouldn't go.
I saw a play built on improvisations a company of actors generated from everyday objects. The play was entitled Les Ephemeres--ephemeral moments--and was a mélange of vignettes built upon cinematically iconic moments...moments that stemmed from both individual and group subconscious as stirred by the memories and nostalgia which accompanied the original objects. I was disarmed and unprepared for the intensity of the struggle ongoing in this nation to reconcile the war with reality, with any system of being or living. Twice during the viewing, individual audience members collapsed, stricken by the play's content, and were attended by emergency services.
I now understand the heaviness one feels in Europe, is the burden of the past. France was an occupied nation. We can't understand this in America, a nation that has never been so violated by 'the other.' Our homes destroyed, heritage razed, children shot, and humanity betrayed for the fear of staying alive. The war BREATHES in France. It is in the collective memory and consciousness. This LAND, the very land I walk on is a palimpsest of fate's collusion: the blurring of right and wrong, aggressor and victim, man and animal.
This epiphany haunts me.
I am afraid to return to America, where the virginity of even our land, our youthful innocence makes it too possible to forget.
I am at once terrified and soothed by the ghosts of this landscape.
dimanche 20 avril 2008
samedi 19 avril 2008
Tragedey
I have been living in Paris for 7.5 months without being kissed ONE SINGLE TIME.
For Christ's sake, this is the fucking capital of LOVE and ROMANCE.
This is a serious emergency and must be remedied before I part across the atlantic for goodsies.
I will work assiduosly to redress this grievance in as timely a manner as humanly possible.
Thank you for your convenance.
For Christ's sake, this is the fucking capital of LOVE and ROMANCE.
This is a serious emergency and must be remedied before I part across the atlantic for goodsies.
I will work assiduosly to redress this grievance in as timely a manner as humanly possible.
Thank you for your convenance.
mardi 15 avril 2008
Children
Today I proposed to Adele that we visit the Zoo de Vincennes tomorrow, weather permiting.
This is when Sam said:
"Je suis heureux que je ne serai dispo demain d'y aller avec vous." (I'm glad I won't be able to go with you two tomorrow.)
"Why not Sam, don't you like the zoo?"
"Not at all, it is so sad there. All the animals is in cages. You think they aren't unhappy but I know they really are. Imagine you is an animal and just you must spend all day in a cage, you not can move and be free, and you not can be with the other animals that are like you or your family. And, all the peoples that they pass you know you is not happy, but anyways they just stare and take pictures of how much you are sad."
"Yes!" adds Adele. "And all day you must be all naked!"
That's empathy.
This is when Sam said:
"Je suis heureux que je ne serai dispo demain d'y aller avec vous." (I'm glad I won't be able to go with you two tomorrow.)
"Why not Sam, don't you like the zoo?"
"Not at all, it is so sad there. All the animals is in cages. You think they aren't unhappy but I know they really are. Imagine you is an animal and just you must spend all day in a cage, you not can move and be free, and you not can be with the other animals that are like you or your family. And, all the peoples that they pass you know you is not happy, but anyways they just stare and take pictures of how much you are sad."
"Yes!" adds Adele. "And all day you must be all naked!"
That's empathy.
vendredi 11 avril 2008
On the event of Mr. Jewett’s retirement party
Dear Mr. J,
Thank you.
In real time, I am asleep in a comfortable bed in Paris, France. Or, less responsibly, perhaps I am enjoying a glass of red wine with friends, the early evening having been spent wandering the Louvre after hours.
Yet in time as the heart perceives it, I am here, at this present moment, in Hingham Massachusetts, with all assembled, celebrating you.
I am here because my voice is present—present in my thoughts, feelings, and opinions as I give issue to them, through words. And this Mr. Jewett, is what I have come to thank you for.
As a 10th grade English student, I was an unformed individual. An adolescent. A blob. My role in the world was therefore befittingly puerile; after all, the only skill I could boast was in composing a pat thesis essay, and with regards to self-knowledge…I was certain I would one day marry my High School boyfriend. Yet like most teenagers—bombarded by the world as they take first glimpses of life beyond their own existence—what I lacked in experience and eloquence, I compensated for with FEELINGS. LOTS AND LOTS OF FEELINGS.
