Topic: Posts

In response to something I’d written last night, Indi said something along the lines of, “you have a way of saying a lot without really saying very much.” This is a fairly valid criticism, and something I get with some regularity. The basic theme: “be more specific.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m extroverted, and by default process thoughts and ideas in writing or more often out loud. But then again, it might be because there’s a larger issue, and given that I don’t particularly agree with the idea that personality is that fluid, I’d like to act as if there’s something larger that I might have a chance to fix or improve on.

On the one hand I think a part of me has been like this (terminally unspecific) for a really long time, and that it’s been a coping mechanism for the closet, and because it’s easier, not to mention that it requires less effort.

Having said that, I think it’s a writer’s block-type dilemma. Not writer’s block as in “I have to write X today and stare at a blank page for 6 hours being devoid of inspiration,” but something more along the lines of “I don’t know what I want to write,” or “I feel like I need to write, but can’t bring myself to do it,” sort of like lethargy, And given that I have this massive amount of written material that I have to turn out every week for school, I don’t have the option of sitting and staring at a blank page for hours. So I write uninspired papers that only occasionally are ok (especially when the teacher has low standards.) I’ve gotten a little bit better at forcing my papers to be more specific, but it’s a laborious process and so far has only been accomplished when a parent has been there to keep me from running off into unspecific

The main break as far as I’m concerned is when I got back from Anytown, which was an experience I really valued, but before I went to Anytown (and really before I went to visit colleges in August right before Anytown.) Which is really when I stopped working on Another Round.

I should have someone look through Circle Games, but I’m pretty sure that I didn’t have this kind of a problem when I was writing that. Mind you, my school papers were still not specific enough but I think that is due to the (a) reason. And I defiantly didn’t feel lethargic about writing. I’d like to have someone look through the TealArt archives and see if the entries from a year ago (and before) are specific or not in comparison to the ones now. Any takers?

As for possible solutions, I clearly haven’t found anything that really works in a decisive sort of way, but, thus far here’s what I’m thinking:

I should read through Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” which has a really helpful chapter on writers block, and is generally inspiring and wonderful. Revisiting that should be really good.

I’m not reading as much as I used to which is a definite short falling. As I can knit and read at the same time which is good and will probably encourage me to knit more, but I’d like to establish a routine where I can read fiction again.

I need to do more work at school. There’s a teacher who has a room that’s a very good work space, and I think by moving a lot of writing projects to school, I’ll be able to get more done. Perhaps not the final solution, but I think there is a definite “play” environment at home.

Any ideas?

So there’s a bill before the Missouri House at the moment, that attempts to legislate creationsim. This goes beyond just trying to legislate “morality” which is questionable enough, but this is actually trying to legislate scientific fact. (Maybe they think if they make it law it’ll become true.) This follows the “if i stick my fingers in my ears and sing, and stomp around, maybe it’ll go away” method of lawmaking.

In any case, under duress I’ve compiled a group of resources for both sides of this and I hope it helps someone. (As you may or may not know, my sparse and occasional class notes for Theory of Knowledge get posted to this site for your enjoyment. Or something.

The text of Missouri House Bill 911, summary.

A creation science resource page, and another, and another for good measure

And the other side of the coin: One. Two. Three.

I had and interesting exchange with my history teacher today that was a bit puzzling. The assignment it to write a paper, comparing the use of violence in the establishment of National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany and the Bolshevik (Communist, Russian) Revolution.

Ok. Its an interesting question, because it challenges, or at least can challenge someone’s emotional/rational responses. Generally speaking we’re expected to react badly to violence, and to Nazism. They are bad things, and because we’re trained to react to these words, serious consideration of these questions is difficult at best. So let us try for a moment to consider this issue.

