From the Vacation, the mind wanders and wants to get lost.

Being away from the U.S. -- watching American television is depressing. Except for the Simpsons, which is oddly a relief. Watched an episode of Oprah -- most of the cast of the Cosby show was on -- and while my sentiment and nostolgia were aroused, I was mostly saddened that Bill Cosby is apparantly ill or ailing or just old and ill-looking. Growing up, my brothers and I (the four of us shared two rooms) would listen to his comedy tapes as we went to sleep. I suppose he was my mammy at bedtime. He was comforting. When I see him on TV (or like when I saw him in person two years ago), I trust him implicitly. I don't believe for one second he would do anything wrong to me or anyone else. He is my television father. Of course most of my father figures have come from TV. There was Sam from Cheers; he always seemed to be the nice guy, if sex wasn't involved. However, for all the Michael Landons and Mr. Rogers (who I did love), I think Bill Cosby comes out on top as my #1 TV surrogate father.

I remember Bill holding his TV daughters when they had been in some sort of trouble with friends or boys. This is something my father never did. Of course my father held me as a baby, but he didn't hold me when I needed comfort. He was no shoulder to cry on -- he's not a giver of tissue or an offerer of a sleeve. He's a stony man with something more important than your tears on his mind. He's a man who when a lovely speech was being read to him about his daughter and her impact on the school she got herself through and the award she was to receive could be found leafing through the purple program appearing uninterested. He has been the father deathly afraid of being branded a nepotist, failing to understand that he is still free to support, praise, comfort, and love his children. Yeah, if you haven't noticed, I'm working through some issues here.

On Oprah, there was some talk about the Cosby show itself, about how it portrayed an unrealistic situation within a black family, possibly discouraging black viewers. I never knew of this controversy, because I was watching this in a white neighborhood and thinking to my little white self, these are just people -- a big family, like mine, I wish I had such a big house, with my own room -- and I wish I had a dad that cared that much about what was going on in my life and would put his arm around me and tell me I was special and smart. A dad that believed in me. A dad that wanted me to go and get what I wanted out of life.

Listening to BIll Cosby at night before bed stepped in as that voice to say get out, get out of a bad situation and find your own road. I took my dad to see Bill Cosby at the OC Fair last year, and it was less meaningful to him than to me. The reality hits then -- I only have one dad. It's not the funny, charismatic person on the stage. It's the bored and uncomfortable white man down the way.

Saying goodbye to the fantasies that got me through the ideas I held on to in my youth has been hard. It's all part of the death of youth. The countdown to 29-07-09, when I will be thirty years old, with no fanfare, but maybe, with some hope. Kissing things goodbye only means that you create a space for more things to kiss. So here's goodbye to all the stand-in dads that I leaned on in times of dad-abandon. Thanks. I needed that.

Big Baby!

At the Long Beach Museum of Art, a large orange fiberglass baby measuring fifteen feet tall has held court for the last year or so. Amidst the post-nuclear charm and malice that dance around Long Beach's Ocean Blvd. waterfront, the stark and tragically oversized infant has brought a sense of urgency; standing so aloft and so aglow, the Big Baby, as we affectionately called him and yelled out in the car as we passed him, helped us see that our young nation is awkward and lonely, goofy and imposing. I loved it. I thought it powerfully metaphoric, and even a little rebellious, especially for our LBMA, known for it's collection of impressionist works, and strange colored pencil 1980's works.

Well, the Big Baby is gone; now in storage somewhere. The empty space that he once occupied now feels cold and drab. He took with him all the promise of a new Long Beach, an appreciative and refreshingly hopeful Long Beach; a Long Beach that wouldn't tear down it's historical buildings to the tune of 2 million dollars -- and I know, 2 million dollars sounds really good right now -- but you can't get these buildings back, people! Someone laid bricks, someone cut a ribbon, someone (okay, me) found first editions and excellent used copies of her favorite authors in your establishment. Legends are being razed, and we don't even have our Big Baby to turn to.

But I have found a new Big Baby. Marlene Dumas is a painter from South Africa and the Netherlands who paints babies, big.

