Meet my old love

I have had a long standing crush on this man for oh, close to a decade now, and here's why.

THIS is exactly why I get mad (shrieks!) and believe in the role of the public intellect, and the importance of academic endeavours. Dammit, there's something rotten in our world, if we can invent pesticides that inflict harm on child half a globe a way (i was watching a tv programme on fairtrade as i was doing my stretching exercises) if we can be so damn arrogant as to include and exclude others based on ideologies and oh, by the way, wipe out their livelihoods (don't believe me? just research a little bit on the wood that adorns your home... its likely to have come from a forest that was once home to pgymies or otherwise).

Defend freedom, defend our beliefs, our lifestyles, our sexual orientations, oh for heavenssake!

I will never be a President

I will never be able to be a President of a country.

I say this with deep sadness, and, not even revulsion, when i read Bush's reflections on his past legacy. The best he offers is that he believes that America remains on moral highground.

Believes. moral highground. how empty these words are, when we justify anything in the name of torture.

I am not downplaying the complexity of dealing with a world--- i won't say gone mad because really, we as a species are incredibly inventive in devising ways of killing ourselves---where young men believe they need to eradicate others and themselves in a one-second bomb bid for glory.

but can't we acknowledge, that perhaps, we never ever know the consequences of our actions, that we, like our forefathers, always visit our 'sins'/problems (whatever you call it) on our children anyway. I say this not in judgement of parents, who are themselves afflicted with the consequences of the actions of their own parents anyway, but to return to Bush agai, to say, his actions will be justified as long as America doesn't pull out her troops is lame to say the least. When you, uh, invade a country and meddle sufficiently such that people are hurt, dying, and angered, it seems to me you have to continue meddling in a continual contest to prove who is stronger.

Freedom? human rights? what are these words but empty banners when we cease to remember the fundamental human-ness of each and every person, yes, even the mad man who is out to take our lives? We do have reason to fear, yes, but it seems to me that the pity, empathy that is over-ridden and forgotten as we go on the offensive and defensive is what keeps us human, and makes life living, if at all.

Look at Bush's face. This has got to be one of the most incredibly closed faces typical of war mongers. the way his lips and chin are defiantly set against the world, drawing himself hunch over to protect his beliefs.

It's funny to think how i have changed in my responses to him. I use to rage evertime i heard him, my blood pressure goes up because i was so angered by his blinkeredness. I still am, but a deep sadness fills me, because this is the way of the world, only those who are incapable of the following: self-doubt, of being fully human in understand the limits of their understanding and being strong enough to cope with "i don't knows" can be presidents.

Bush isn't alone, though.

There are warmongers amongst us all, Muslims, Christians, everyone, because when we solidify something as a universal truth we need to defend (how strange, indeed, when we think we need to defend the God we claim to revere as God, oh the delicious irony), that's when we indeed perpetuate an existence not worth living. How strange, then, that we can fall into a trance where we actually think it's our bounden duty to defend God.

Five Ways to Kill a Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation’s scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

Edwin Brock

Autism

What do i care for if you aren't well?

what do i care when a thunderstorm quivers on your brow,

impending signs of a rocking so incessant it's mesmerising,

and in your screaming i hear whispers uttered not by you.

First they said it was a malevolent spirit which i had omitted to exorcise,

then they said it was my utter devotion to my job.

Yet, i hear the muted accusations behind each invisible finger,

you were the product of a mother neglectful, a refrigerator mother, a mother who forgets her firstborn duties

thus i anxiously re-walk a path worn down in search for a cause, a memory of a negligence that cause you such great harm.



i wrote this in reaction to a book i'm reading at the moment which details the history of autism and diagnosis. it denotes the common blame laid at the feet of mothers who were deemed as less attentive to their children's needs--- thereby causing the aforementioned autism). Refrigerator mothers they were called.

It made me angry as i remember someone i know, who had unsolicited and well-meaning advice and diagnoses hurled at her. oh he must have been possessed, and on and on they would insist on a variety of exorcisms, then it became a charge of moral weakness---you aren't firm enough with him, you give in, you are too weak.

Sontag was accurate in her understanding that illnesses were always interwoven with moral universes, and the same rage she feels towards this intertwining is now what moves me.

Sometimes it's shocking the deep harm we cause to others---i grieve for the mothers who must have wondered just exactly what it is they did wrong, and rage on their behalf at those (inevitably!) white male psychiatrists/psychologists and psychoanalysts who forget that the costs of their armchair theorerizing and five-second judgement (you are doing your child harm; you did not show care) was to inflict years of agony and guilt for others.

And in our well-meaningness, sometimes less certitude, less posturing is welcome, since what we really need is more patience, less homespun and carelessly given advice and simply more compassion.

Borough market

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.


i have also received some of the most awesome presents of late...thank you! it's lovely to discover parcels of surprises in my mailbox (keep 'em coming! heh heh heh!)

Chickpeas and pickled tofu

Ahem, ahem, my first attempt at chickpea curry. Isn't it awesome? I have discovered the wonders of chickpeas so as you can see on the left, its chickpea curry and on the right, chickpea with parsley salad.

the left is cooked using chickpeas , black beans and butterbeans (sorry i agah agah so can't tell u the quantity), water, sliced onions and garlic which i fried first with cumin, coriander and other herbs and curry powder, then i simmered with water, again, guesswork, then dumped in the beans, with orange juice, my few days ago oven-roasted butternut squash and spinach.
yum. it has an awesome taste, just teh right consistency.

on the right is my chickpea butterbean salad with parsley, which i learnt from a housemate's jamie oliver's receipe book left lying around...

woohoo! i really had enough of chicken for a few months methinks, so i'lll have to find other means of obtaining protein.

and yes if the question is, have i been doing my readings, er no, but food is more important. methinks i am a fulltime housewife and part-time student.. grin

the reference to pickled tofu is the find i discovered at Chinatown (at last!) of chilli pickled tofu soaked in vinegar. yum yum! now i can have my porridge... whopeee!