Violence is a bad thing. People dying and hurting is a bad thing. Yes. Very bad. It’s also par for the course, and seems to follow humans everywhere we go. There is no avoiding violence. Violence represents our darkest fears of chaos, and the fear of personal morality certainly doesn’t help this reaction. The only problem is in order to argue against this (from any point of view) makes you (or me) come off as an insensitive jerk who doesn’t care or have compassion for other people. A person, who doesn’t care if “those people” die, as long as “we’re” safe. On the other hand, if someone’s to eager to die, then its overzealousness, which is equally as bad. So there’s a fundamental flaw in this argument, and lets tack on as a disclaimer, that the acceptance of violence is not a devaluation of life, but a realization of actual circumstances. Regardless of reality, I don’t think progress on this discussion can be made if we let emotions battle it out over this point.

Moving on.

The next point is that because of the Holocaust, and other clearly ReallyBadThings(tm) Nazism, like violence, provokes an emotional reaction, which isn’t good. I’m not saying that we should forgive Nazism, and try too look at all the good things it accomplished. But I do think that allowing the emotional reaction to overtake us without rational consideration is dangerous at best. I’ve taken to do a couple of things, that I think help a little, both of which are semantics related. That is, using the words National Socialism and SS, rather than Nazism and Stormtroopers. Minor detail, but it removes the initial instinct to react.

That accomplished, thought is now required.

Basically, what I have to do in a research paper, now, is say that Hitler didn’t use a standing armed force to obtain power, whereas, the Bolsheviks did. That basic over view hasn’t quite moved into the realm of rational thought, but that’s due at least to the simplicity of the statement. I also think that I can twist this objective to something a little more reasonable, so in the end I’m not terribly worried about this paper, but given what I said above, I’d like to ponder what my teacher gave me in a little more depth.

Because of the reaction to ‘violence,’ it seems to me that this question puts the Bolsheviks on a lower level than the German fascists. Perhaps. That’s something that I think is unfair and incorrect.

Other incidents and comparisons between Germany and Russia that have been made in this class that I feel twist and hurt historical objectivity, or at least rational consideration of history:

The six million or more killed in the Holocaust (the commonly quoted statistic at least) compared to the 20 million Stalin killed in the Purges.

The one million Soviets died at Stalingrad (during WWII) compared to the all time running total of US war dead (which are apparently, still under a million).

The fact that retreating troops were shot at Stalingrad. While certainly gruesome, I do belive that it’s always been standard military procedure to shoot troops that flee from a battle in a situation like this.

And there you have it. Not to be snobbish or anything, but that’s straight from the highest level history class available at Metro High School, in St. Louis, MO. The perennially highest ranked school in the state (according to the standardized test scores, which aren’t always the best marker of these things but still). I somehow doubt that the rest of the country is much better off.

Clearly thought isn’t expected or particularly desired, but aren’t we obligated?

For a while I’ve been chugging along through Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” an essay that she wrote in 1925 about women and fiction writing. I’ll admit that I’m not yet done reading it, but this won’t keep me from offering commentary.

It’s a good deal of fun, well it’s a bit hard to get into, but now that I’m into it I’m very glad to be reading it. It’s one of those books that, I know, I’ll have to reread a few times because there has to be a ton of stuff that I’m missing, but that’s all a pleasure.

I really like Virginia Woolf for two reasons. One, stylistically she’s a gem, and the words and craft are just amazing even if you don’t feel like you understand what she’s saying or the point she’s ultimately trying to make (which is where I am right now. Two, I really like the ideas and theories she presents about women, men, their relationships and society. She approaches feminism from a balanced position, and doesn’t (or couldn’t have, more properly) take any political baggage.

Additionally, she completely avoids category theory, because men were men, women were women, and your “label” was accepted. And there’s a measure of rhetorical elegance to that. Category stuff is really important, and ultimately I think it helps larger gender theories to have some measure of proficiency with category theory, but too much and you get drowned in meta-talk.

Having said all of that, I don’t think that Virginia Woolf was much of a theorist in the first place. She was just a thinking person with a good deal of insight that was able to communicate the injustices that she saw. In one sense, that’s all a ‘movement’ needs, people talking and thinking, the truth and a little bit of momentum. Fancy language and talk of theory is really secondary. So if you present feminism, or any argument for social justice in the right way with the right kind of power, you can’t help but succeed. Good rhetorical ability is invaluable, but after a certain point, rhetoric alone serves no end.