Her painting, The Painter, currently on display along with dozens of others at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand, downtown, is magnetic. It's a painting of a washed out nude threeish year old, with one red hand and one blue hand, and it's breathtaking. Her works are disturbing, but of course that's the point, and I am moved by them. Her more obvious shocking images, like a Marilyn Monroe death mask painting, and several paintings of dead bodies and people hanging from the scaffold, are not joyful, but they are somewhat sublime.

What is even more spectacular is that she is this bubbly blonde European woman with a fast tongue and an eagerness to talk that pleasantly surprises one, as these days you have to be on a New York society page to get coverage as an artist -- see Schnabel (Dumas' work is in an other, vastly superior, realm than his is), or these other connected artists that you could never have a conversation with about zits or sit with and eat a Greek omelette.

I really recommend seeing this show, not only for the NBB (New Big Baby), but for her whole body of work. It is something to see.

Desire Diverted, or Maybe Freud Inverted, and Bros Before Hos

I haven't read Freud, so I don't know why I act the fool and use him to explain ideas floating around in my head. I do sort of know that he had this idea that at a certain age boys want to have sex with their mothers and girls their fathers, and that they become jealous and possessive of them. Yet, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it seems that the inversion of Freud's idea is true, as least where males are involved: Brick's troubled relationship with his father and his friend Skipper has diverted his desire for his wife and inspired him to numb his feelings and cares with alcohol. I think it was Blythe who informed me that there is a theorist who suggests that homosexual desire is often sublimated through a third party in literature -- I agree with this observation. I find it apparent in Gatsby, within the relationships between Nick, Jay, Daisy, Jordan, and Tom, as well as in much of Tennessee's work, like Cat, Streetcar, Glass M, and Suddenly.

I don't know just what I can add to that discussion. I don't know enough. But it's something I am thinking about for a paper. I could just stick to Fitzgerald's novel, or try and have a discussion of William's works as a collective. I'm not sure how that kind of paper is received by the academy nowadays, but I suppose there's no harm in trying.

Loosely related, the oft mocked phrase "bros before hos" bears some significance here. Although the poetry of this phrase might give it a modern edge, the meaning behind it is timeless. It is also an idea used to support army life; you have to leave the one you are in a relationship with in order to live with and possibly die for an army of others. Now, in our capitalistic country, the citizens do not have to join any of the armed forces. But when they do, they must employ the BBH philosophy in order to justify putting aside personal commitments to lovers in the name of allegiance to unknown others.

Yet, the BBH philosophy has retained it's strict gender control in a few recent successful films. In Todd Phillips and Judd Apatow's most recent comedies the BBH mentality is taken to a new level of frustrated sexuality. Blythe mentioned to me that Telladega Nights is a good example of this, as well as Old School, and then as I got to thinking...Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad...etc. I don't include Forgetting Sarah Marshall, because the "Bros" in effect actually put their love interests before their relationship (making that a sure-fire post ironic film, Brandon? I'm not sure), and even the quintessential "Bro" in the film only puts himself before others -- everyone else in on the same level to him. As far as the other films are concerned, they seem to have BBH as a common thread. Sometimes the Bros in the movies must unlearn their BBH behavior, and come to appreciate their Ho even more than their Bro, as is the case in Telladega Nights and Old School. And it is usually a Bro that doesn't have (or doesn't get many) a Ho, or is tired of his Ho, see Old School's Beanie or Telladega Night's Cal.

Doesn't it seem as the though the BBH mentality is a rationale for the third party sublimation theory, as well as the inversion of Freud's theory? Certainly the BBH philosophy is present in Cat, as Paul Newman is overwhelmed by his self-pity concerning Skipper's death, and must have the love and approval of his Father in order to resume any sexual activity with his wife. He was active with her before, when Skippy was alive, and was there to keep his desire alive. His relationship with his father becomes the new same-sex component of the triangle of sublimation, with a nod to Freud. Big Daddy, indeed.

It's rather complicated and somewhat pedestrian, but I feel like I'm on to something.

