June 2003 Archives

Budapest rocks! Just thought I'd announce that.

A few days late, but nevertheless, Juneteenth celebrations are underway. Definitely worth noting "the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery."

As usual, my ambition exceeds my reach. There are too many things, one has to pick and choose, and that process in itself reveals (and conceals) so much. The necessity of choice doesn't stop me from posting though, its finding the time. Perhaps, for real, now things will ease up schedule-wise for me. Emotionally, however, I am not so optimistic. So it goes.

This past Tuesday I did the coolest workshop with James and Vangie on problematic moments. My main role was to be there and add in my two cents, based on the reading and writing I've done in school on PMs. My supplementary role was in the so-called "simulation" which put people through the steps of the intervention and then cut us loose to process it in the here and now. The clip used was on sexual identity, and my assigned task was to monitor homophobia. I knew that there were ways in which it was a set-up for me, but I was willing to go along with it for the sake of my own and others' learnings. A PM did happen, and the impact on me was fairly intense. Yet, I did manage myself; and everyone (well, 5/7 participants) had the affective experience of a PM plus the confrontation with internalized heterosexist privilege. That was alright!

But it did get me wondering, again, about how often I am willing to allow myself to be used by a group for the purposes of their learning. Yes, I learn too, there's no doubt. But instead of resisting that role (which is sometimes an option) with which I am familiar, my conscious choice is often to go along with it, understanding that others (and hence, we) stand to gain more from this choice than alternatives. It's the aspect of my own internal process that I think is the experience of "the call" as theorized by Marion. My motivation is often to accept what seems given to me by the group's dynamics.

Then there's my relationship, and friendships. I would like for them to not be restricted to operating only on this basis - that I'm enacting roles for their benefit. Surprising and unexpected as the role always is (and no matter how much learning is also in it for me), what I need is to be able to explore its manifestation within macrosocial processes and larger discourses based on each of our situated position (based on lineage, heritage, personality and personal history, and all factors of "difference"). What would be cool would be to develop the capacity in these relationships for whatever is given to be reflected upon, stepped outside of, and not limited or restricted to "only" taking up the role that appears. I'd like to be able to reflect openly on the operationalization of my own identity as relational practice with others who are also able to reflect on their own roles and attendant implied larger meanings PLUS think critically about the relational interaction.

I'm feeling awfully damn lonely these days. :-(

I did have a very nice lunch with Ingrid the other day; and Gu Li and I are jamming on this video project. These connections feel good. If you're patient (and curious) enough you can see my pal Carole with her daughter Deliah. Once you get to the site, click "next" until the 5th pic. This is Carole's MA graduation. Deliah will move soon to Oregon (Go Grrl!) and the combination of these two events means Carole will be moving overseas as soon as she finds the right opportunity. I'm happy for her and sad for me!

Ah................my main man is back! :-) Truth is, there just haven't ever been that many guys in my life. I've never been a separatist in any political sense (I certainly understand why some women are, and think we need those places/spaces for women to retreat from the still overwhelming patriarchal forms of everyday life), but, there just haven't been that many men for whom I've felt affinity. There are increasingly more men that I personally care about and want to connect with, most from the Com Dept, but also within the Deaf community and around town. Anyway, long way of getting around to talking about Uncle Sam.

Sam had a hell of a winter. His body is just plain giving out on him but his mind is so sharp, and his spirit continues to be so generous and live-giving. I hadn't visited him in five weeks (perhaps the longest spell since he moved to the nursing home, two years ago now), but he was much more perky and engaged than he had been during my last few visits. He asked about the on-going family dramas (H&P; me&B) - when he's down he doesn't ask, my guess is because he doesn't want to know any more "bad" news. So that was cool. Then I read him a couple of chapters from The Alienist, which is fun. Because I had enough time to really hang out, we started talking about "the important stuff," which is always what I have loved so much about him. Sam never flinches from acknowledging the emotional subtext of things. (He may not always say something about them, but you know he knows.)