I’ll leave you with that. Happy Solstice Holiday(s), to you all, and I’m sorry for our vacation. We have stuff in the works and more posts coming soon, I promise.

I think I’ve finally learned, after a good year and a half of trying, what transparent style really means, and more importantly how to accomplish it. Transparent style, of course, is the style of writing appropriate for most academic non-fiction. Rather than creative writing where you want to display technique, academic writing requires transparent technique. Any device used shouldn’t jump out at an average reader. Even quality writing, if it’s showy, it distracts from what you’re saying.

But that’s the kind of thing that your history and countless other teachers tell you before your first essay, not to mention 50,000 other times throughout a course, and unless you’ve had an epiphany on the subject, you (or at least I) probably don’t really know what it means. That isn’t to say you don’t think you don’t know…. I’ll stop there.

Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. I was reading through a bunch of psychology papers today (from Webster’s psych student research poster session), and frankly they were all pretty crappy. Well that’s a bit strong. What they were studying didn’t interest me at all, and this is probably fantasy on my part, but I would like to think that college students aren’t just doing research projects to display their competency in methodology, but I suppose that’s precisely what they’re doing.

The kind of work I’m doing right now, all this gender theory stuff that I’m doing for my IB classes, all display process and all of that good stuff, but I’m doing work that I find interesting and important, original and unique. Gay culture in Jazz age Harlem. There are like a total of three people who’ve tackled this subject ever. And believe me, I’ve looked. There really aren’t feminist literary criticisms from a male perspective, not to mention gender criticisms from any perspective. I show process, I keep my self interested. One thing that got me in trouble earlier in my school/IB career, is that I’d try and be too contrary, and focus all of my efforts into being contrary, rather than what I should have been doing.

Now, as my recent experience with history essays has proven, getting a good grade isn’t about saying the “right” thing as it is about presenting it the right way. I have two perfect papers from history class, where I wrote from two positions that got little more than a scoff when I presented them in class. But I presented my ideas in the way he wanted, and I approached the whole deal with his process. I suppose. I mean I’d like to think I understand that epiphany better than I actually do. I suppose there comes a point with a lot of things where, if you take a step back things will fall into place. So that’s what really happened; but in some way I don’t feel particulay adept at articulating right now, I think that was really related to my original point. So there!

But I digress. Transparent Style…

What I think this means, basically, is that you don’t have to write stunning prose, you just have to write coherent prose. You don’t have to use creative constructions; you just have to make sure that your essays flow from one idea to the next seamlessly. You don’t have to invent crazy new syntactical phenomena; just manipulate the old ones for proper emphasis (which of course means avoiding monotony). This isn’t to say that the words I put up here, aren’t going to become more polished suddenly (that’s another problem completely). In some cases, TealArt is exempt, because I want my style to show because the whole point of a Journal is for the readers to learn about me through my writing, and style is one of the best ways I can think to do this.

But enough metatalk. Yes, metatalk.

I think/hope that this is one of those epiphanies where nothing actually changes, except my perception of difficulty. Sorry it took so long folks.

PS. Chris and I are doing some metatalk ourselves about TealArt and the like as we are want to do from time to time. We have some simplifications coming around in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes pealed. Cheers.

Well my computer drama continues, though there’s an end in sight. That’s a comforting thing, and I’ll write more about that when things get more sorted out. For now, it’s time for Link and Think.

The basic idea, is that on December 1st, website owners do the same thing they usuually do, except they talk about HIV/AIDS. So if you write a techie blog, then instead of posting news in mircochip development, you post news about retroviral drug development, or in the case of TealArt, we blabber esotericaly for a page or two before going to bed.

