For the past two years I've been trying to make sense of how I can make my work in the academe speak to the struggles on the streets. It's a really hard thing for me, because I have to work against a whole host of people in academia telling me what to think, write, say, do... and every week I work with community organisers from whom I learn too ( Read more... )

To lend a voice to suffering is the condition of truth.

I live really close to Little Italy, which was strangely silent as a graveyard yesterday, save for three kids on a bench in front of a cafe. One kid was wearing a full-on Dutch jersey, and they were sitting on the bench with a Dutch flag draped over their legs. They were quiet, just looking around, just smiling, especially when some Italian dude ( Read more... )

I watched My Blueberry Nights today and I'm not going to ruin it for anyone. But I just want to say I hate critics and I love Wong Kar Wai still... more and more, again and again.

That's all.

I miss breathing underwater. I miss being launched by currents, my body being gripped by the sway.

yesterday and the day before i helped prepare for a big demonstration in toronto. despite the storm the energy was amazing with people taking the streets. suddenly, on the march itself, i found myself becoming some kind of marshall, holding a megaphone, screaming against the deportation of immigrants, against the exploitation of non-status peoples ( Read more... )

~~~

I was accused of having "materialist nostalgia" when I delivered my paper on prison landscapes and empire.

At the time I was tired of having to keep Marx in the closet. Anyway I remembered Aime Cesaire, and the way the Vichy fascist regime wanted to clamp down on the radical anti-colonial journal he and his wife Suzanne wrote called Tropiques. ( Read more... )

~~

It's funny, isn't it, Karamazov,
all this grief and pancakes afterwards ...

Robert Hass, Praise, 1974.

~~

party for a little boy

Yesterday was V's birthday. He's 2 years old and the son of one of my best friends in the programme. Anyway, yes, it was so nice to be in a birthday party for a little boy! We had balloons (I got to draw on them!), streamers, cakes with marshmallows, hot fudge sundae, cupcakes, toy trains, Mr. Potato Heads ... and really ( Read more... )

~~

~~

"I am not being trivial. Your separateness could kill you unless I take it from you as a sickness. What if you get stranded in the town where pears and winter are variants for one another? Can you eat winter? No. Can you live six months inside a frozen pear? No. But there is a place, I know the place, where you will stand and see pear and ( Read more... )