He asked me if I'd read Tuesdays with Morrie, which of course several of us read right after he moved into the nursing home, at his request. (That he had forgotten is one of the minor evidences that occasionally show up regarding his mental state.) I always understood that it was his way of reaching out, asking for people to stay in contact with him, not leave him alone through the dying process. He's not literally dying yet, but its on his mind almost all the time: I'm pretty sure that the only times he isn't thinking about it is when he has company. Anyway, I told him about the idea I had to use this blog for some kind of "study" of subjectivity - my own, but obviously if I'm writing about my reactions and thoughts to him then I'll be revealing a lot of info about him too. I suggested that we could maybe use it as a way of reaching out to the people who know him - they can keep a bit more up-to-date on him (even if the picture is refracted through my lens), and even - if inclined - post their own comments and engage in more of a dialogue with him. I'll print stuff for him, and can even take dictation from him if he wants.

"What do you get out of coming here?" he asked me. Besides just liking Sam, I told him its one of the few places where I feel I can be completely uncensored: be mad if I'm mad, complain, whine, whatever. Exercise the sharper edges of my sense of humor - I just don't have to worry about his reaction, "because I don't give a shit what you think." He laughed, "If I even react at all!" He mentioned that all his family is in Colorado and California, and asked me what it was like for me having my family far away. "I worry sometimes that I might feel guilty later for not having pursued relationships with my family more vigorously, but I think the nurturing that inspires a close relationship just didn't happen when I was young, so there isn't much of an emotional basis for connecting." I do miss my brother, but I told Sam that as much as I love him, I just don't know how to connect with him while he's so messed up.

Sam said he hadn't nurtured relationships with his brothers very much. But he's the youngest and I think the burden is always on those who are older to reach out and make the connection meaningful. This Christmas is the first time, he said, that he hadn't called his brothers' widows. (Sam was the youngest of a dozen, there's only himself and two sisters left, and then nieces, nephews, godchildren, etc.) There's a way in which Sam is "alone," that I can relate with; we are without family in somewhat similar ways. I know that some of my emotional functioning - what I feel, fear, and sometimes act upon - is that there is no "group" of belonging for me. Even with B&H I'm a bit on the outside. It fluxes, with the DoMH a bit more fluidly than with the FP. The DoMH and I do cycles of closeness and distance; sometimes it seems to me that the times of distancing are increasing, but then we'll re-connect...the FP and I have done distance for so long that whatever cycle there might be is operating on the basis of years, not weeks or months as it is with the DoMH. It seems to be shifting recently, which is nice, but (as I told Sam) I'm not getting excited about it. We'll see what happens.

I also told Sam that one of the things I appreciate about visiting him is that it always makes me think of these important things - death/dying, what really matters, after all? What's a life worth living? His first winter at Eden Park I read a book about dying to him; we spent hours talking about the process and the connections between his own body's decline and the experience of the author, Ram Dass. It was reading that book when we discovered that his speech problem isn't mechanical, it's cognitive - a very mild (at least for now) kind of aphasia: the brain is looking for a certain term, and substitutes the wrong thing but thinks it is correct. It's a misfire between thinking and speaking; the words come out and Sam thinks he said what he meant, but one of the words is the opposite of his intention. So, sometimes he's slow. It's a good experience for me to alter my always on-the-go pace to his much more measured (and calm!) mode.

Anyway, in case you're wondering, Sam did approve my writing about him here. "It's a good idea."

Note: edited from names to codes on October 2, 2005.

