Letter to the Editor on "The Park People"

Dear Oakdale,

Having returned recently from a scholarly stint in the bay, I was dismayed to find uprooted public benches, probing Leader articles, impassioned public debate, and a regrettable disdain for the “park people.” To my chagrin, I felt this personally while walking to Cafe Bliss, when I was curtly accosted by nearby store owner who interrogated meanly: “Are you one of those park people?”

I worry that the recent ordinance that diagnoses the issue as alcoholism is only the most recent contribution to the city-wide discourse about the ‘park people’ that has yielded unhealthy discussions about ‘who they are’, these members of our community. It also ignores many of the contributing factors to the development of such a habit, including but not limited to poverty, which is not an individual but a shared, social issue. This ordinance that endeavors to address the issue simplifies the atmosphere of causes and effects and generates a solution that addresses only a small part.

I want us to come to an effective solution like the rest of you. But labeling a complex and multifaceted issue of poverty, social stigmatization, and the rapid disappearance of the public space as one of ‘public drunkenness’ is misleadingly simplistic and infused with failed, outdated prohibitionist values. While treating a loose group of park-goers as “those people” does little more than create unnecessary fissures in our own community. The issue is far from resolved, so let us focus on creating inventive, inclusive solutions, such as shelters, or simply those that treat these ‘people’ as human beings in order to actually be that loving, inclusive Oakdale we purport to be.

(In my search for city council minutes, I also found it quite challenging to obtain a copy, anything after 2012,, which signals a possible but remediable barrier to public knowledge.)

Risk Aversion?

A risk is a risk because it is a risk and not because it is not a risk. This is the way of the world.

All actions are risks because they project us from what is and has been to what is not and what might be; in any case, some actions and engagements are more risky than others, project ourselves further into conditions about which me may know little.

We have an intuitive sense of this risk, to some degree, as attending to our bodies and what they tell us about our performance and our environment's proffered resources, not to mention our ability to confront likely challenges, is a way to read our own aptitude for facing uncertainty.

It is not foolproof, but it is essential, and we can inform and develop this intuitive sense through research, conversation, reflection and writing. Without it, however, we are dead in the rough, incapable of interpreting even our basic abilities to cope with and adapt to our environment.

Blue Orchards, Coming Now

I awoke this morning to an endless sea
Of blue orchards, opening up before
me. In the distance I could hear a few
(but perhaps there were more,
who knew, really?)
roving mechanical beasts, threshing and
thrashing belligerently, defiantly.

They were coming for me. I could hear
them, approaching, interminably slowly
but with a trembling certitude, a predictable rhythm.
The moment of harvest was upon us.

Hopefully, my windows would hold, though I knew
the shades would falter; they were far too weak
for creatures of that size, animals of that stature.

In the pool of water before me, slight ripples in the
water began to form, widening and narrowing.
They were trying to trying to warn me, like a long-
distance radar.

I wanted to heed their kind, silent signals
But I was paralyzed. I would confront them
here and now, and they would no longer
haunt me...

While the wind blew softly, little more than
a breeze felt upon the cheek.

The General Aesthetic of Oakdale - Chapter 1

Descriptions of Oakdale are typically cast in a pall of the mundane. Fitted neatly into the amorphous category of 'natural,' the physical environment that characterizes this place is what is unique to it. Long, rolling and sometimes verdant but mostly beautifully and subtly golden brown pastures encircled by distant fences and miniature four-legged animals belie the uncultivated view that there isn't much to appreciate here.

So too, the sky illuminates the place at night in a way no street light can, drawing our gaze upward, revealing the moon and a blanket of patched stars and constellations, a canopy of light redolent of the sacred. This is the physical environment of Oakdale, but there is yet more.

The built and constructed environment deserves as much attention, with cowboy boots, hats, saddles, spurs and so many other objects decorating the town, with varying degrees of ostentation. Some proudly wear encrusted, adorned, and sculpted versions of these western accoutrements, sometimes even insignia-d. The local economy generates interest in such artifacts as relevant targets of artistic investment and interest.

