This quote, which I tore out of an old City Pages and which has graced my bulletin board since, mm, the late 1990s, was meant to lead off a post on the riots in London.
And then I remembered that I don’t know fuck-all what’s going on over there and should just keep my trap shut.
But the tear-out? It stands on its own.
It was so obvious I forgot to mention it: the Big Fear.
About The Unexpected Neighbor, I mean, the main reason I hesitated to tell people I knew that the book was now available at Smashwords.
And no, not whether or not they liked it. But whether they’d think less of me for this story. I mean, they could like it, but think it a trifle, and thus consider me. . . trifling.
Y’know how I mentioned a couple of posts ago that, however foolish the attempt, I nonetheless try to control what people think about me? Wasn’t kidding. Not one bit.
So here I tell people—you, my friends in New York, a friend in Wisconsin, my mom—that I wrote this book. Because I want you to know that I wrote this book. And I might even want you to read it.
Maybe.
But if nobody I know reads it, I don’t know if I’ll be more disappointed or relieved. I want you to like the story, and I think the story is likable, but I’d like you to like it quite apart from me—as in, AbsurdBeats is here and the book is there and never the twain shall meet.
Silly, I know, and embarrassingly neurotic. (Okay, so the control thing may have something to do with neurosis, as well, but it sounds so much. . . flintier to state I want to control than to say I want people to think well of me. Control, yeah, I’ll go with that.)
Anyway.
I want to get better at this, the novel-writing, and while I think The Unexpected Neighbor is a decent first book, I don’t know that I’d have published it if I thought it were my only book. I wouldn’t want this to be too big a piece of me.
It’s not me. It’s not biography, and no one in the story is me. But it came out of me and there are bits of me (and friends of mine) scattered throughout these characters. It’s not all or nothing; the twain has met.
It’s mine, but not me.
I know that. I have to trust that if anyone I know reads this, they’ll know that, too.
How they know that, well—deep breath—that’s not up to me. That’s up to them.
Or I could just hope that only strangers read it.
_____
(This is the real hat-tip to Susan Wise Bauer, but her site’s not loading; I’ll add a link when I can here’s the link.)
A few words about words:
Privilege. I have used this word, and will continue to do so in the context of “privileges and liberties” and “privileges and/versus rights” and “privileged information”.
I have also used in terms of “skin privilege”, as in I, as a white chick, have skin privilege: I don’t have to think about skin color/race because, through no effort of my own, I have, in this country, the default skin color. There are things I don’t have to worry about because I’m white.
The term, in other words, can do some real work; unfortunately, it can also do some real damage.
What was meant at one point to lead to greater understanding now gets in the way of that understanding. It has become a term of opprobrium, an insult to be hurled at anyone who hasn’t had the worst of everything and therefore can contribute nothing to understanding anything.
It shuts people down, and, as a general matter, I don’t see the point of that.
I do see the point of trying to prod folk into critical (self-)reflection, to encourage people to be mind-ful of what in their lives was unearned and, perhaps, to then gain some perspective on what was earned. It’s not about individuals versus structures, but about individuals within structures, how individuals move structures and structures move individuals and the multivarious ontological and practical implications.
Good times.
Wielders of the privilege weapon, however, too often try to guilt the individual for the existence of the structure itself, that someone who’s rich is responsible for the class system, that the individual man is responsible for patriarchy or each straight person wholly owns heteronormativity (yet another word which should be confined to the academy), or that ablism is the fault of every person who’s able-bodied and ageism, each and every young whippersnapper out there.
How is this helpful to anyone? What role does such shaming have in creating a more thoughtful people or a more equal society?
The ends may not justify the means, but they should inform them.
Triggered/trigger-warning: This is not a term I’ve used, although I have some sympathy for those who do.
There are some topics which are known to set off intense reactions in those who read or hear them; knowing this, some people choose to offer a warning before diving into those topics. That’s a decent thing to do.
Now, perhaps I don’t do this because I’m not decent—entirely possible—or maybe it’s because I don’t know what’s going to set people off. And because I don’t know where to set the line I prefer not to set one at all.
I’m going to write what I write, and while (with some notable exceptions) I don’t intend to offend, I know I’m going to, regardless. If I worry too much about that offense, I may end up not writing, and I’d rather write and offend (and apologize, if necessary) than not-write so as to not-offend.