Some long overdue comments:
* I also took The Matrixian "Are You the One?" quiz and discovered that I was Morpheus, a dillusional leader who is "looking forward to a nice holiday somewhere near the Earth's core." A place hotter than Arad, Romania at this very moment?! No thanks.
* I didn't exactly understand why Newsweek published the "I'm Only Guilty of Being a Friend" piece... Although the woman had her (obvious) reasons to write it, the article had no info value whatsoever. Unless that byline that says "Zuza Glowacka, NEWSWEEK" means that she has resigned/been fired from The Times and is now employed by Newsweek... Even then, her piece serves her and only her and not the readers. Such pieces are usually fit to be published as an answer to accusations, in the SAME publications that hosted those accusations in the first place. As for the woman's dilemma, I need to read up on her case, cause I'm clueless and have only read her skimpy defense.

Raz is back :o), all apologetic about the ridiculous length of time spent away from the blog!... :o( But he's back now, as in back from Rio de Janeiro, back to Romania, at the moment in a newsroom (former venue of sweet daily torture) typing his backside off... Missed the action in the blog and the companion, who's been very busy, it seems :o) Returning to subjectivity and, thus, to the first person - I am tanned, sleepy, lazy and slightly annoyed that I feel slightly annoyed for not having N. close to me, after a near-to-perfection honeymoon on the Copacabana beach... In one week, I will be in Budapest, taking part in a pannel that deals with EE students teaching English (spoken or vwritten) to native speakers. Could be fun, could be boring, we'll see. Then off to Bucharest to get my mom the American visa, see my sister and her husband, meet my best friend whom I sorely miss at this moment and also look up some other people... Then, maybe do a little work in this newsroom, just for fun, for good old times sake. And, if there's still some room, maybe finish Christian's INCOMPLETE :o):o) Off I go into the wide, wide world outside - 36 degrees Celsius in the shade and a two-hour car ride waiting for me.... Will be back! And that's a threat.

I keep hoping Raz will show up...he must be on route to Romania by now? Maybe my sense of timing is off.

I've been running full tilt...my tendency is to want to backtrack and relate things in chronological order but who really cares if I get the sequence recorded precisely as they occurred? (Besides me?!)

Today I interpreted a high school graduation, lovely weather. The kid was at Austine 10 years ago when I arrived here in Vermont. Amazing to see him now as a young man. I've been thinking about how I can write about interpreting here, what with all the constraints imposed by the code of ethics, especially regarding confidentiality. It seems important to be able to write about it, because a) hearing (non-deaf) people rarely if ever get feedback on their performance and b) my subjectivity has so much to do with the interpretation process. I keep thinking effective interpreting has less to do with the substance of the communicative message per se than it does with the relationship between or among the interlocutors. Have to get my act together for the RID conference soon; Sneak Peek II is in a month, but the handouts are due this Friday. (Somehow I missed that deadline.)

I've been thinking on and off about the Fulbright...but have decided to relax and not try to pull off the application for this fall. Give myself a year to do the requisite networking and research...I can go closer to the end of my coursework, rather than in the middle of it. Saw Kathleen and Donald Graves from World Learning at the cow parade Saturday and mentioned it; they said they'd be glad to help. (Cool!)

Besides working on this proposal for Larry Frey (about the Deaf Majority Now movement), the main thing that has been on my mind is the interaction with one of my Asian pals from UMass earlier this week. It was a scheduling thing - we'd planned a day trip and I was really kinda squeezing it in knowing it was our only chance AND that it was gonna cut into my sleep. Had a couple of major realizations. One is that I really am older - I like being comfortable, feeling rested, and having things go according to plan. My flexibility in dealing with last minute changes varies widely; I think if I hadn't been so worried about the next day, then I could have been more relaxed, but since I was already a bit stressed I just couldn't hide my frustration. The weird thing about it is that I had a premonition that we were going to be late, that the communication had broken down and it was going to take awhile to round everyone up and get outta town. But, even knowing in advance wasn't enough to prepare me for the reality. I felt so Other-ed! On a basic level, I felt disrespected ñ that the circumstances and conditions of my life were just not recognized. BUT - I'd also been thinking, even prior to the incident, about what it might be like for me to go to another country where time is handled differently, more leisurely. I think I will adjust alright - in fact, when we go on vacation I have no problem shifting into a completely different, laid back mode. But when the system is driving me - or I'm driving myself within the system - I can't move back and forth so easily. Anyway, we've yet to see whether the incident passes without damage to our friendship or if it becomes one of those things that changes things. I hope it works out. I know my tendency is to try and deal with things directly, but that doesn't always work so well for others...