People 'need' (to a degree) collaborate with animate and inanimate objects in order to complete their productive projects in order to remain participants in the strictures and pressures of the political economy and to maintain a spot in the tradition and history of this place. Continuing the family line is also of high priority, as it is part and parcel of their place in the community, implicated in a process of resisting incorporation into non-native, non-local ventures that comforts the people who live there, as they think on what distinguishes Oakdale, aside from its convenience as a stop on the way to Yosemite.

Art and political economy are interrelated in important ways here, explaining the emphasis on certain kinds of artifacts and rebutting the claim that there isn't anything aesthetically redeeming here. There are just different objects, different practices, and often ones foreign to novice spectators, the exact kind that are prone to ill-informed speculative judgments that render a place ill-equipped to satisfy their sense of taste or judgement

Aesthetic appreciation, as much as any other activity requires time and focus, attention and effort for attuning oneself to the rhythms of a particular world, their relevant details and what makes them significant. It is about a disposition as much as it is about an object being shiny or beautiful or melodious that makes them noteworthy.

Art objects are defined as such (and further defined as worthy of interest) by certain community-proclaimed authorities, but once we realize that we can all be authorities on these items to some degree on these subjects, then we will be entering a new stage of re-creating this world in the image of ourselves but all of ourselves, including the environment and the flora and fauna that inhabit it, who, like each of us, plays as much of a role in recreating certain parts of it as we do. We should treat experts as authorities, but we should also maintain confidence in our own abilities, as these are real and present in ways that are not readily nor appropriately jettison or scraped.

 (there are so many details that each of one of us focuses on that others fail to appreciate, and it is the successive appreciation by new and different people and communities of this place (and others) that discloses and selects different aspects of the environment, of the social and nonsocial world, that really determines what we produce and leave to the generations that succeed us, our ways of making intelligible the world, describing and reconstituting it)

Pipe Dream-ing

Flight (1) .......................................300

Apartment rent (1 mo)...................900.....(x4=3600)

Groceries (1 mo)...........................120.......(x4=480)

Transportation (1 mo).....................50.......(x4=200)

Discretionary money.....................100.......(x4=400)

Courses........................................200

New stuff......................................300     

Total................................................................5480

Savings......................................4000

Income (1 mo)............................1600............6400

Net..................................................................4920

Research

- alternative apartment options (furnished, preferably)

- general new york living guides

- trip for spring 2014, summer 2014

The Combat of In-Decision

Deciding is one of the most challenging tasks for me, and the extant resources for thinking about and 'coming to' or ('arriving at') a decision are few and far between and often very particular to certain kinds of situations. In my work, I hope to provide better information and resources for others to decide, but I do think having to face decisions themselves is an ineluctable aspect of being human, of discerning and considering potential options and electing one or the other based on some kind of existential criteria, some sense of how a given activity fits in with what one is doing and what one wants to do. How we see ourselves taking the river of our volition into the lake of the future.

But such a process is intensely and immersively taxing, if one were to always take it so seriously. There is an innumerable number of possible worlds, if there can be said to be a number of them at all, or if counting worlds is a sensible way to think of discerning option from option (if this process of discerning were so concrete and apparent). And, through our actions, we effectively opt with one course over another, which anticipates other future tributaries that flow from that decision, creating some new opportunities and closing off others. Navigating these possibilities can be overwhelming paralyzing, and debilitating even. But I think it doesn't have to be. Ensuring that one has a proper decision space is important: sitting oneself down, comfortably, satiating all or many of one's needs and taking a few moments, if not longer, to be alone, once one has researched the various possible options.

Decisions often take weeks or months to make as well; by which I mean, all of the research and meditation and consultation and weighing and consideration involved with making an informedly adequate and thoughtful decision takes time, takes effort, takes focus, takes courage. Sometimes, people are faced with relatively easy options, possible courses that do not take much of them to elect. In other cases, people fail to take seriously the different courses before them and just elect to go one way or the other, which admittedly may be a healthy alternative to painfully exhausting oneself over what may be very good options, may be reflective of a set of options which diverge but are both positive.