I’ve had lots of thoughts, trying to get some sort of entry together, and perhaps this is part of the reason I’m waiting until now. I wanted to say something about the upcoming Angels in America production on HBO, that I think is going to be very powerful, and has the potential to open some eyes. I wanted to say something about our perceptions of HIV/AIDS in terms of people who live with it. The impact of treatment, and the things we don’t talk about. (the drugs, the strain that it puts on family/friends, the durration and length). I wanted to at least make a point about realistic sex education, and the extent to which abstanance-only education only helps the virus. How heterosexim and homophobia force people into their closets, where transmission rates are huge.

But I guess, instead of being wordy, I’m going to let you do the thinking. Now you’ve seen what I’m thinking about, I’d like to know what’s on your mind. Part of this project in my mind, is that it brings discusssion of AIDS into an enviroment where it wouldn’t be discussed. So talk about HIV/AIDS, and think about it. Everyone has to deal with this epidemic somehow, and we could all afford a few brains cells for a good cause.

Cheers.

I’m visiting family for the holiday, and you know what that means? Cable TV (and lots of food, and family visiting, of course, but we’ll leave that entry for later.)

Anyway, with thanksgiving being a football holiday, we’ve been reduced to watching make over shows. We caught a Trading Spaces (there’s a 48 hour marathon going on, so tune in, if your interested.) which was an interesting experience, and I watched a Queer Eye, because I find gay guys acting unabashedly nelly, very cute and entertaining.

The actual content of the shows are kind of blah. I mean it’s a great idea and all, and I was really just trying to watch the gayness in the whole ordeal. But, one thing that we all (the family) found entertaining was that when ever someone sees the changes they say “Oh My God,” accenting the ëmy’ about four times in a high voice. “Oh, my GOD!” “Oh MY god!” “OH my God!” and so forth.

I mean come on. What kind of self respecting straight guy says “oh my god” six times on camera. For that matter, what kind of gay guy doesn’t say “HFS” (as my father so tactfully put it), at least once be for the “oh my gods start?”

And the only thing I can think of is this scene from the forth of fifth UK Queer as Folk when there’s a surprise party for Vince’s (Michael from the American version) 30th birthday part, except he knows it’s a surprise party. It’s at Stuart’s (Brain) house, and Vince’s boyfriend or pack of friends (boyfriend = David/Cameron and friends = Alexander/Emmit and Ted) are taking him to Stuart’s but Vince knows about it, so for at least ten minutes Vince is saying “Oh, my GOD!” “Oh MY god!” “OH my God!” in an attempt to sound authentic when he fakes surprise at his party.

In the next scene Stuart cornerës him and says “howëd you know.” It was priceless. Having said all that, I’m probably remembering it all differently, but in any case…

I continue to maintain my opinion that its generally harmless and a great deal of fun. I did hear a lot of “lets make your bedroom a sanctuary,” and “it feels like a whole new me,” which was too touchy feely. But then I’m in this “embrace your labels, and make them work for you, instead of working for your labels” phase right now, so it’s all good.

Well it’s certianly been an eventfull evening. My instalation of windows which I’ve probably been using for the past nine or more months has finally bitten the dust. Mind you, my data is all nice and safe and it can stay there. It’s nerve wracking becasue I’ve agreed to go out of town this weekend, and my computer situation is compleatly up in the air.

See I want to instal Gentoo Linux on my PC and have that be my primary operating system. I really do have a lot of affection for Windows and all, but there’s little reason not to change, and I’d like something a little less touchy. For the moment (becasue the instalation of windows that I’ve been using for the past several months is dying slowly), I’m reduced to Knoppix, the bootable CD linux distrabution. It’s a nifty idea, and lets people get used to the idea of linux, and is a great diagnostic operating system that’ll quickly let people know that it really is Windows messing up, and not their processor blowing out.

As for primary OS aplications, it doesn’t work so well. My issue with it is that I have three NTFS drives, and no way to write data anywhere… even to a flopy disk. Now two of those three drives are backed up and ready to be formated for the eventual arival of Gentoo, and I’d really be happy to turn one or both of them into FAT drives, but, I can’t figure out how to do that right now.

