Five Days in Berkeley (Day 1)

Here is the chronicle of my five days in California After I submitted grades and a draft of my Powerpoint Paper to In-Transit.  These were written on my crackberry as facebook notes and updates as well as twitter-tweets.  Day One seems a bit cryptic, so I’ll embellish in bold.

Rockaways from Jet Blue 91

Cali Day 1
Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:37am
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Day 1 in CA/
royal cafe for a familiar breakfast (our favorite breakfast place where the kids learned their restaurant manners and I love the cornmeal pancakes with poached or fried eggs); where we met Diane and were remembered by the staff (Diane was one of the staff workers and ex residents of University Village in Albany CA [we hashed over residual bigotry in Albany Schools and the architectural destruction of the village community])./
noon mtg: familiar faces and places
Books, chairs and views that are perfect/
Le Petit Cheval bun (vermincelli salad w/ fish sauce), pork chops, pork sandwich (Simply the best low-hassle Vietnamese food I’ve ever had: Le Cheval in Oakland is better, but more involved)/
smyth fernwald flashback (Chandler and Mason’s last daycare before public school) with Mary and Leslie we recounted three years in kids life (Fond memories of really good kids)/
dinner @ greg & chalon’s was so comfortable and affiming of our friendship (I am amazed at how close I feel to Greg, Chalon Sophia and Maya, they were one of the families who spent my 40th Birthday with me: damn fine people)/
chandler to sleepover with zoe, arnelle & meagan (sleepovers have unseen costs when tired kids return)

Priceless (how advertising makes our lives better)

March 29, 5:43 am

Wow it has been a while since I wrote here. I’ve been surfing the ‘net too much and I wanted to include more writing in my life (even though I am teaching and I have the four preps, three of which are new). We were cruising along and I handed back the first batch of papers too my 101/103 when into my class walks L___. Odd, thought I, why is my wife in my class? I had no idea what was going on, or what sort of looking glass I was falling through.

M___n, she announced, was in an ambulance and on his way th NY Hospital. His teacher from PS150Q called en route saying that he had “fallen and hurt his ankle.” [This is getting too elaborate and wordy so I'm going to cut detail ruthlessly!] We ponied up and cleared out our offices for the day, taking home grading, electronics and other necessities of the post-modern life.

The drive into Manhattan was painless enough but it took a while to find parking. I got out as Linda continued to search for parking Like Diogenes for an honest man on the Upper East Side. I went and found Mason and Mrs F. and he was watching an episode of Star Wars (III?) with a strangely twisted ankle:

Lots of other things happened, not the lest of which was being treated like a nitwit by the hospital staff because I do not speak their version of “medical insurance bureaucratese.” Mercifully L. was there to translate, and they finally took the xrays (negative), gave mason some crutches, and released us (on our own recognizance). It was 4:30 when we were released and the parking rules had changed where we had parked. Our car had been stolen by the city for our lack of attention to detail and the need to make York Ave more passable for rush hour. We took a minivan cab back to Queens picked up C and LX at Grandmother’s house (“over the river and through the woods” [god I love minivans]) contacting the city about our car on our crackberries on the way home. No sign of our car.

We ordered out, zonked by the experience, too hungry to be nice to one another for the our it would take to cook the pasta or rice or whatever. Linda was on the phone and internet for a few hours trying to track down “big sticky” (our car). Finally she found it hiding under an alias (the Z had been written as a 2).

At 8 I left the house with my mp3player and a book to read for school (Jihad vs. McWorld).

At 8:15 I was on a 7 train heading out of 61st street towards Manhattoes.

At 8:45 I was at the Hudson river and 42nd street having enjoyed my walk through times sq immensely (I rarely get into Manhattan during the semester).

At 8:55 I was in line at the pound with the other towees, trying to maintain my cool in light of the histrionics of a particular middle aged BMW owner. I read for a while but the show was too good so I wrote a poem about my fellow (non-)travelers on my crackberry.

 

The pound is like the post office on hormones.
It combines the impatient lines and hopeless tasks
With the bullet proof decor and public service hygene.
The despair of an all-night McDonalds clings to the vending machines
And usurious cash machine beckon the broke to try
The cash cards of vasectimized bank accounts.

