Academic Plans

I have been very busy lately. I've been trying to blog everyday but, evidently, that hasn't been working. I decided a few days ago, after a very long and hard inner debate, that i will not pursue my Doctorate immediately after my MA. I know, i am surprised too. I still find myself planning for it though, and it makes me realize just how committed i am to that goal. It actually feels weird to think that after next summer i'll be taking 2-4 years off from the (dream) world of academia to enter the(real) world-- does Shakespeare's green world and world of supposes ring a bell? Among other things, i want to spend time with my daughter (when you're doing your PhD you don't have time for your family, really), I want to do some writing and i want to, perhaps, start-up a business and get some cash rolling in. I am thinking about starting up my own (private) school or something along those lines. After all, i feel like that's what i should be doing for the rest of my life. The trick is-- in a corporate capitalist economy, i have been told-- how to enjoy your career while making a business out of it. Hmm, we'll see. I feel like i am mourning the loss of academic learning because i haven't quite adjusted to the idea yet. I think my decision is final though. Funny how you can't always chase your dreams. I guess, in a perfect world you could.

An ECard for JJ

You are as sweet as caramel
and as precious as a gem
you are the throb in our hearts
and the courage in our stride
you have been both a challenge and
a blessing, as young as you are.

First, you entered the world with a bang
and, then, showed us you were ready
to move us with your charm.
You are truly an angel
as you never failed to brighten
and lighten our hearts,
with your happy-go-lucky,
persistent smile

We really hope no one will pinch us
to awake from this dream of
having you as our great big bundle of joy!

Love,
Mom and dad

JJ's Health and Dev.

JJ was hospitalized from Friday morning until Saturday evening due to wheezing and breathing problems. It was her first time so asthma was not yet a diagnosis. She did extremely well despite her illness and cheered, "wee, wee, wee", when paramedics wheeled her out of the doctor's office (even while she was using all her muscles just to inhale and exhale). All the nurses and Pediatrician at the hospital were enthralled by her alleged ability to articulate, and everyone who had met her declared, seriously, that she was an advanced one year old. The Pediatrician told me that JJ is no regular 17mths old and suggested, among other things, that i start her in a Montessori school when she turns two. Oh, she counts to twenty and knows and says a whole lot (too much to make a list). She's very perceptive and responsive and i can't wait to meet her parents (we, the alleged parents, can't remember being "advanced" at such a young age).

My Fave Author

Or, the Immigrant Woman

Since i have been fixated, over the last couple days, on the subject of the immigrant's presence in Canada, i decided to write about the one thing/person that helped me to keep it together in my early years as a student. I want to say that Dionne Brand is the most honest author i know. She tells it like it is, and you either take it or you don't. She was the first person who told me (through her work) that it's o.k. to be honest about how you feel, and to get angry if you have to. And, for that, i respect her a great deal. Her politics is so far reaching and i could always "return home" to her prose.

A Post 9/11 Dialogue about Race

Or, a Conversation about Friendships and Race

Black woman (in reflection): " You know, in all my years at University, i've never had a white friend, you know, like a good friend that happens to be white. I've had East and West Indian friends, South Asian, black, and Jewish friends but never any white."

Black man: "I can tell you why: most whites still think that they are better than blacks, therefore, they don't want to be your friend, unless, of course, they think that they can use you for something, or if you are famous like a celebrity or something. They think that 'you' should want to be their friend."

I've being thinking about this dialogue, and 'meanings' of it for the last two days.

