Monday, November 29, 2004
While I don't blog very much at all, Jeannie has just started her own blog about all of the stuff that we eat and cook, and the restaurants we go to in NYC. Its really a good blog so far really interesting, it deals with the strange produce we get and our food obsessions. If you want to read it while you are waiting the two or three weeks in between other peoples blogs, check it out Jeannie's blog . Oh and comment if you do read it, she thinks no one reads it.
Posted by Edward @ 10:55 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Saturday, November 20, 2004
it's been a while but I feel like today's event was a significant occurrence. Today I took a one day master class with Li Young Lee. It was a class of 12 poets from different backgrounds and it all happened at the asian american writers workshop. What was so special about today besides the fact that Li young doesn't teach at a university and rarely if ever does writing workshops, was that he was amazingly insightful. The class began by everyone picking one poem to workshop, after reading the poem yourself and then having someone else read it, he and everyone else would comment on it. That is nothing unusual but what was extremely interesting and helpful was the exposition that he would give about poetry itself. He would talk about what poetry should be and in many ways what the poet has to be. It changed my outlook about poetry completely. He would constantly throw out these beautifully carved philosophical outlooks on poetry. He talked about poetry being a negotiation between the probable and the random. Form and chaos. If a poem starts out in a form like a villanelle or sestina then it must find the balance by being more original in its expressions than a poem in free verse. He said that words are like the hearts of clouds magnetizing other words into bonded correlations. That a poems medium is not the page or the language but the mind of the audience. It was amazing and really has me re-examining my approach to memory and rhyme, poetry itself. I would say more but I haven't processed it all. It was a very god day, worth every penny.
Posted by Edward @ 08:37 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
the last time I voted was 2000, for Al Gore. I was an absentee ballot in the Florida Presidential election, more specifically in the Miami dade county. I am pretty sure that my vote was not counted. It probably sits in a box in the foundation of one of the millions of houses that are always being built in Florida. This year I voted for kerry and I feel just as frustrated, no depressed would be more accurate. I have eaten as much chocolate as I can, ate sushi for lunch and tried not to think about what is going to happen. I don't understand the country into which I was born. It is the year 2004 and the country resembles looks more like the US of the 1850's, than the new century. We are now one of the only countries to never have elected a woman to its highest office, even second highest. We now have a black senator, and two latino senators. Yippie. If the one hundred senators are supposed to represent the country then fifty two of them would be women, and 14 would be latin and 13 black, 4 asian, one native american. Those three senators that were elected yesterday are heralded as a windfall for people of color. Whatever. We keep people from getting married and send eighteen year olds who just want to pay for college off to die to keep from running out of gasoline. We are victims of low expectations.
As far as the presidential elections here are my thoughts:
Reuters NewMedia - July 15, 2004
"UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands ranked as the best five countries to live in.
The United States was ranked in eighth place, a drop of one position from 2003 in the report that rates not only per-capita income but also educational levels, health care and life expectancy in measuring a nation's well-being."
I can deal with being number 4, rather than number 8 and dropping like a stone.
I'm gonna start looking into Toronto and Montreal as they most resemble New York without the threat of draft, Flat taxes, or dumb asses, voting to hate gays or because they think a terrorist will care enough to leave a bomb in some backwater cornfield. This kind of manipulation is what lead perfectly normal thinking germans to follow orders in the 1930's
This isn't going to happen right away but I don't see how I can continue to live in a country that is so disrespectful of human rights and international laws. We lose jobs, wage wars and reelect idiots. "That must be one of those whadda ya call it...exagerations." "need any wood"
Posted by Edward @ 06:31 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]