Many of us laugh at naiveté, but Mr. J, you didn’t. Perhaps you feel as I do that while kids sometimes have a hard time processing the new world they see, their observations of it can be strikingly perspicacious and unbiased. I will not go so far as to make presuppositions about the personal beliefs that guided you as a teacher and a mentor, but I will say that as a 15 year old in your class, I learned that while recognizing truth makes us human, speaking for truth makes us extraordinary.
This is how you taught me to find my voice.
To begin: you made our class psychoanalyze Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, proving to me that the individual life counted, that (contrary to the rules of proper essay writing) employing the first person mattered. In many ways, I think of this assignment more as a lesson on courage, than on close reading.
Drawing inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s writings on comparative mythology, and Star Wars, you then had us try our hands at creative writing. You were the first person to ask me to author a story, and thereby the first individual who asked me to set out, concretely, my inner reality. Through these first exercises in autonomy of thought, I began to learn who I was, what I thought, and where I stood.
That is where you took your teaching one step farther. You helped a small group of students become peer facilitators for the Anti-Defamation League’s A World of Difference program, initiating a student corps that traveled school, community, and statewide working to eradicate hatred, bigotry and intolerance while promoting social justice. I am the empowered, socially active and conscientious woman I am today, because at 16 you showed me, Mr. Jewett, that in exercising my voice, I and any other human being have the agency to shape and mold our world for the better. My voice can sound louder than simple idealism or politicking; words are thought and thought is power: words are change.
Aside from the love of my family, this is perhaps the greatest gift I have ever received.
And, I would endeavor to say, that generations of young people with courage of conviction and words to bolster, is perhaps one of the greatest gifts the world could ever possibly receive.
We all have you to thank for that.
With much admiration,
Caitlin
Thank you.
In real time, I am asleep in a comfortable bed in Paris, France. Or, less responsibly, perhaps I am enjoying a glass of red wine with friends, the early evening having been spent wandering the Louvre after hours.
Yet in time as the heart perceives it, I am here, at this present moment, in Hingham Massachusetts, with all assembled, celebrating you.
I am here because my voice is present—present in my thoughts, feelings, and opinions as I give issue to them, through words. And this Mr. Jewett, is what I have come to thank you for.
As a 10th grade English student, I was an unformed individual. An adolescent. A blob. My role in the world was therefore befittingly puerile; after all, the only skill I could boast was in composing a pat thesis essay, and with regards to self-knowledge…I was certain I would one day marry my High School boyfriend. Yet like most teenagers—bombarded by the world as they take first glimpses of life beyond their own existence—what I lacked in experience and eloquence, I compensated for with FEELINGS. LOTS AND LOTS OF FEELINGS.
Many of us laugh at naiveté, but Mr. J, you didn’t. Perhaps you feel as I do that while kids sometimes have a hard time processing the new world they see, their observations of it can be strikingly perspicacious and unbiased. I will not go so far as to make presuppositions about the personal beliefs that guided you as a teacher and a mentor, but I will say that as a 15 year old in your class, I learned that while recognizing truth makes us human, speaking for truth makes us extraordinary.
This is how you taught me to find my voice.
To begin: you made our class psychoanalyze Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, proving to me that the individual life counted, that (contrary to the rules of proper essay writing) employing the first person mattered. In many ways, I think of this assignment more as a lesson on courage, than on close reading.
Drawing inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s writings on comparative mythology, and Star Wars, you then had us try our hands at creative writing. You were the first person to ask me to author a story, and thereby the first individual who asked me to set out, concretely, my inner reality. Through these first exercises in autonomy of thought, I began to learn who I was, what I thought, and where I stood.
That is where you took your teaching one step farther. You helped a small group of students become peer facilitators for the Anti-Defamation League’s A World of Difference program, initiating a student corps that traveled school, community, and statewide working to eradicate hatred, bigotry and intolerance while promoting social justice. I am the empowered, socially active and conscientious woman I am today, because at 16 you showed me, Mr. Jewett, that in exercising my voice, I and any other human being have the agency to shape and mold our world for the better. My voice can sound louder than simple idealism or politicking; words are thought and thought is power: words are change.
Aside from the love of my family, this is perhaps the greatest gift I have ever received.
And, I would endeavor to say, that generations of young people with courage of conviction and words to bolster, is perhaps one of the greatest gifts the world could ever possibly receive.
We all have you to thank for that.