Having said that, linux is prety nice, I must admit. The longer I sit here looking dumbfounded at the whole thing the less excited I get about the whole matter, but it’ll be nice. I hope. I’ve wanted to at least put on a linux distrabution for just in case, and I know that if I just layer over the old windows install with new stuff (becasue the problem is totally not that serious I think) I’ll never do it. So maybe some of this torture is self imposed, but I could find out that Gentoo is really awsome and that I’ll end up liking it and wanting to not go back to windows perminatly afterwords. But first I have to figure out what a stupid tar.bz2 file has to do with anything and how I get a CD to install from.

In any case, I bet you’re wondering why I’m going into geek babble on the Times of TealArt (it still feels a bit funny to call the main log that, but it’s kinda cool). Well I thought it might be nice to get a little more bloggy out here just in genereal, but also becasue I have an actual art acomplishment thing to talk about.

I’ve gotten myself involved with my school’s writing lab. It’s a nifty little thing… stay after school for a few hours and get work done in a nice enviroment, help other people think about their writing, and enjoy the company. The nice thing is taht, since people at my school are slackers and don’t really show up for this kind of ’lab’, I get an English teacher at my disposal for a few hours a week, which is really nifty.

There’s this poetry contest that this english teacher was telling someone else (whose writing/poetry I’m not particularly fond of) about this really nifty and quaint poetry contest. So I thought, what the hell, I can pull together a few poems and submit them.

So I started writing a Poem, or at least trying to. It’s been a long process, and it’s taken a while, from the point of the first line, to a theme, to a couple of revisions, to some intresting developments interms of literary neatnesses. The end result is prety awsome, I think. So I’m going to have to put a little more effort into such projects in the near future.

I’m not so sure I’ll be posting this stuff here, but we’ll see. Also I should apologize now. There’s a prety neat wordprocessor in Knoppix (two or three actually, but one that I’m suited to; anyway,) the problem is they couldn’t fit the spellcheck dictionary onto the CD, which is really ok, given all the other things that they fit in around here. So this entry is assuredly rougher than you’re used to. Sorry about that folks. Some semblence of normalicy will return in due time.

The rest of the gay blogging community seems to have issued some sort of message in relation to the Massachusetts court case. Some say, “it’s about damn time,” and it is. Some issue congratulations, which are due. Some fear the backlash, which is only reasonable. I on the other hand (as I do with a lot of current events stuff) have waited a while to let things settle down a bit, so I can comment on it with the safety of hindsight.

My prediction is that we’ll see a proper marriage reform in the next few/several years. Why? Defense of Marriage acts aren’t going to stand up in the US Supreme Court, Scalia has even said that it seems. As for a backlash, waiting isn’t going to do anything… There are always going to be radical elements who will try and insight a backlash. Here’s something interesting from a recent Washington Post article:

We were afraid that pushing too hard on this issue would inspire extreme legislation," she said. “But by 1996 it was clear that we had achieved nothing at the federal level -- not even a simple employment nondiscrimination law or hate-crimes bill. The incrementalist approach, while a valid idea, had no effect. So why not be clear about what we need and what we should be given as a matter of birthright and a matter of being fully participating citizens? Set out all the goals at once.

The nice thing about extreme legislation is that it usually doesn’t live through the courts. Legislatures and courts almost always move in opposite directions of each other, and it seems to me that it’s easier to rally the community against extremism. For example, marriage, hate crimes laws, and employment non-discrimination (ENDA) are all very noble causes, but the community will have a mixed response; however, extremists are far more likely to provoke a unified response. Also, straight-allies are even more likely to see injustices when it’s really pronounced.

Let use race as an example. Before and during the civil rights movement there were these grave injustices for people of color, extremist legislation, and all that bad stuff. The community was able to rally, and enough white folks became allies, that sweeping changes like Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, were able to pass. And now, today. There are tons of race issues that still need to be addressed. But, there isn’t any extremism, and white people are for the most part oblivious to the problem. As a result? There isn’t a broad movement fighting racism today. While it’s certainly not that simplistic, on some level it is, and on some level the queer movement is facing the same sort of issue.

