I thought I'd get ahead on what I expect to be a full on assault from my fellow queers, jeerers, reformists, and bull-horned progressors on the ridiculous hypocrisy of Independence Day celebration and the annual 1812 overture cannon blows that sound throughout Boston and the televised world. There are millions of topics we can explore regarding this one day, its history, our (alternative) histories, globalization, faggotry, the dead made into fireworks (really!) notions of independence and interdependence, mass media, nationalism, transnationalism, etc. Where will my wailings lie? Let's talk the family BBQ.
Every year my brother is host to a 4th of July backyard BBQ with all the traditional fixins. Paper plates, american flag cakes with blueberries and strawberries used as the stars and stripes, meats cooked in beer, and a firework finale that costs thousands of dollars.
So: every year I find myself in the sticky situation of taking part in a kind of day long ritual I avidly rip to shreds in appropriate settings and compromising my political self with my loyalties to my family. Said brother is fucking amazing. His smile can be infectiously kind and its a true sign of his utterly unpretentious and childishly unjudging character. His goal is to offer a day of gathering; a celebration not steeped in bogart nationalism but rather built on the corporal pleasures of food, summer lawns, drink and socializing. I enjoy the gathered company of family (and some friends) but also hate the ways it makes me feel like my integrity is put on the back burner. Manning the so-called Veggie Hut or Tofu Tent doesn't exactly allow me the kind of relief I desire from mainstream american 4th of July celebration dogma. Still, should there be an alternative celebration hosted by people looking to dismantle the hypocritical trash celebration of Freedom For All! and create an alternative foreigner/immigrant/tranny/queer/manwomanchild/animal/everythingeverythingeverything friendly environment, I'd still have to choose my family on this day. Where my political and philosophical ambitions/beliefs disrupt my commitment to my family I am terribly compromising. Because from them I have received endless love and hardly any judgement. They would kill and die for me and it transcends political context. So on the 4th (I avoided discussing our lack of Independence from corporate America and people who have to work on this day, I might have to) I will be cooking my tofu Pups on the grill and encouraging thoughtful conversation about Americanism when appropriate (I am in the process of trying to re-embody America and American because I am exhausted by the idea of giving up. A firm critic of nationalism I still have spent my life in this system and fuckall if I'm going to join the Move To Canada airplane. This is a country not entirely gone to waste and I want to claim these words and emblaze them in the context of my faggoty little self, more soon!). I won't enjoy everything, I will be grossly frustrated, I will feel somewhat compromised, but there it is, the family.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Thief
Seemingly significant alterations in my mood are affected by small accomplishments, all of which I can not realize without the help of things like oxygen, the family, castor oil, my body's ability to process B12, and our planet's particular fix in the solar system. Despite these wonders, though, I'm a grump.
A waspy critic, though I don't meant that how I would have 2 or 3 years ago when I subversively eyed the WASP looking to memorize it's technique for organizing a spice rack or edge the walkway. Nowadays I feel like a slightly darker, perhaps more alarming bug on the screen though ultimately you can buy an aerosol can of something off-putting and I will go away and be sad in a gutter. I find it difficult to always be specific. My frustrations disassemble into dreamy poetics. I hate Target and the tidal wave speed of commercial plaza construction. I look on, jaded, and think: "I will come back at night and I will steal their shrubbery, and make a garden of love and war." Television is 99% let down so I don't watch it and when I've lived on my own I simply didn't own a tv (how easy!). Still, it's not always easy to compliment my ideals and actualize my politics. I'm an impulsive thinker and can never stand by any one moral with die hard strength; possible fluctuations in circumstance are a regular part of my deliberations and so my equations are always changing. Shape-shifting: perhaps there is nothing I approve of completely and nothing I condemn entirely. Does this make me wishywashy? A weak character? I usually regret operating solely off of impulses because the next day I can scarcely stand by my old convictions, there's been a shift, chances are I've lived another day and slept another night and nothing in the world will ever be the same again.