Fleshly Things

As a rule, I try not to watch PETA videos. Although I'm sure many would disagree with me, I feel that I do not need to see the violence and torture that animals undergo in order to empathize with them or understand that it is wrong to do such things, or to support those that do. Images of violence do not have a good affect on me. I may, according to some kind of logic, as a human, deserve to have to witness the suffering that my methods of consumption are associated with, but I am not the kind of person that doesn't believe in something until she sees it -- I can very well believe something, or even believe in the possibility of something without witnessing it. If this suggests that I am weak, well then, okay. I still think that I can pretty much put it together that if the material worked with is made of fur or skin, an animal was raised in captivity and then, at some point, skinned for its pelt. I don't like this -- especially the fur part. There is no need for fur. I do not need to see the torture that animals go through in the name of fur.

Leather is not as easy for me to dismiss. I love leather. I have an unholy attachment to shoes and bags and furniture. But we will get to cows later.

I have been thinking about this for some time, and I want to become mostly vegetarian. When I eat steak, chicken, and pork, I can't help but marvel at the fact that I have no idea where this dead animal is from, how long it has been dead, what conditions it was raised and slaughtered under, and how much energy was used in the process. I have seen breakdowns that claim bovine ranching and dairy production to be the most detrimental to the environment, followed, I think, by pig and then chicken farming.

It may sound strange, but I can reasonably cut out chicken flesh from my diet. I don't really like chicken. Once in a while barbecued chicken comes into my life and I marvel at its juicy and tender texture, but I can gross out on chicken pretty quickly. Unfortunately, chicken farming is the least of my worries when it comes to ethics. I mean, I wouldn't agree with or be down with any unethical treatment of animals. For me, this includes feeding them anything other than what they naturally eat, confining them to areas they would not normally restrict themselves to, painful death, or any negligence regarding their health. I always buy organic, free range, and hormone-free chicken and eggs. Yet, I don't really adore chicken. I'm adding to animal suffering by choosing according to convenience instead of maintaining awareness.

I love steak, and some pork dishes are simply delicious -- but don't I owe it to myself to curb my cravings in order to take a stand against inhumane practices?

Yet -- yet -- I really don't want to be one of those people who simply can't eat anything, or go out, or who make veganism their religion and non-vegans their sinful counterparts. I definitely want to simplify. This may mean that I don't shop like I used to, or that I don't eat like I normally do. I just can't continue to eat and wear animals as I have in the past. I don't want to be as associated with killing and consuming as I have been.

You may wonder how I suddenly became so passionate about this. Actually, my concern has been growing incrementally. I don't eat veal or fois gras. As I already mentioned, I don't buy meat that isn't organic and hormone-free. I don't buy fur. But I have asked myself -- is it enough? Can't I do more? I don't ever want to be "done" attempting to simplify my life. I cannot throw it all up into the air at once, though. I mean, that would be traumatic. Of course my dream would be to live in tent I wove myself from cotton I farmed organically...but I have been dealt a hand that I feel I must play respectfully. The bottom line is that I love animals, and I love this planet.

The most recent National Geographic magazine had a article on the eating of endangered monkeys in Africa. The reporter remarked that one baboon that was being roasted looked disturbingly like his three year-old son. I suppose that article struck a chord with me, for I think the element of animal consumption that bothers me the most is how close it seems we come to eating eachother.

Everything is Math, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Syntax

Long ago, my mom sighed and declared, "Everything is math." I was just a squeak then, and knew nothing of binary code or geometry, or grammar, also known as syntax. I simply knew things. I knew that I liked things, or to be more precise, I knew that I preferred things. I preferred reading to counting. I preferred words to pictures, but I still liked pictures. I definitely preferred words and pictures to numbers, even if those numbers were presented alongside words and pictures. Numbers were for memorizing; words were for comprehending. I do not truly believe that someone "taught" me this (way of comprehending). This, I assert, I knew.

I also assert that before I was ever taught syntax, I knew how to write. This is very clear now, as I'm struggling in syntax class, yet can still write, some might say, beautifully. Once the sentences are broken down into parts, and assigned symbols, language, this thing that I knew, disappears and becomes math, this thing that I do not know. The feeling, the spiritual connection that I have with language, becomes numb. Slowly, when things are explained carefully, I do begin to understand. But it is painful, as that part of my brain has fallen asleep, and the pricks of comprehension sort of tickle and torture my mind.