With much admiration,
Caitlin
jeudi 10 avril 2008
On a less serious note
The past weekend while patronizing an Absinthe bar in the 11th, I happened to be a few knocks into a very pleasant drunk when I finally decided to indulge in a long overdue rant on the French toilette system.
I might have said something along the lines of:
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE TWO FLUSHY BUTTONS ON THE FUCKING TOILETTE? IT'S SO FUCKING ANNOYING AND REDUNDANT AND WRACKS ME WITH SELF-DOUBT AND UNCERTAINTY EACH TIME I HEED THE FUCKING CALL OF NATURE."
To which my friends applied in tones that might even have been patronizing had they secretly not been wasted:
"Um, one's for when you poop...and the other is for pee...it's an energy conserving toilette (YOU BOOBY)."
Just as I was beginning to feel as freakish as Ron Paul or any other Republican running for office, a dear friend came to my rescue with her astute observation going something like this:
"In reality...they're only energy saving for men who don't wipe after 'number one.' 50% of the population has to use the poop button NO MATTER WHAT, ergo rendering the pee buttom a vestigial and clearly phallus oriented technology representative of society's larger sexism problem."
What she said.
Two pee buttons is recockulous.
I might have said something along the lines of:
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE TWO FLUSHY BUTTONS ON THE FUCKING TOILETTE? IT'S SO FUCKING ANNOYING AND REDUNDANT AND WRACKS ME WITH SELF-DOUBT AND UNCERTAINTY EACH TIME I HEED THE FUCKING CALL OF NATURE."
To which my friends applied in tones that might even have been patronizing had they secretly not been wasted:
"Um, one's for when you poop...and the other is for pee...it's an energy conserving toilette (YOU BOOBY)."
Just as I was beginning to feel as freakish as Ron Paul or any other Republican running for office, a dear friend came to my rescue with her astute observation going something like this:
"In reality...they're only energy saving for men who don't wipe after 'number one.' 50% of the population has to use the poop button NO MATTER WHAT, ergo rendering the pee buttom a vestigial and clearly phallus oriented technology representative of society's larger sexism problem."
What she said.
Two pee buttons is recockulous.
Most Respectfully...
Stop popping up in my dreams
After much time, loss, and struggle
I have come to peace with you
Please
Address your sad conscience
that my consciousness
nations
and lifetimes away
may pass a quiet night
finally at rest
After much time, loss, and struggle
I have come to peace with you
Please
Address your sad conscience
that my consciousness
nations
and lifetimes away
may pass a quiet night
finally at rest
dimanche 6 avril 2008
Fragments
Bits and pieces that must not be forgotten that one day will will be woven into a coherent whole:
1. once there was a man who had never before left his village or country. perhaps he was not very bright, or perhaps he had not seen many white women, but he mistook my freckles and moles for mosquito bites.
2. accordian school
3. drink whenever the screen scrolls "ANTHRAX."
Other things in my head:
westerns and lawlessness
magic words. the heart
my beautiful, immpenetrable brother
children of young years know that the hill is there so they may roll down it...yet it is the weight of the head that always brings the magnificent falling body back to vertical position...and stasis.
stories longer than haiku
.........soon it will be time to pack again....and what will that bring?
doesn't the earth ever tire of turning? what a fantasticlly tragic comedey, this 'time'.
I have to laugh at myself because I learned at age 7 the world was not flat, and that 'horizons' are but lingustic fallout from the shock and awe of mortality...yet how dearly I still cling to the poetry of their idea.
1. once there was a man who had never before left his village or country. perhaps he was not very bright, or perhaps he had not seen many white women, but he mistook my freckles and moles for mosquito bites.
2. accordian school
3. drink whenever the screen scrolls "ANTHRAX."
Other things in my head:
westerns and lawlessness
magic words. the heart
my beautiful, immpenetrable brother
children of young years know that the hill is there so they may roll down it...yet it is the weight of the head that always brings the magnificent falling body back to vertical position...and stasis.
stories longer than haiku
.........soon it will be time to pack again....and what will that bring?
doesn't the earth ever tire of turning? what a fantasticlly tragic comedey, this 'time'.
I have to laugh at myself because I learned at age 7 the world was not flat, and that 'horizons' are but lingustic fallout from the shock and awe of mortality...yet how dearly I still cling to the poetry of their idea.
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