Like any number of you, my mind is much taken up with what’s goin’ on in Louisiana and Mississippi. The extent to which I’ve been wigging out about it has surprised me, as has the extent to which this has set off a cycle of self-loathing: I am not, after all, sitting on my roof, three days’ hungry, while fetid water drifts slowly by, half a foot below.
Others whom I read, one, two, three, have been pursuing much the same lines of thought, with Accordion Guy presenting an impressively practical corollary. I’m taken aback by my level of distress–comparable in my own experience only with when the way I felt in the summer of 1990/91, watching my extended family sit enthusiastically around the television, as Anita McNaught enunciated the details of the first Gulf War, shot by shot. Something about this disaster has tripped my ability to filter appropriately the media images, and I feel as if it’s me who’s had to leave behind my dogs in order to get evacuated. Fuck.
Today has therefore the feckless quality of an episode of House, from the patient’s point of view, at least. Dramatically, my mood would be best-served by an animated shot of something very bad and blurry happening inside my amigdala, followed by any number of anti-compassionate quips from Hugh Laurie (that marvellous, marvellous man). But it’s not that way, nor should it be. I simply have to tough out this wave of feeling terrible in the knowledge that some relief and help is finally arriving for those who don’t have the luxury of thinking about how it might feel–for them, it’s how it is.
Bitch Ph.D discusses racism and infrastructural underfunding, and asks “Will we care as much about the lower-lying areas of New Orleans as we did about rebuilding lower Manhattan?”, a question which, curiously, Nanette and I were framing last night. The urgency of our discussion–and the fact it took place in the midst of a skincare demonstration (I kid thee not: I saw a reduction in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles in a manner that makes my usual supermarket products now feel like cheap goop)–didn’t seem surreal at the time, although to write about it like this does.
Meanwhile, the political context of this disaster had an incendiary effect on the dog emailing list to which I belong (no actual emailing by dogs takes place, sadly), and I surprised myself by writing a message urging everyone not to take offence at each other’s remarks on the culpability, or not, of the federal government, and not to quit the list. Take any situation where you’ve got people unwilling to admit, first off, that they’re feeling frightened and angry, and the tone gets nasty very fast.
Outside the spinning of my own anxiety, I’m getting organised to head for the far north tomorrow. If I can calm down sufficiently it will be a week, I hope, of sight-seeing, reading and writing. The following week, the change proposal will be announced at work, and I’ll find out if my corner if for the chop, so this is the best time to get out of town, Charlie Brown.
A long conversation with Dwayne last night about the coming election probably hasn’t helped my state of calm. We are not that dissimilar in our responses to policy, but the ways in which we frame our responses our utterly different. It’s the old private sector/public sector divide: with friends, it’s negotiable, but two strangers might well think the other had come from outer space.
The rhetorics are different, and almost mutually unintelligible, but the underlying desires are the same: family and social stability, fairness, justice. I did try and debunk that pernicious piece of Best/Smith propaganda in which the Moriori’s role in history is as kai tangata. But still, it amazes me that, in this country, we live as peaceably as we do, given that even two friends who grew up together can frame the world in such different ways. In the end, I suggested that we held different views of history itself: his, apocalyptic, mine, cyclical. The whole conversation left me thinking that, if anything might help us, it’s historiography, but one might imply that I would say that anyway.
This week has been largely marking, and writing, and making provisions for my departure and return. I will have a chance to catch up with Mabel and Ellen in Auckers on my way home, to which I’m much looking forward. Then it’s back to it: second half of the semester, restructuring blues, a smatter of dog showing (if the hole Millie’s chewed in her coat grows back in time) and the possibility of puppies. A dog pregnancy calender, downloaded from ye internet, gives the day by day hypothetical changes. Currently, little blastocytes should be growing into embryos in utero. We live in hope.
The other films I saw at the festival were Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, Bombón El Perro and Sedition: The Suppression of Dissent in World War II New Zealand, but I’m not in a reviewing mind today. If this changes, I’ll fill you in; otherwise you may pursue ‘em for yourselves. I hope the next time I write here will be from sunnier, more tranquil climes. The far north, the cradle of our civilisation, I said to A-Lee. Hahaha, she said; how about the cradle of resistance?