I don’t know if that’s better or worse than those who append a TW before a topic; it’s a choice and a preference, nothing more.
Swearing: You may have noticed I do not restrain myself in this area.
The best argument I’ve heard against swearing (thank you, Ms. G, my high school English teacher) was that it wasn’t creative (although, with all respect to Ms. G, I have heard some mighty creative curse constructions). Even that, however, was not and has not been enough to stop me from littering my blog and speech with blue words.
Now, if I give a formal presentation, I don’t swear. If I prepare an article for publication, I don’t swear. Professional situations? Ixnay on the ursecay. I try very hard not to swear around little kids (let ’em learn these words from the older kids, the way I did), or, for that matter, around people who I know are offended by swearing—especially if I’m a guest.
But this blog ain’t a formal presentation: it’s a cyber-conversation, and in conversation, I tend to lay down the low language.
I’m not proud of this, and I periodically try to clean it up—but more for aesthetics than morality.
Goddess forbid I’d let morality get in the way of my rampages. . . .
I always call on birthdays. And this was a big one.
No, not the president’s (tho’, since we’re here, happy birthday Mr. President); my mom’s.
She’s seventy.
That could be old, I guess, but it’s tough for me to think of her (or my dad, 73 in December) as old. They golf and take vacations and go swimming and take walks and work out and play cards and watch movies and, I dunno, do all the stuff they’ve done for the past thirty or forty years.
Maybe more slowly, but, hell, a couple of years ago they went to Costa Rica and whipped down a zip line.
Anyway, my pop got my mom a Nook for her birthday. I told her about The Unexpected Neighbor.
Which was unexpected.
I didn’t think I’d tell ’em because I thought, well, they’re not going to read this thing on their computers. Plus, there’s the link to my profile, which includes a link to this blog.
My family doesn’t know about this blog.
Now, it’s not a problem if my mom follows the link and finds this blog. When I started the blog it was VERY IMPORTANT to me that I retain my pseudonymity, but over the years I’ve loosened up a lot. (And, obviously, in posting the link to The Unexpected Neighbor I made it very easy for anyone to find out who I am.) Since I had decided that I wouldn’t say anything behind my big red cube that I wouldn’t in front of my name, traversing the distance between my given name and my absurd one isn’t that great.
Still, I like that distance.
Anyone runs a search on me, this wouldn’t be the first thing to pop up. (Although I don’t know that I’d be the first thing to pop up if I ran a search on my name: it’s not uncommon. Anyway, I don’t know, because it’s been, mmm, five years? ten? since I ran a search on my name. Some shit I don’t need to worry about.) And, to extend this, I like having that space between my teaching self and my musing/ranting self. Finally, however much I’ve given myself over to the cyber-machine, I still don’t care to make it easy for the Googleplex to connect my absurd self to the rest of my life.
So, what if my mom or pop or anyone else in my family reads my blog? Eh, I don’t know. They’d be bored by the politics and likely put off by the swearing and they might wonder about my wonderings.
I don’t know that I want them wondering about my wonderings but, really, isn’t it long past time for me to stop policing what others may think of me?
I mean, let’s be real: I’m always going to try to police what people think of me, but I’m way past knowing that others will think what they think, regardless.
That’s how it’s always been, hasn’t it? You do what you do and everyone else will do what they do and sometimes it matters more than anything and sometimes it doesn’t matter at all.
So I’ll walk the beat and then let it be.
Absurdly, of course.
______
h/t Susan Wise Bauer, for this aptly-timed post
Ronnie Cheung, combat instructor, via Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World:
“That was crap,” Ronnie Cheung says, it was total crap. Are you some kind of huge-testicled ballet dancer under that uniform? Are you a fucking chorus girl in a red beret? If I strip you off, Sergeant Hordle, and don’t snigger because I can and we both know it, if I strip you down to your skivvies with my own two hands, which I wouldn’t, because I don’t know where you’ve been, but I have thoughts, will I find that you are wearing stockings and a bloody tutu? And lest you think, Sergeant, that I am impugning your sexuality, let me remind you that Billy Radigand from C Company was in here half an hour ago and nearly took my bloody head off and he is a poof, not to say a homosexual, not to say he sups on sausage rather than fish, but he is hard as nails! And you are softer than a baby’s arse! Now fuck off and practise!”
Hard not to like the guy.
