Dreams and Things

I fell asleep last night with the face of the moon pressed against my window pane. The sky looked barren and emitted a kind of strange desolation. I got out of bed and fumbled with the curtains at my window to get a better view. It suddenly occurred to me that i had not seen the moon, let alone stars, for longer than i cared to imagine; after all, gongoozling at the celestial body is not exactly a pastime in a big city. I opened my window for a preferable view but only so i could further study its uneven pale face. I soon realized that there were no pimples or wrinkles, except a few minor scrapes here and there. I retired shortly after to the comfort of my pillow top mattress with a blithesome feeling of discovery that you can only get from the physical world. Eventually, i was able to fall asleep, and sleep did come easy but not without companions. I had two disturbing dreams. The abridged version of the first is that, for a reason i could not understand or, perhaps, remember, one of my incisors had fallen out and another was loose and pulsating. I held on to the one intact partly because i did not want to lose it, and partly because the pain was agonizing. The other dream was less painful but equally questionable: i was having a bowel movement over a long period of time with three other individuals in the same room impatiently waiting their turn. Luckily, i awoke to the piercing sound of my alarm clock and with only a sudden urge to urinate.

In West Indian culture, each dream has a meaning, good or bad. A dream is also considered a dose of luck for the dreamer, since it can be a solemn call for lottery winnings. There is a dream interpreter in every West Indian family, religious or non-religious, who is always willing and ready to tell you exactly which subconscious symbol matches a number; and the interpreter does not have to cajole anyone into buying a ticket; it is expected that you would not want to miss the chance of winning, and would, therefore, buy...(to be continued).

However...

sometimes we are our harshest critic. I am still very much in love with academics (in spite of our recent quarrel). I am still trying to figure out who i am, really. And my brain is always working overtime...

Academic Musings

As i embark upon this new and exciting journey called graduate studies, i am, again, thrown into the corner of my own meditations about higher education. While it would be quite an accomplishment for anyone to receive higher learning, the (abstract) reality and truth of what such learnings actually do to the human element inside us is nothing short of a systematic moulding. What i'm trying to say is this, and it frightens me to the core of my being:

When people become academics, it broadens the gap between them and the not-so-accomplished "others" in a way that is at once both a (capitalist) conspiracy and the workings of an intellectual cultism. I am thinking about the cons of academic learning, here, for i grew up hearing the pros. What happens is you go through a long period of undergraduate indoctrination wherein you learn various theories and literary practices through the political views of various professors whose views, in turn, reflect the dogma of the university as a whole. When you are being indoctrinated, you think that you are actually learning because you are told to "think critically". The irony is that, in the end, when you sit down to write an exam, or an essay, you are told that you have to "support" your opinions and "cite" sources because it reflects academic integrity and shows how talented you are. What students don't realize is that as they "cite" and "support" their "opinions" they invariably mirror/mimic/reproduce a knowledge system that is equipped with the glorious power of a (contained) intellectual tradition. By the time you begin to have an opinion, you not only realize that it is not your opinion but the branch of knowledge you have come to associate with, you also notice that opinions come after influence.

O.K, let us say that you decide to go further, and you wish to pursue the Arts. Now, you are a part of an academic elite, you can now do something which up to 98% of the world's population cannot do: you can comfortable speak in an abstract language which only a few people like yourself can understand, you help to maintain an elitist pool of knowledge (and maybe add to it) and you could close your eyes to the gaping gap between yourself and the uneducated poor; in other words, you can close your eyes to concrete reality and never be asked to open them; unless, of course, you decide to use your "credentials" to work for Red Cross, UNICEP etc. You may say, "i will be an activist!" But how far will your "activism" goes, and who will most likely be left out?

When we use words like "academic musings" we are already in a different fan club. We belong to, or at least, trying to get into, the club of "privileged decision makers" and "movers and shakers of the world", whether we know this to be true or not. Some say that poor uneducated abused women are abused because they do not have an education. Well, o.k., education/indoctrination gives you some choices, but. What happens when the abused woman goes to find help and is turned away because of red tape, perhaps, who knows, there is a waiting list at the shelter? Who, then, becomes the "problem" to society, the drunken husband or the educated service worker who is also under the guidance of her more educated "superior"? What about other things like having a government that ensures that all the people it is supposed to be "protecting" have equal access to food, clothing, shelter, jobs, medicare, libraries, technology and the pursuit of happiness? Surely, the well being of citizens should always come first, or at least, be on the top of things. But what does this have to do with higher learning? Academic learning shows you the gap between the past and the present, it gives you intellectual tools to notice the difference and then subtly helps you to widen those gaps and differences. So, if we must have it, an academic education should not be our only education, i'd say. We should also learn about the core of what makes us human, that is, vulnerable mortal flesh with a brain, a sex drive, and an insatiable appetite for progress. Academics must be introspective and self-critical.