The 'System' of Education

Literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology. [That is, a system of specific class beliefs, images, values, and practices that functions to reproduce the dominant social order]. It has the most intimate relations to questions of social power- Terry Eagleton

When i wrote my politically charged article, "Black Statement or Writing Resistance", in March 2004, i wasn't thinking about "Truth" and the dissemination of knowledge; at least, not in the way that i think about it now. As an undergrad majoring in English Literature, i never came across teachings that dissected the canon and looked at it as a socializing tool. It is only as i read parts of Terry Eagleton's, "The Rise of English", that i came to this orgasmic realization. When i posited that "English courses perpetuate[d] my oppression" as a black female immigrant from working-class background, it was no overstatement. In fact, at times i felt as if i was going mad (with either fury or captivity, depending on the day). Speaking from my own location as racialized and socio-historically constructed being, i can easily say that each person needs a door, a way through which they can enter the world, the different worlds that are alien to them. The trouble i had rested in the fact that that door was lost to me, closed in my face, i couldn't find it. And it fucked me up quite a bit, psychologically. When that TA wrote my name on the board, in my first year, to explain to the rest of the class what/who race was, it fucked me up quite a bit. The door was closed in my face when i raised my hand to ask who/what was the "object" and who/what was the "subject" and she wouldn't let me in to the meanings of those words, in to the dissonance and discord that floated around in those words. I didn't know this at the time, I only know, now, in retrospect. Apparently, as i now come to realize, ideas of race, class, gender, space, place, history, geography and the dissemination of knowledge have never left me.

Waves of Opportunity

1. Received a letter from York saying that my essay did not win an award.
2. Received a cheque for $10 from the Ministry of Finance to help support my daughter.
3. Received advice on how to improve my SSHRC proposal.

Miscellaneous

1. Finally figured out what Bakhtin means by "dialogic Imagination".
2. Still wondering what Barthes smoked (that made him so smart?)
3. Need to go make dinner, now!

The Nature of 'Being'

There are times when i reach my own level of perfection: holding down school, running a family, giving to others when i can, pray, reach out to people, reach inner peace et cetera. But sometimes the changes in my life, as a go through different stages, make me question whether perfection is what i should be striving for. And i am reminded of this through the ghosts of fallibility that lurk in the shadows of my existence.

Excerpts and Things

Today was the usual busy day for me. Woke up, prepared breakfast, prepared Jaylah for the sitter, did some RA/GA proofreading, blah, blah, blah...

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the hell Structuralism is, and thinking how privileged Barthes is to have the power to "kill the author." I sometimes wonder what these theorists smoked. Other than that, my day went fine. Actually, that was my day... no pressure though :)

Here are excerpts from the "long poem" i wrote this summer:

[...]

To see identity
de facto by default, the war never ended
The struggles, victories, barriers
The progress, regress, detours
taken.
The paradoxes of a stigmatized culture

Many came to escape war
poverty, repression. History
Yet, the havoc of flight is near
In this free democratic place
the presence of a black face, threatens
the v a l u e of an e s t a t e

The new false consciousness
misremembers history
The damage has not been lost
A new ‘ism sucks like a leech
on the surface of their existence

[...] ah, the irony of place
Guns in ghettos less disrupting
The rhyme, easy distinction
It is an old fight, this fight over space,
place

[...]
“We cannot let this happen to our children”
Our children, she says it with such conviction
as if it does not depend
on residence, on words

The s e m a n t i c s of language—
to live outside
the word: to consume in nothingness
language is death
Survival is unsure
Survival is fiction

Troubled area. At risk. Violent
[...]
The dreaded, unwanted appendage
of a city turned red, read
in the language of poverty, she sees
the carnage of the city [...]

To be classified, categorized, colour coded
It’s been here
It’s in the history of the place—
the history of the people of the place
There are no gatekeepers

Over the horizon of their oppression,
the sun rises
It touches the zenith of their fears
It descends upon hopeless dreams
The son never rises. Still, they dream

She, along with other West Indian mothers,
came—
were summoned, transported, shoved, HERE—
they arrived, are arriving
It is a cold place

They’d been traveling for years
migrating, moving
made to move, migrate, travel
It is an isolating place, insular space

Back. When
Aaron’s black babe bathed in blood
it never sucked
the sweet solution of its mother’s breast. So.
A f r i c a, raped, escaped
full bloom