A waspy critic, though I don't meant that how I would have 2 or 3 years ago when I subversively eyed the WASP looking to memorize it's technique for organizing a spice rack or edge the walkway. Nowadays I feel like a slightly darker, perhaps more alarming bug on the screen though ultimately you can buy an aerosol can of something off-putting and I will go away and be sad in a gutter. I find it difficult to always be specific. My frustrations disassemble into dreamy poetics. I hate Target and the tidal wave speed of commercial plaza construction. I look on, jaded, and think: "I will come back at night and I will steal their shrubbery, and make a garden of love and war." Television is 99% let down so I don't watch it and when I've lived on my own I simply didn't own a tv (how easy!). Still, it's not always easy to compliment my ideals and actualize my politics. I'm an impulsive thinker and can never stand by any one moral with die hard strength; possible fluctuations in circumstance are a regular part of my deliberations and so my equations are always changing. Shape-shifting: perhaps there is nothing I approve of completely and nothing I condemn entirely. Does this make me wishywashy? A weak character? I usually regret operating solely off of impulses because the next day I can scarcely stand by my old convictions, there's been a shift, chances are I've lived another day and slept another night and nothing in the world will ever be the same again.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
My Hemorrhoid
The new name for my one man Hammond Organ Band is Hemorrhoid.
And speaking of, I took Saturday night off and called it Disability because I could barely walk and I had already worked 49.3 hours for the week and they frown on server overtime. That said, at this, the cool break of Monday afternoon, I'm a bit better, somewhat tired, and completely at a loss.
To my reader:
Suffice it to say I did not make it into the CoOp because, as a dear friend so candidly put it, Diversity Hates Me. I can deal with that. It's fucked but so is our context and severity begets severity. That's just catch up. Did I mentioned I shaved my head a few weeks ago to scare away chipmunks with my red locks tossed into the garden? They laughed.
I could use a clean room these days. I feel as though I'm in need of spacial sobriety: my room is a sloshy mess and so is my car and I can't seem to read and this is my weak attempt at writing. Give my life B12 because I can't turn a jar lid anymore. What posits me in this place? A partnerlessness? I've whined enough about having no one to read in bed with, so what of it. I would be a dull hermit. Take away my stimulations and I turn gray and flowerless. A plant in springtime trapped under a plank of wood. No light no glory. I'm a needy little planet. But I doubt you aren't. Still, in this round equation friendly age I'm the one actually buying roadside lemonade from middle class kids because I was once that little homo trying to bring in the business with my cartwheels. So I tell them here's 5 bucks, get out of here as fast as you can.
And speaking of, I took Saturday night off and called it Disability because I could barely walk and I had already worked 49.3 hours for the week and they frown on server overtime. That said, at this, the cool break of Monday afternoon, I'm a bit better, somewhat tired, and completely at a loss.
To my reader:
Suffice it to say I did not make it into the CoOp because, as a dear friend so candidly put it, Diversity Hates Me. I can deal with that. It's fucked but so is our context and severity begets severity. That's just catch up. Did I mentioned I shaved my head a few weeks ago to scare away chipmunks with my red locks tossed into the garden? They laughed.
I could use a clean room these days. I feel as though I'm in need of spacial sobriety: my room is a sloshy mess and so is my car and I can't seem to read and this is my weak attempt at writing. Give my life B12 because I can't turn a jar lid anymore. What posits me in this place? A partnerlessness? I've whined enough about having no one to read in bed with, so what of it. I would be a dull hermit. Take away my stimulations and I turn gray and flowerless. A plant in springtime trapped under a plank of wood. No light no glory. I'm a needy little planet. But I doubt you aren't. Still, in this round equation friendly age I'm the one actually buying roadside lemonade from middle class kids because I was once that little homo trying to bring in the business with my cartwheels. So I tell them here's 5 bucks, get out of here as fast as you can.
Friday, June 13, 2008
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