Academic learning can make us all hermits, in some a sense. And whether we cripple beneath it, crumble, or reign supreme over it, we must understand that it's a language/knowledge cult, and that there is nothing "equal" about it. A medical doctor can spend three minutes with a patient (and not so much as call her by her name), and in this three minutes, examine her and hands her a prescription without explaining a diagnosis or getting to know her personally because he's not paid for all that trouble. The greatest task for all of us, i believe, is to find an equilibrium between higher learning and "other" learnings: that would be quite an accomplishment.

Nativity

The theorem of confinement
sits on the brow of each native,
on the wings of creatures
painting cirrus across heaven.
The halo of the native is the curse
of the fallen saint. There are no gods
for scavengers who raid the
earth, for in sin they must
rest: the cauldron of despair

The natives embark on
a journey befouled
by an invisible rod,
their decampment marred by
limestone pebbles and sulfur.
Their feet carry the sounds
of migrants mauled by
rough times

Their gazes avert to an
empty dream
as their eyes congeal the sorrows
of mass murder.
Hardened souls,
the neologists had thought
about them
for the native sees nothing

They cannot see themselves,
they are not allowed to,
their lives elude transparency.
Blinded by the beam of history
shining upon their land,
a land without soil, bearings
not to be found.
The natives are lost in time.

The lines of their palms are
the (new) fixation like
brick walls cascading,
a mirror without reflections.
Their wrinkled skin stretch to
fit rows of expressions of
the Ashanti, Apache, Yoruba,
Mandingo, Kalinago, Ibo, Cherokee,
Blackfoot, Taino, Cheyenne, Inuit,
Creole, Métis...

They see the hopes of their ancestors
betrayed
they must not remember.
The songs are dying, slowly
they will have no voice to sing praises
the beating sun recalls their destiny,
the cages of their minds

Ask the natives,
their lives are open like
fresh wound
deep with goo to fester
and spread like wildfire
but the cards show they
must live to conquer...
the cards show, they must live

Anxiety, Plus

Oh my, i'm nervously excited about starting GS next week. I keep wondering if i will be able to handle it; you know, all that "serious" work. Truth is, i wondered the same thing when i started my undergrad, and here i am. I am very intellectually insecure but i'm the only one who knows that. I told one of my professors that i was shy to speak when she invited a guest lecturer (*embarrass*) and i believe she was surprised :); i don't know, i certainly become a different person when i write. I feel more free to be honest and could care less what other people think when i'm being ethically or morally open-minded. As soon as i begin to verbalize, i almost become too cautious.

What annoys me most is a seminar in which nobody talks and we all just show up because of the participation marks and could care less if the instructor speaks for the entire three hours. To sit and listen to an instructor for three hours is more excruciating than getting my wisdom tooth out; not because he/she isn't doing a great job, but my attention span is not that long. In my first and second undergrad years (which are the listening years) i would often dream and wake-up to reality many times over before the period would be up. It's amazing how, somewhere between dream and reality, i acquired knowledge.

I like when i can look forward to a seminar, and when it's over, wish the next one would be the following day. I'm weird like that :). I have to get over my shyness though. Sometimes i get so nervous before i speak that when i do begin, i am, literally, out of breath. And my contributions are often times productive, i would like to think. Oh well, we all have things we have to "get over". Now, if i could only get over my fear that the MA program will be unmanageable...

Ten Things and a Poem

Here are ten things you didn't know about me...

1. i have been to the Cayman Islands
2. i received 100% on my citizenship test
3. i make my best decisions in the shower
4. i don't care for flowers
5. i don't gamble
6. i bite my nails
7. i dream a lot
8. i can't swim
9. i 'm faithful
10. i like diamonds

Accursed Romance

As a girl, she'd met him.
He took her, tempestuously
raped her, made her want him
she hated him.
He saved her, ruined her
she opened, like a jasmine
to his promises, kisses
playing for keeps, she couldn't.
He was her secret,
her "little white lie",
her escape, her jewel
her confidante.
They played chess, naked
with words, without language
he touched her, she cried
in pain, in ecstasy, in hope
that nothing was lost
between the sheets
of her heart, feign.