Five Feet High and Rising
Like any number of you, my mind is much taken up with what’s goin’ on in Louisiana and Mississippi. The extent to which I’ve been wigging out about it has surprised me, as has the extent to which this has set off a cycle of self-loathing: I am not, after all, sitting on my roof, three days’ hungry, while fetid water drifts slowly by, half a foot below.
Others whom I read, one, two, three, have been pursuing much the same lines of thought, with Accordion Guy presenting an impressively practical corollary. I’m taken aback by my level of distress–comparable in my own experience only with when the way I felt in the summer of 1990/91, watching my extended family sit enthusiastically around the television, as Anita McNaught enunciated the details of the first Gulf War, shot by shot. Something about this disaster has tripped my ability to filter appropriately the media images, and I feel as if it’s me who’s had to leave behind my dogs in order to get evacuated. Fuck.
Today has therefore the feckless quality of an episode of House, from the patient’s point of view, at least. Dramatically, my mood would be best-served by an animated shot of something very bad and blurry happening inside my amigdala, followed by any number of anti-compassionate quips from Hugh Laurie (that marvellous, marvellous man). But it’s not that way, nor should it be. I simply have to tough out this wave of feeling terrible in the knowledge that some relief and help is finally arriving for those who don’t have the luxury of thinking about how it might feel–for them, it’s how it is.
Bitch Ph.D discusses racism and infrastructural underfunding, and asks “Will we care as much about the lower-lying areas of New Orleans as we did about rebuilding lower Manhattan?”, a question which, curiously, Nanette and I were framing last night. The urgency of our discussion–and the fact it took place in the midst of a skincare demonstration (I kid thee not: I saw a reduction in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles in a manner that makes my usual supermarket products now feel like cheap goop)–didn’t seem surreal at the time, although to write about it like this does.
Meanwhile, the political context of this disaster had an incendiary effect on the dog emailing list to which I belong (no actual emailing by dogs takes place, sadly), and I surprised myself by writing a message urging everyone not to take offence at each other’s remarks on the culpability, or not, of the federal government, and not to quit the list. Take any situation where you’ve got people unwilling to admit, first off, that they’re feeling frightened and angry, and the tone gets nasty very fast.
Outside the spinning of my own anxiety, I’m getting organised to head for the far north tomorrow. If I can calm down sufficiently it will be a week, I hope, of sight-seeing, reading and writing. The following week, the change proposal will be announced at work, and I’ll find out if my corner if for the chop, so this is the best time to get out of town, Charlie Brown.
A long conversation with Dwayne last night about the coming election probably hasn’t helped my state of calm. We are not that dissimilar in our responses to policy, but the ways in which we frame our responses our utterly different. It’s the old private sector/public sector divide: with friends, it’s negotiable, but two strangers might well think the other had come from outer space.
The rhetorics are different, and almost mutually unintelligible, but the underlying desires are the same: family and social stability, fairness, justice. I did try and debunk that pernicious piece of Best/Smith propaganda in which the Moriori’s role in history is as kai tangata. But still, it amazes me that, in this country, we live as peaceably as we do, given that even two friends who grew up together can frame the world in such different ways. In the end, I suggested that we held different views of history itself: his, apocalyptic, mine, cyclical. The whole conversation left me thinking that, if anything might help us, it’s historiography, but one might imply that I would say that anyway.
This week has been largely marking, and writing, and making provisions for my departure and return. I will have a chance to catch up with Mabel and Ellen in Auckers on my way home, to which I’m much looking forward. Then it’s back to it: second half of the semester, restructuring blues, a smatter of dog showing (if the hole Millie’s chewed in her coat grows back in time) and the possibility of puppies. A dog pregnancy calender, downloaded from ye internet, gives the day by day hypothetical changes. Currently, little blastocytes should be growing into embryos in utero. We live in hope.
The other films I saw at the festival were Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, Bombón El Perro and Sedition: The Suppression of Dissent in World War II New Zealand, but I’m not in a reviewing mind today. If this changes, I’ll fill you in; otherwise you may pursue ‘em for yourselves. I hope the next time I write here will be from sunnier, more tranquil climes. The far north, the cradle of our civilisation, I said to A-Lee. Hahaha, she said; how about the cradle of resistance?
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Diaryland, O internet, commentatrix, dogs, the social round. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.