Back. Traveling back
Freak. The hot hot tot, hotten hottentot
To be raped by language, traded, branded black
Outsider, outcast, outlandish
The black hottentot

“The sea brought us, them, hErE”, she knows, but. Still.
“A man was shot in the chest…” she stopped listening.
Unlistened. Switched channels
Tulips are in bloom—
She never cared for l i p s

She m o v e d HERE long ago
She remembers
the smell of salt. Lime.
human excretion

Not much has changed, much not
failed
promises delayed
Swindled race, Christian gain
Paid sins
no deaths were recorded

Here, there, where they live, they pay
she knew, knows
Trenchtown, Tivoli, Harlem, Bronzeville
Soweto, KwaMashu, [...]

[...]

The smell, rotten
stench of paucity
cold hugs, blankets
warming pain, stoned
hearts weeping, calling, wanting

[...]

But
the voices she hears are muffled, by
silences, sirens and streetcars

[...]

Africville, Negro Creek Road, the maroons
The Arrivants are still hErE
troubled, tainted, undone by language
“We are ugly, but we are here”

[...]

911

Yesterday, the inevitable, or perhaps, evitable, happened. I was helping my step-daughter with her homework while combing my daughter's hair when, suddenly, i started having some serious chest pain and heart palpitation. I was getting cold sweat and couldn't concentrate...
so i called 911. It took 15minutes for the whole thing to subside and only did so when the paramedics came and supplied me with oxygen. Since it was concerning my heart, they said not to take any chances and so they rushed me off to the hospital. After six hours and numerous tests, fortunately for me, my heart was ok. I did not have a heart attack but something that would make me feel as if i was having one: an anxiety attack. Never had it before and wouldn't like to experience anything like that again; it was a very scary thing to have experienced. They told me to take it easy and work out my life so that i will have less stress. All in all, i felt like i was in a nightmarish episode of HOUSE.

Thoughts of a Lone (Wo)man

When the tide of your life rises eight feet tall
who will you call?
when the willows whisper small
sufferings that will come
who will take the call?
when the waters soar within to disturb
the sweet comfort of your home
who will heal?
when sorrows visit your doorstep
without warning
who will deliver?
when the fringes of hope that
you have fails to conquer
who will listen?
when you surface from your
lowest low
what will be your answer?
when you no longer have sails
for your ship of troubles
where will you travel?
when the wind sweeps the neat
plans from your projects
where will you find ground?
Are you prepared to make it
alone?

Expired "Free" Time

First day of classes and, to quote Ward, i'm already "swamped and struggling to breathe". I still need to get a routine going. The aches and pain that i feel while walking from one end of the campus to the other made me realize the kind of shape my body was in. After all, i stayed home all summer; the funny thing is, i thought chasing my daughter around, everyday, would be all the exercise i needed! Now, i guess the joke is on me. There is no way i can possibly fit gym into my schedule, at least not right now; maybe not ever! Who said motherhood, marriage and higher learning could work? Oh yea, oops, that would be me! Actually, it doesn't, i'm the one who makes it work. I can't take all the credit, but most of it :) Now, if i could only get my husband to believe that...

tsk, tsk, tsk

Busy day for me. I ran around to do some last minute shopping and to fulfill some last minute appointments. I need a break! Given that classes begin tomorrow, i guess i will have to wait a while:). Summer went by fast, though. I did get to throw in some entertainment but i'm still thirsty. I have a couple movie and theme park passes/tickets that i planned on using before September, and here we are! Gee, i need to take it easy or i will grow old before i get young. Oh well, I will throw some fun into this coming weekend...

Autobio

My life is one big everlasting debate
a poem that doesn't rhyme
an open novel
a linguistic deformation
a sociogenic edifice
a house with too few windows
a game with too many rules
a story without closure
an ambiguous clause
a sophisticated struggle
an unsettling dream
an open battlefield
an irony
a meeting place
a metamorphosis
a site of trauma
a rebirth
... dissonance