Many are here in the course of regular car driving lives
Here with dates and husbands, work kits and tools
There’s a nice kid with a yarmulke a marketing t-shirt
A shot glass and booze breath wearing $200 shoes
All of our cars have been taken to this pound
Only to be released after excruciating bureaucracy.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

 

Just before 11 (not bad really) I was called to a window and made to jump through another six flaming hoops of bureaucracy by a woman with Queens accent and a Costco wardrobe and body. The Z formerly known as 2 on our license plate made it so that we had to negotiate for another 15 minutes over some Oswaldo Guzman who lived back in California and was supposed to be retrieving the car (I’ll bet that’s the closest he’ll ever come to visiting NYC [if he comes I hope he leaves his car in Cali, we have enough]). There was something wrong with the printer at her station and it took 10 more minutes for me to be given the Charlie Bucket golden ticket.

The cavernous pier was a site to behold filled with late model cars of every stripe with layers of grime that made them look cadaverous, though they were the latest, hippest and coolest cars to a one.
My last message, before I was able to leave the waiting-room-purgatory was:

Mason hurt skating: ambulance ride to New York Hospital: $500
Car towed while in Emergency Room: $300
3 hours at the New York City Impound Yard: Priceless
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Feeling Whistful @ 48 (Whittier Poem)

Read ’til the end, where you get the payoff: For of all sad words of tongue or pen,/The saddest are these: “It might have been!

Maud Muller
John Greenleaf Whittier
Maud Muller, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadows sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:
And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, “It might have been.”
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!“

Prophet Housing

12/18/07 04:56:38 AM

So our new lives in our new apartment have started. I took Chandler to meet Aneka at 46^th Street on the seven train. We were there so early Chandler has renegotiated for an extra 10 minutes of sleep today. I was a work by 7:30 and If I continue to do this I’ll have time to go to the gym in morning. Apparently Lennox and Mason’s drop off also went well. Linda and I went to Costco to buy a TV, which I think we’ve put off in the hopes that we can buy the kids more of what they want this “holiday” season. Funny thing about that ironic use of quotation marked holiday.

I found a copy of Khalil Ghibran’s The Prophet (that I had bought on telegraph avenue used) and in it was a bookmark. The page it marked was the Prophet’s response to the Mason. “’Ironic,’ thought I, it is addressed to my son.” But the opening line is “Then a [M]ason came forth and said speak to us of Houses” (34). So, since I spent the evening unpacking my seemingly endless supply of things and assembling them I was intrigued by the synchronicity of the bookmarking.¹ This is the electronics (and modern) version of feathering my nest. We’ve got to get all of the twigs and grass just right so that the chicks and their parents will all fit comfortably. I imagine a bird’s nest of wires, surge protectors, USB cables and transformer power lines in which we comfortably cuddle together. (God, how I digress.)

The first few “stanzas” were pure anti-city, and I’ll include a bit here as an illustration: “Would the valleys your streets and the green paths your alleys… [and] In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together” (35). These nods to the bucolic piss me off. Besides the fact that the human condition is social, and there would be no wilderness if we spread people out like that, even in 1922, I just want to dissent a bit further on this romanticization of the bucolic.

(Digression Alert) I remember one week when Scott and I lived on Maui. This was before we got food stamps, in deed it might be why I got food stamps. We had “no visible means of support” and we had alienated those off of whom we could beg. But there was a mango tree and an avocado tree that were in season near where we were camping. We could fill ourselves nicely on these huge trees for the cost of a climb. Guavas, I think were also ripe in a pasture a couple of miles away. Before seven days had passed I was crazy and hungry though my stomach never went empty. There is a reason that we are a social and agrarian species. The hunter gatherer thing is too much work. (I think it is also why we are omnivores, but that is another rant.)

Then the prophet gets to why I am writing this now:

Tell me have you [peace, remembrances and beauty] in your houses?

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?

Ay, it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.

Though its hands are silken, its hear is of iron.

It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeers at the dignity of the flesh.