It is true -- everything is math. Everything is quantifiable. Once, a pseudo-scholar, quite like myself, and I both agreed (with little to no research or evidence) that free will is not quantifiable, therefore God exists in the presence of free will. I don't claim this statement to be true -- but it sounded intelligent at the time (self-comforting rubbish, I'm sure). Whatever its validity, it sort of communicates the feeling I have about math -- its like, I know you math, I know you're here, there, everywhere, but you aren't in my feelings, my spirit(uality), my words. I have a narcissistic relationship with language. I see myself in it, and I feel it reflects me. I think math also has a narcissistic relationship with language. It sees itself through language. Therefore, I also have a narcissistic relationship with math, except that I see math as my shadow side, a reflection of that which I identify with in a positive sense, a negative to the positive reflection. A binary representation of free-floating abstraction. The rigid to my obscene. Why the bit about God? I think it's because it's a tie to the knowing. There are things that I simply knew, without being taught. Is God quantifiable? I'm not really a good scientist. God is both the hardest and easiest thing for me to know.

As the title of this post suggests, I am learning to love syntax, and therefore, math. There are things that make me who I am that I don't like. My shadow side. Math is in there, though it's not as apparent as, say, intolerance, or hypocrisy. I think I have mistrusted math due to its rigidity, it's precise nature. I have always been more attached to Lewis Carroll's idea that a word means exactly what I want it to mean. Oh, there is a science, but there is also poetry. There is choice. There is a place for the abstraction that has no word. There is a look. There is no text where there is a text. I want to imagine that there is a place where there is no math for a word. I imagine this place to be God. I know I create it. I know.

Perhaps the most hopeful thing I can muster is that for something to be both -- the shadow and the material -- it is divine. It is a bond that we can take shelter in. Perhaps the key that unlocks the great mystery of the collective unconscious. Certainly, certainly, it is special. For me, it is home.

The Cold Ripoff, or How I Know I'm Old

I'm old and grumpy. I became aware of this sometime last night, as I, along with hundreds of others, was herded along attending a Coldplay concert.

Coldplay are a very well liked group of musicians. They resonate with people of all ages, and both sexes seem to like them with an equal fervor. The band acts as an equalizer in that way; oh, you like Coldplay? I like them too, etc. Liking them is an American pandemic. So I wasn't surprised to find out they were playing an arena show at the Forum, in Inglewood. I wasn't planning on going anyway, as I have already seen them perform twice, and I don't even have the new album.

My brother, however, loves them. (I must add at this point that it was I, back in 2000, who bade my brother listen to this incredible new album from these English lads, and it was he who replied upon hearing, "Oh.") He and I had already seen them at the Hollywood Bowl, and then again at the Coors Light Amphitheater, when he surprised me with tickets.

I wasn't going to turn him down, even though I was less than enthusiastic about going due to these facts:

It fell on a Tuesday night.

The Forum is less than comfortable.

I don't have the new album.

But, I reasoned:

They do put on a good show.

I love live music.

It's nice to get out during this grueling summer schedule, and I'm not too deep into the second session yet.

I have decided to recount my evening, because at this point I just don't know if I'll ever go to another large venue concert.

Getting from the 405 freeway to the Forum was a nightmarish gridlock with cutting and butting in, and collisions nearly missed, all the while flanked on the sides by aggressive panhandlers, scalpers, and T-shirt sellers. I swore it was the L.A. version of the border line in Tijuana. After that mess, where it took half an hour to go .9 miles, I was directed to drive all the way around the full-to-bursting stadium parking lot, and then to pull into an overflow lot, across the street, then into the lot for the Hollywood Park, two blocks away from the forum. I paid $20 to park two blocks away. MInd you, I was already sore from the extreme fitness routine I'm doing four days a week -- and I was not pleased to get to stretch my legs in this way. For $20 (parking in the Forum lot was $22).