These kinds of decisions are the most difficult: the ones that entail that you take a stand on your being and give up a part of yourself that you have for some time been cultivating, or requires that you anticipatingly hold them in suspension for a time. Normally, one confronts these situations of election when one has reflected on what is available and and out there in the world and is uncertain of some of the outcomes involved with a potential selection but nonetheless needs to decide and move forward. The possible courses themselves are of equal appeal and speak to different aspects of a person's character, different potential future thems that the person in question has reflected on and wants to move towards in some fashion at some point in their lives. I've confronted these myself, and I realize that there isn't a best choice here; there just needs to be one. As much as we may genuinely and carefully consider the implications of a course, we will not have all of what we need to know to take it, and sometimes we cannot possibly prioritize one over the other based on where we are, as they may both prophesize a different future, and so we just must move forward and learn from whatever action it is that we take. That we take the action is important, however; as it worse to jeopardize our very confidence in our ability to take a stance, to take a position on who we are as human beings. This stance doesn't need to be final, and often isn't, as we are constantly taking new stances that may be consistent with or in contradiction to previous stances. Nevertheless, that we do so is significant. It is important that we are aware of this aspect of selecting courses as well, as it is only with honesty to ourselves that we may be able to recognize ourselves and how to make decisions to fit ourselves.

We must also account for the inevitability of these situations. That, as much as we may practice and act, we will always be confronted with situations consisting of a wholly novel set of circumstances that will challenge our very ways of thinking and relating to the world. If we are not finding these situations, we are not adequately and regularly challenging ourselves in ways that we should if we want to grow along some course that we've discerned and set out to find. Although these existential obstacles have become all the more treacherous and complicated with an increasingly unintelligible social and informational landscape, one in which we are becoming more skilled in distracting ourselves, we can still harness our faculties as human beings to face them and come out successfully. Arendt invests great faith in us here, in our ability to work together to decide collectively and the importance of protecting and revering the process of electing and following through on a given option. The same can be said of an individual, and although I do not want to fall into a kind of Sartrean complete anti-determinism, as it is apparent that we are often not able to make decisions because we are so immersed in a social totality that distracts us persistently, and because we aren't fully aware of all of the options available, fully conscious of everything involved in selecting a course, I do want to emphasize the power involved in selecting a course of action. Nonetheless, there is hope, and we can find this hope in suspending disbelief, in being honest with ourselves about the challenges of selecting a path, being as observant and aware as possible of the information relevant to taking and making a decision, and being reflective about the outcomes of that path, but always, always confident that a decision must be made.

Really, there is no way of getting around deciding, and indecision. There are just ways of coping with it more effectively, openly and honestly and mindfully of what we need as human beings and what our social and natural spaces offer us, time and again, and as much as they change, we must respond to and find ways of dealing with them, and in this way, we change, always adapting to a forthcomingly new and novel world that forever presents new challenges, whether we expect them or not. This is how we must traverse the river of our existence, as we casually row with the various currents of our humanity.

Ode to Sprinkler Head

Ode to Sprinkler Head:

The garden,
Where you've long impersonated a fountain
Defiantly spurting and bubbling like you'd
Completely forgotten your purpose in the
Garden, where you're there to keep the plants
Refreshed and satiated, not submerged nor drowning
Today is the day when you will be reprimanded,
Rehabilitated and returned again to
The garden

Baggaging Family?

I don't want to return home this weekend, like before. I feel that I've reached a point in my creative commitments that I want/need the alone time and would like the opportunity to remain in Berkeley to develop them further, to read and write and to enjoy the potential spontaneity present here.

At home, too, I feel so pressed to commit to many activities that I only partially enjoy but that my family always desires to include me in, so I know that my creative life will need to take a backseat. I still want to preserve a sense of community with them, and they are very important to me.

And I miss my brother even. But we inhabit different worlds. I read, write, draw, play guitar, garden, cook and etc. And they don't do much of this at all, absent one or two of them. They watch excessive amounts of tv, and I desire only some part of it, if at all. oh well.