It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.²

Verily the lust for comfort murders the the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

But you, children o space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. (36)

Moving Impotence

12/14/0710:46:52 AM

So the movers are packing away and Linda is away at the other apartment cleaning and accepting deliveries of new furniture. “The game is afoot,” as Holmes often said. Things are happening fast and I’m not sure how much I can write here. I am useless now that I’ve washed the dishes and tightened the cheap Ikea chairs that are always falling loose. There is a feeling of impotence that accepting (or paying for) help causes. I want to have meaning in this whole process which I don’t seem to feel just paying for it. I am too 19^th century. I feel like if I don’t put my shoulder to the wheel in this move I am not actually helping. Of course that is ridiculous because Linda and I are the “first movers” of this whole show. These three strong Latinas would not be here if we were not paying for them to be here.

It is strange having people in your house touching all of our stuff. Now I don’t know these women in our house singing away to the popular music they have thumping from our boom box as they yell questions and comments back and forth. I guess this adds to the strange feeling of helplessness that I feel not helping. Here are three total strangers doing what in the past only our dearest (and most willing) friends had done. But they are not Richard Heller, Joel Stanger, Trevor Turner, John Mercer, or any of my Berkeley friends who helped with the last three moves. Interestingly the last move here we were helped by Miss Misti H and the one two moves ago involved Dennis Wolf. Both of those people are out of reach to me now and I am sad that they have been replaced by paid professionals.

Neither am I participating physically (no heave-ho), nor am I intimate with the workers. I am slipping out of my life during this move. In this journal, a sign of my increasing alienation from my life, I am recording my increasing feelings of alienation from my life. The skrittch of packing tape sounds like fingernails on the blackboard of my life as I sit in a house with people working incredibly hard as I sit here and diddle on the computer. I guess the root of it is that I am uncomfortable with and unused to my new status as bourgeois middle class sub-gentry (I can’t even own up to the fact that I am indeed a well paid middle class professional with a post graduate degree and a good union job [I'm prayin' for tenure]). I want to live in my imaginary hey-day of a working class youthful messenger. Sigh. If it was that good I’d have never gone to college.

If I insist on continually romanticizing my youth I will always be unhappy, looking over my shoulder at some thin hungry horny bachelor. The truth of the matter is that he was miserable and empty. I was lonely and bored except when I was misbehaving and in grave peril. The life I fantasize about was the life of a young man with few coping skills and a lot of misused down time. I guess I should be proud of one thing. When I was bored, lonely and venal I at least painted and wrote and some of those drawings and writings still exist. Two moves ago, from one place in the village to another I went through my “archive” and looked at lots of my letters and paintings (that wasted time alone justifies the cost of this packing). Up in the attic are two huge tubes of my work from the early 1980s that are testaments to the fact that there might be something to this nostalgia thing. But if you count out how much time I’ve lived and subtracted the time I “created” you’d still have each and every waking hour of a misspent youth.

So I think, against my better judgment I’ll post this now because I’m tired of writing.

 

When I was trying to stay out of the packers way I thought of a poetic way to characterize our move, but I think I’ve lost it: “from the intimate proximity of the gardens to the phallic modernity of the Big Six. ”

 

Surveillance

Here is the space that we will move into. In order to move here we have to fit a certain number of criteria (like the ACT, guys), live in New York, have three kids of two genders and not earn too much money. Mitchell Lama has enough rules for a politburo standing committee or the Republican Platform Committee, and one of them is a home inspection. We are to be inspected today between 1 and 4 in our current home.

Since we are completely legitimate, I’m not worried. I am so glad that L—- is the queen of all forms and documents and we are all set on that count. If it were up to me we’d be in trouble.

The idea of being inspected is a lot like the tribulations that they put people through in order to live in New York Public Housing (back in the day?). This is intrusive, but in order to move into this beautiful subsidized HUGE apartment we’re willing to suffer some (foucauldian?) surveillance. The inspector will be here today. I’ll let you know how it works out.