I will try to restrain myself from commenting any further on the debt-deficit-deal-debacle—but only after making the following two points:
1. Politics is not one thing. Yeah, Duh, I know, but in this debt bill there are two crucial pieces: the substance of the deal and the optics of the deal-making.
I am unenthusiastic about the substance, and am pleased that my representative (Yvette Clarke) and one senator (Kirsten Gillebrand) voted against it. I’m convinced by those who state that cutting spending during a time of low demand and high unemployment is a bad idea because such cuts will simply push the lows lower and highs higher.
Yes, I am effectively unemployed and no it’s not because this is hitting me, but I think a far bigger concern than the deficit is unemployment.
Get people to work, and those people start paying taxes on their paychecks. You may at some point need to raise taxes and/or cut spending to curb the deficit, but right now the emergency for tens of millions of people and their communities is unemployment.
Regardless of my unenthusiasm for the deal and small pleasure in Clarke’s and Gillibrand’s votes, I also understand why others voted for it. The debt ceiling had to be raised, most of the cuts are pushed back to 2013 and beyond, and, well, default would have been catastrophic.
Upshot: this is lousy on its merits, but it could have been worse.
On the optics, however, this is worse-er than merely lousy. Obama and the Dems could have dealt with the debt ceiling back when they were still in the majority, and, oh yeah, could have gotten in front of the budget issue in general.
Yes, Republicans were uncooperative before the 2010 elections and even less cooperative between the elections and the seating of the new Congress, but Obama, Reid, and Pelosi could have pushed forward a strong enough agenda that would have required the TeaPer-fueled GOP at least to have to fight for their “No!No!No!” platform. As it was, the Dems retreated before the wave rather than holding on and waiting for the wave itself to recede.
The Dems weakened themselves both in terms of not going hard at the Republicans and in not defending, much less advancing, their own vision for the country—probably because they seem to have forgotten that they ought even have a vision.
There are some good, tough Democrats out there, and yes, I’ll vote for Obama again in 2012, but beyond stopping the conservative onslaught, I have difficulty discerning what is the purpose of the Democratic Party.
Saying “it could be worse” is a truism, not a rallying cry.
2. The notion that Obama’s weakness in, ahem, “negotiating” this deal is due to the apathy of the left and/or the party base is false and infuriating because false.
I’ll give half-credit to those who note that people have to vote, and those who stayed home did failed in not taking advantage of one of few powers we have.
The other side of this, which goes unmentioned, is that it’s up to the candidates and the party to motivate them to vote, and the Dems did themselves no favors in the many months preceding the elections by not promoting what were, in fact, some solid accomplishments.
Again, telling us the other guy is worse ain’t enough.
What really flips my lid, however, are those who raise the FDR card: “The president told us to push him to do the right thing, and we didn’t do that.”
Mm-hmm.
Axelrod and Plouffe and the president himself looking for some hippie to smack when they were, in fact, pushed—how does fit into the whole “keep me accountable” gig?
Mocking and deriding as hippies those left-critics who you invited to speak does at least indicate that the president retains the ability to go after his detractors. Too bad he only deploys this ability against his own side.
Finally, when is telling people to “make me” do the right thing a sign of strong leadership?
Lead from behind, wait-and-see, blah blah—yeah, I get it: the president isn’t a bully and for the most part he dispenses with the pulpit.
But you can be cool without losing strength:
No, the president can’t do what Malcolm did, for all kinds of reasons.
But there’s no reason he can’t also lift his hand and point to where he wants us to go.
What a fucking ridiculous day.
I almost said absurd, but that would lend it an ontological weight which it clearly does not deserve.
Yes, the job-not-job-but-maybe-yes.
Tch, I don’t even want to talk about it other than to say that my only error was in the initial excitement. Yes, it might still work out, but my eyebrow will remain raised until events prove otherwise.
And then our let’s-make-a-deal president who, apparently, thinks that giving everything away beforehand is the preferred opening gambit. Nevermind he could have pushed the Dems to have done this while they were still in control. . . tch, I can’t even.
So a bit of good news: The Unexpected Neighbor has been granted premium status by Smashwords (which means it’ll be available thru Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo [Australia], Sony, etc.) AND managed to get through the EPUB verification system.
Had there been problems, I would have worked them out. But it’s nice that there were (at this point) no problems.
Tch, finally.
AbsurdBeats 