But, as with many times before, I'll most likely reluctantly go, in spite of what remains here and for me to enjoy, to learn from, to take pleasure in. There is so much already.

Prudish Prudence

Talk about reproducing sex-unfriendly social habits and assuming that human beings just can't stand publicly admitting they have any part in reproductive or procreative habits. This Prudence lady gives weird advice, again and again.

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/dear_prudence/2013/07/dear_prudence_video_raunchy_upstairs_neighbor.html

Onwards!

Unfortunately, as of yet, I don't inhabit a world where I can read and write all day, but instead, I have to commit myself to jobs and other occupations that are not necessarily in line with interests but provide me a level of subsistence. Oh the future I look forward to...

Personal Time

Perfunctory or brief posts may as much be evidence of time alloted as of focus or interest. One can only do with the time that one has.

Infatuation and Compromise

I see people engage in relationships around me all the time, but I have a deep sense that I'm incapable of them, and I say this not to incite or compel sympathy but to admit to myself and my viewing public, whoever that may be, that being uncompromising might mean being lonely.

I empathize profoundly with Benjamin here, who, time after time, found human and economic relationships troubling and hampering of his own work, compelled on, again and again to produce and to hold responsible the exploitative system of relations characteristic of capitalism.

Again, a post that is far too personal for any to view...

Sublimating Sublimation?

Lately, I've been worrying about how sexist I am, and about whether others who share these tendencies are just better at covering them up or sublimating them.

I wonder what this says about how I respect women. This is what concerns me, and what confounds me as well. I wonder about the prospect of seeing another sex, or another general group as the object of sexual affection/interest and what this says to relations of power between such groups. Is it possible for equality and sexual relationships to coexist?

A professor once suggested otherwise, or they did insofar as they related stories about the figure of the female in Greece. They argued that, in a world in which sexuality implied or expressed ownership, the homosociality of men living among men prohibited any kind of sexual relations because this would subvert or undermine the power equally shared and exhibited among them and over women and others in society. This is why pederasty had to be hidden and concealed but simultaneously why it was permissible that women were the objects of sexual interest, as they didn't hold the same status in Grecian society. But this only has to be the case when sex is ownership; but how and when was this changed, and was it? Can mere practice and ideological reformation change these relationships?

I wonder if I'm experiencing this same feeling, and I wonder to what degree the figure of sexual objectification and ownership has been lost from myself or from the communities from which I come. I wonder and worry about whether I have respect for someone I sleep with, or, put another way, is if such a relationship inhibits a sense of equality in ability or capacity.

There is no doubt that my own opinions, sensibilities and predispositions to those around were fashioned and formed in some part in and during my childhood, to take a Freudian stance. Although I consider myself progressive and even revolutionarily so, in the sense that I entertain the thoughts of new and different kinds of relationship configurations, every now and again, I notice my own conservatism, and it sometimes temporarily paralyzes me with questions of implications.

I think this is the small town boy in me, coming to terms with the radically different conditions of an urban world. These generalizations would surely not stand up to too much or too thorough of testing, but in general, I'm skeptical of many practices, even though I feel myself more at home here, in this atmosphere. But I feel, still, that I'm constantly fighting myself, that Freud was right, that we are, for the most part, broken, uncertain beings that are constantly coping with competing urges and finding ways to fit those to the strictures of our environments. If only we took him more seriously...

Un-Making Time

After reconsidering the plan several times, I finally made my way to the gorgeous vintage wonder that is the Legion of Honor, sitted atop small rolling hills and surrounded by a golf course. The fog was strong today, which explained the briskness of the weather and the thinned out crowd. But even as I got there, I couldn't appreciate the art. My mind was elsewhere, contemplating books I should be reading, political projects that needed my attention. I'm reaching a point in my adventuring where I feel that I cannot dedicate as much time to it as previously. Nothing feels as important as the political, as the academic, as what makes me me.

I realize also that perhaps this is a pleasure to be had later in life, something I can when I'm aging or when I've established myself. When I feel I have time for fun.