The Semester Begins (Summer Ends)

We went to Riis Beach for one last splash this weekend in between the madness of the kids’ first week of school and Mom and Dad’s first day teaching. The water was warm and we were there at high tide so the waves came up and were really impressive to look at and play in. We got there in the afternoon and the kids and the cousins stayed in the water for three straight hour, until we beached them (pulled them out of the water as unwillingly as mermaids and a merman). It was a wonderful end to the summer of Jacob Riis Beach visits (and Aunti ‘Neene couldn’t make this one). I guess I should mention also that we might not be able to ever go to Coney Island, The Coney Island of yore again: and I’m sad about that (Sigh).
I’m getting excited about my new classes, though, again the “new preps” are spelling lots of reading and extra new work. In a strange way I’m excited about teaching new classes in new ways, but it is always a lot more work. I wish that I had just settled down and done my regular preps, but I think that that is just a way to stagnate. While I want to improve my ENG099 skills/practice and get my ACT pass rate back up to where I started, developing a whole new prep for the common reading like I did last year just doesn’t excite me like trying these new classes.

At Opening Sessions I was talking with President Mellow and I mentioned that Dr. Katopes once published a book of fiction. I, somehow, ended up saying that I’d read it and send her my review. Getting a hold of it will be one of the problems that I have to overcome here: me and my big mouth.

When I started blogging my tentative syllabi for the coming semester I got some interesting hits from people who’ve taught the same books, been taught the same books and are interested in the graphic novels I’m teaching. The dialogues that began as responses to the posts went on as ecorrespondences that have given me interesting ideas and pointed out problems I might face. The internet can be helpful.

Oh Yeah, And I’ve got to give a quick update on the kids: Lennox is a big Kindergarten Girl at PS150 now. She, on Friday, left me at the door for the first time. I think she’s full of her new status as a big Public School Girl, and the wry pride I see on her face as she turns to say goodby one last time at the PS150 Kindergarten Annex on Across the street from our house is priceless.

Mason, who is still at PS150 is full of his new status as a 6th grader. That is big at the school and he has the upper-classman-swagger that is nice to see after a summer with girl siblings, girl cousins and a girl world that didn’t fit him. He also started Soccer on Saturday, and I see the life coming back into him each moment. The Schoolyear is a rebirth for all of us.

Chandler is just so great. She is growing into her new role as seventh grader like a beautiful garden. She has her metrocard and rides the subway to and from her school (chaperoned) every day seeing the world of the New York commute like, well, a New Yorker. Everyday she has a) tons of homework, b) complaints about the subway and commuters, and c) some really keen observation about the world she’s out there witnessing. I think that this exposure is making her more comfortable here in New York. I know that this independence will pay dividends, though I am nervous about her spreading her wings.

Yesterday Auntie Elena got tickets for a Broadway play for Linda and Chandler so Mason Lennox and I went to the Museum of Natural History. We all met up at La Caridad for dinner afterwards. The play was a great experience for Chandler and Linda, who chattered on about detail after detail of the matinée. We went to the mythical creatures show which the kids were really into (though I was a bit disappointed by). For me the real fun was when we got lost looking for “Dum-Dum” (at the end of the Margeret Meade hall) where we saw all sorts of animals and exhibits we never look at when we come with a plan. I think I’m going to stop getting maps when I go to museums to let the hand of fate guide me through the exhibits. It was great.

They are all growing well, Thank You God.

Summer Ends (ANNOTATED To DO List)

So last night I was distracted, avoiding the honest feeling-filled conversation that was going on around me, and I made a list of the things that I still have to do before I begin the Fall Semester. My Key drive will no longer save the document from my Journal, so I put it here to save. If you have any ideas about what I should do with these texts, holla at me.

Things From a list I made yesterday:

Black Lit Syllabus

Black Lit Reader:

Phyllis Wheatley Poems

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, (1789) (Excerpt 1, 2, 3, )

Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Excerpt)

W. E. B Du Bois The Souls of Black Folks (Excerpt)

Booker T. Washington Up From Slavery (Excerpt)

James Weldon Johnson Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man

Charles Chesnutt Marrow of Tradition, The Conjure Woman

Pauline Hopkins (Contending Forces, Of One Blood)

Zora Neale Hurston (Site 1, Site 2, Site 3, Site 4, Site 4a)

Richard Wright (The God That Failed, Black Boy, Source 1, Source 2, Source3)

James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time, November 17^th 1962 New Yorker)

ENG101 Syllabus

Coldest Winter Ever

Queensbridge: The Other Side

Mike?