Don’t take me to mean that we need to radicalize in order to provoke a response in order to accomplish anything, but I don’t think we need to be overly focused on appeasing those with power and working to scare no one. Ultimately it boils down to my age old conflict. If you like what the HRC is doing but now how their doing it, can you in good faith support them? I don’t have a good answer, and I’m not sure I have anything to say to this that would further the debate right now.

Its no secret that the main point of education isn’t to teach content (or perhaps more importantly shouldn’t be to teach content) but rather to teach process skills and thought processes. That’s great, because answers change a lot, but the way to find the answers doesn’t really change. But what form do those process skills take, and dose this really make us better more knowledgeable individuals?

The traditional paradigm would seem to be all about accepting what’s come before. To internalize information in a very flat way, that doesn’t involve the learner. Accepting and not questioning, this kind of learning is still widely employed, but I feel my life’s been working under a different paradigm for a while. Basically, through my theory of knowledge class, through the whole Anytown experience, through my gender studies project, I’ve been forced to take something of a deconstructionist attitude towards knowledge, and I’m not sure I like this idea. Rather than accept, construct, synthesize information, and reach some sort of clarity, the opposite happens: I have to take a masse of information and break it apart into lots of little pieces. Science, gender, oppression, social science, math, sexuality, identity, and history, rather than build up knowledge, accept what is, we’re looking for all the exceptions, all the flaws and while this is a good way to approach knowledge, if nothing else it’s put a HUGE crimp in my ability to write effectively.

Within this paradigm, (which I’m starting to feel is just as limiting as the flawed one it replaces) I feel as if I’m obligated to deconstruct everything. To get in there and notice how it’s flawed, how the rules and categories society provides don’t apply much of the time, how bias skews so much knowledge/information and our interpretation of aforementioned knowledge. But of course everything is flawed, and this is inescapable. But we can’t or shouldn’t invalidate anything because it’s flawed, because then we’d be left with a whole lot of nothing. But you can’t accept knowledge as it is, because it’s flawed, because it’s not right.

I suppose the question I’m looking to answer, is “where does that leave us?” I can’t accept flawed information blindly, and I can’t deconstruct everything into an unrecognizable pulp. There has to be a middle ground, or so you’d think; but both ends of this spectrum seem to exclude each other. Ironically, the only thing I can think to say right now is “faith.” Not really faith in a god sort of way, but faith in an understanding that the information you are working with is reliable, and that your treatment won’t do any harm.

Not an easy task.

This difficulty is compounded by the fact that we’re not just talking about disciplinary knowledge here, we’re also talking about gender and about identity, which is where it gets really difficult. Because on some level I know what makes up my own identity, and I know what society expects, we all do; but on another more intellectual level I also know that this isn’t true of everyone. I know that there are exceptions that defy categorization. What do you do? Or, I suppose what can you do?

I’ve said in the past that the only thing you can do is keep on going, and endure. Because this chaos is what the world seems to exist in. Now there’s this whole order in chaos; and chaos in order idea, but I’m not sure how to apply that. So there might be an answer in there somewhere.

So ultimately, I feel stuck and lost. I mean I can continue to function and I can continue to be productive on some level, but I guess the real problem with that is that I don’t feel like that would lead to any progress, and just more of the status quo which in it’s way is part of the whole flawed traditionalism.

It’s a vicious cycle, and I can’t get away from it; even when I’ve tried to remove myself to discuss it. Also, there isn’t an end, every statement leads to a question and every question leads us somewhere.

Just as a general commentary, I’d like to say that it’s slightly ironic that I’ve identified this as deconstructionism, because that’s a critical school that I’m not fond of. (It should be noted that my opinions of critical schools exist in varying shades of disapproval). Additionally, I think I can finally understand existentialism, which is another paradigm that I don’t want to touch, but I can understand it now.

Since there’s no logical conclusion for this mess of philosophy and thought, I’m going to end this here, rest assured that I’ll get back to it at some point.

But before I go, I offer my most sincere apologies for this entry which must be nearly unintelligible. I look forward to the resulting discussion.