Of course, this seems like a real good idea when I have my shit together, but when I don't....

I'm still stubbornly, doggedly, trying to learn something from the replication of family-of-origin patterns in this family. But it sure ain't easy.

There's been a court ruling on privacy (wouldn't you know) that probably won't hold up (free speech) about a dude (who seems scummy so I won't use his name) sharing private info on the web about a former girlfriend: Judge orders name taken off website. Today I remembered another story about weblog theft....something I got via email? No, it was in one of my student's papers....(not that I want to invest much energy in prevention (seems like there are better things to do), but it made me wonder if I ought to post a copyright symbol somewhere on the new, revamped version whenever it's ready. A policy decision. :-) It also seems I read somewhere, quite some time ago, that once something is posted publicly on the web it qualifies for a sort of automatic copyright?

I tried to find something in blogs on theft and came up with The problem with identity theft from Feb 25, 02, but the archives seem to be gone. Jason looks like a progressive programmer type....there's a subjective judgement for ya!

The other wild thing I read today has to do with surveillance 24/7. "The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health," reporter Noah Shachtman wrote on May 20. The biomedical monitors are what caught my attention the most - similar to my image of brainwave neurotransmitters to record emotional and intellectual activity during problematic moments. (I'm pretty sure I didn't confess to many that I intended to apply for the Department of Homeland Security Fellowship Grant, but I missed the deadline by days - too swamped at the end of the semester.)

I tracked this through The Washington Post's Filter column.

H. and I talked about "being famous" this morning on the way to school. If I want to study subjectivity, the only way to really do it is to expose my own, which - by default - means exposing information about those I have relationships with or encounter. What are my ethical obligations to these "others"?

For instance, I want to use real names. Would that violate others' privacy? To what extent is it legitimate for me to reveal my own empirical experiences without transgressing another's sense of propriety? And who made up all these rules and what purposes do they serve? Anonymity is arguably "good" for some things, while openness and transparency (to the extent this is ever possible) accomplishes other valid goals.

Despite everything she's been through, H. is a really grounded kid. She has access to her own emotions and she pays attention to them, as well as to those of others. This morning she said she thought she had some "special gifts" because of the struggles between her biological parents, and she listed several that I'm still trying to develop at 40! They included standing up for herself and others, and caring about people's feelings. She's so mature, yet at the same time she knows she's still a kid. Such balance!

Anyway, her goals are modest: being popular within a circle of friends, but not needing to make loads of money or be in the media. She stated some boundaries between what she thinks ought to be "private" and what is ok to be shared - I'm going to have to work hard to honor. She's adopted her mother's family's mode of (non)-inquiry and her father's penchant for secrets - both of which are practically anathema to me. But, they often say kids have the clearest vision about ethics, so we'll see how an 8-year-old framework succeeds as the initial boundaries for this self-study. :-)

I'm off to borrow the neighbor's riding mower as today is the last rainless day for the next several days...(wah)

James and I had a great breakfast last Friday - cranking on those PMs! :-) I've distilled all the learnings of the past year into one basic intellectual problem that I think will define my academic career - or, at least be its guiding thread: exploring the construction of subjectivity.

I want to get going on Fulbright research - finding places, etc, but I have to go out while its sunny (we're having a monsoon spring) and deal with our mailbox, as the a-hole who delivers our mail (he was described as such by his own colleagues at the Main St P.O.) has determined it is not high enough from the ground.

But Raz oh Raz? Where are you? I think the beach days must be coming to an end...hope it's been all you wished it to be.