ENC101 Syllabus

Comics

Manichean

The Myth of the American Superhero, Another Superhero Source (Batman Crucified)

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Good and Evil Feminism, Feminism 2, Feminism 3,

Watchmen: Action and Inaction (Good and Evil) Movie? Annotation?

Mike?

Jon Drinnon’s most excellent Website:

http://www.merritt.edu/apps/comm.asp?Q=P1151

http://jonsenglishsite.info/

Jon’s Sentence Site:

http://jonsenglishsite.info/Sentenccombnew.htm

Jon’s MLA Pages

 

Jon’s Pedagogy Page

 

 

 

 

 

Blog My Life

8/11/2007 7:17 AM

(This is a collage of some of the houses of worship in my hood, when I could run I ran past all of these)

I finished Rosario Tijeras, and started reading the book Killing Pablo about the US government assassination of Pablo Escobar. I remember liking the first half of the book that introduced Pablo Escobar, flawed human, failure, and eventual drug baron.

I finished Harry Potter the Seventh. I think that that with the summer class I’ve been teaching Contemporary Black Literature (ENG269) ending, will mean that I have more time. Finishing the Potter book leaves a gap in my life. There is a big bright hole that was filled with a good book, and now will be sucked back into my usual negocios seculares (tv, cooking, etc).   I haven’t been writing here or thinking about my life and goals, I’ve just been holed up watching the war between good and evil in the Harry Potter land of make believe. Though it reminds me of how much I like reading (and Harry Potter), the book was like dessert before dinner, it is a fun read, but I miss having a pencil handy to make marginalia in preparation for wriing about it. Of course I have to be careful not to spoil the ending for anyone else coming down the pike, so we who have finished it have a sort of secret society, one where once we’ve established that we are both “completers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” we can converse upon the arcane knowledge of the book, the series, and the new information therein.

I have been playing with Kiko’s story a fair piece, perhaps inspired by a good Novel. I’ve got to start making more things happen and have less texture and color. I have him meeting the guy who will bring Kiko to racing, but I need to get him into a race (informal) and then actual. The trick is that soon Kiko will be winning, and I hope that this offers more momentum, because I think I’ve been bogged down recently.

One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world left a message on one of my photos on my other blog yesterday. I’ve got to write her a letter, call her and maybe visit her this summer. Last summer we went to Fire Island, and the summers I spent with Leisa are among my fondest memories. I love Leisa like very few other people in the world, which is an empty boast because I rarely call her. I want to spend more time being a friend and less on this computer, internet, TV and in books (I can’t short the kids at all).

Kiko Delivers a Big Question

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, and he’s back. More observations of work in NYC, and not the kind for people who go to college.

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

The day continued with delivery after delivery interspersed with chopping and cleaning. Out with an omelet, back to the basement to prep more onions; two cheeseburger deluxes to an office, come back and shred another three heads of iceberg lettuce; fried eggs on toast, clean out the pickle bottles: He had known that this was his job, but he was beginning to think more and more about his bike. The next time he came back (French toast and sausage at 4 in the afternoon!?!) he asked “Señora Choi, por favor, please I can fixing my bike?”

“It no look broken,” she observed, “what you need fix?”

“I need tighten this,” he said, squeezing the calipers of his brakes to the wheel’s rim and pantomiming crashing because he couldn’t stop. “Gears no work” he said spinning one leg as though he were unable to shift out of first gear, with a mock pant or two to show the energy that swirling your legs ridiculously costs. Running around to the back he pointed out a bubble on the sidewall of the balding knobby tires meant to shred down ski-slopes: “soon pop -late food or late come back.”

Dubiously, “OK, you fix, but flatten boxes and refill fryer when done.”

In this way Kiko spent more time out in front of the shop working on the bike, and he began to understand why the bike she had bought him wasn’t very good. As he tightened up all of the nuts on the bolts that he could squeeze the Vice Grips around he saw how weak the metal was on all of these parts. The tool left marks on each piece it touched and close inspection by anyone who “knew” bikes would have shown an outbreak of the viral acne of Vice Grips. Kiko felt like his uñas –fingernails– would be able to leave marks in most of the fasteners that held the department store bike together.

While