I finally arrived at the stadium, and entered with my brother. Beers were $13, this for a Pacifico, which I believe goes for about $7 for a six-pack. Upon entering the arena, I was overwhelmed by two things -- heat, and marijuana smoke. That is one pungent herb. I don't smoke and being that it was an enclosed, stuffy, and hot place, I wasn't thrilled to be breathing everyone's resinous exhalations -- it's unsanitary. I thought to myself, it's the beginning of the show, I better use the restroom now before things really get going. This is the part of the story that I begin to feel really underappreciated by the folks who are ripping the money out of my wallet faster than I can say, one pretzel, please. There are two bathrooms for a ten thousand+ arena. I would say there were twelve stalls in the bathroom I, eventually, went into, and I imagine that the situation is the same on the other side of the area. 10,000+ people...hmm even if only 5,000 were female (this was an equally female crowd as it was a male crowd) that would mean that there was one stall for 208 women. I considered bribing someone, anyone, to let me use any bathroom, immediately. But, I did have some luck in that when I was just getting to the breaking (water) point, a very popular song came one that sent dozens of line denizens heading for their seats to listen in discomfort. That made things a little easier. A little.

Did I mention it was hot in there? I was in a tank top and capris, and I was standing still, and sweat was rolling down my face.

Did I mention the screaming? I love music. I even love my favorite bands. But the screaming. I don't think I even like raucous screaming anymore. I don't think anything is worth it, really. You're paying $80 to have severely limited access to a toilet, sweat like an athlete, and you're screaming like you've just been cured of cancer? I'm troubled by this. Didn't people pay what I paid? Don't they value the experience, and not just scream their heads off in glee because the band showed up? I mean we paid for this experience, and I'm glad the band showed up too, but I don't think I even got close to having the experience I paid for.

$130 dollars could have got me chorizo-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, and wine, and unparalleled conversation with loved ones. No sweat, no smoke, no toilet lines, no screaming, no songs I don't know, and no gridlock, and no paying to walk two Inglewood blocks.

It's funny, Coldplay has always had a political agenda, and I've always liked that about them, especially their concerns about fair trade and the Iraq war. I wonder, though, if they care about their fans. I mean, I'm not that picky -- I'll see a show in a dive with NO toilet -- for a $10 ticket and $2 beer. The price does not indicate the experience. There has to be some quality control. I love music -- and I'm considering not going to these events anymore. It becomes insulting.

Summer's Already Half Over -- Or Half Full?

I got my final grades for the two classes I took this summer; I got an A in The Power of Masks, and a B in The History of Western Civilization. I'm pleased as punch with both. Of course I take great pleasure in the A I earned in Masks, because I worked very hard on the M. Butterfly paper. I did some fantastic research on tranvestism, but ultimately decided not to analyze the presentation of tranvestism in the play. Maybe some other time. The instructor apparently didn't find me hard to read (yuk yuk), and gave me such lovely comments as "excellent analysis," and "this is clearly your voice here," and even "great." I got full points -- the second time ever, for a paper.

The B? Well, that's okay. How much can a girl memorize in four weeks, anyway? Plus, when I'm studying fascinating works by brilliant playwrights like Hwang, it's pretty hard to stay interested in things like the Carolingian rule and how the Holy Roman Emperors in Germany were always messing around with the Northern Italian economy. I like to have an overview of history, but to be perfectly honest -- all it does it help me form arguments about literature. I mean, the world is a text, after all. And I'm sure something from that class will help next semester when I'm wading through medieval English Literature. None will compare to Jeanne, but I do hope who ever teaches that class makes it interesting; if not, it's a snoozer. Actually, no, that's not right at all. I'm taking Modern English Lit this Fall, and Shakespeare, African American Poetry and Drama, and Cultural Pluralism (I think I chose the African Diaspora), and a class on Natural Disasters. Well, whatever the case, I'm sure have a small knowledge of the mighty bloodshed that has occurred in France and Germany and Spain and Portugal and Italy and Greece and Turkey and Russia and Israel and Persia...Well -- I'm sure that will come in handy someway, somehow. But seriously, people, the Children's Crusade? They say that it's where the myth of the Pied Piper comes from. So whatever happens, don't follow the man with the flute.