every awesome professor of color must flee from seattle like the plague?! is this town so devoid of culture and diversity and racial bluntness that people feel as suffocated as I do and flee at the first available opportunity?! this is so bloody frustrating! how am I supposed to build a community when everyone like-minded leaves?
YARGH.
dead ends, dead ends.
un señal?
que hago. i miss the bay so much.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
(in)sanity
sometimes I find myself feeling quite stable in my new routine...adjusted to the monotony that has become almost comforting. routine is very comforting, as is schedule, for they leave little room for doubt and even less for uncertainty. it really is a comfortable existence, and I have little if any to complain about, except for the feeling of solitude and isolation from the actuality of things. but this is actual, this is happening, this is affecting in a way, but spending your entire day thinking and conversing with a select group about these thoughts is very much an isolated reality. but what reality, in a way, is not isolated?
the weeks hurry by, and i feel myself unmoved, and unmoving.
what, really, is the proposito of all this?
i feel myself unbalanced without teaching. when i was teaching, all of my energy was pushed into something I found to be very productive...enriching the minds of others. but now, without teaching, I find myself filled with flojera, and despite having more time to do what is expected of me, i am less productive and lacking ambition. less stress indeed, my muscles have not knotted about my neck like last year, but the limp feeling of flojera seeps into my everyday.
i find myself questioning my happiness, my stimulation, my ambition. ideas have a weight, an importance, an effect, but am i truly cut out for the production of ideas? I feed my ego through interaction with others, through making them feel important and powerful, but I am not very good at making my ideas and myself important and powerful. and i feel i do not want this.
maybe i want to live by educating and empowering others, at getting their voices sturdy and strong. and this to me would not be knocking myself down to push others higher...I feel that maybe this is my ambition, my proposito.
i don't want to speak for others...i want to help them speak for themselves. and herein lies my quandry and my struggle with academia.
the weeks hurry by, and i feel myself unmoved, and unmoving.
what, really, is the proposito of all this?
i feel myself unbalanced without teaching. when i was teaching, all of my energy was pushed into something I found to be very productive...enriching the minds of others. but now, without teaching, I find myself filled with flojera, and despite having more time to do what is expected of me, i am less productive and lacking ambition. less stress indeed, my muscles have not knotted about my neck like last year, but the limp feeling of flojera seeps into my everyday.
i find myself questioning my happiness, my stimulation, my ambition. ideas have a weight, an importance, an effect, but am i truly cut out for the production of ideas? I feed my ego through interaction with others, through making them feel important and powerful, but I am not very good at making my ideas and myself important and powerful. and i feel i do not want this.
maybe i want to live by educating and empowering others, at getting their voices sturdy and strong. and this to me would not be knocking myself down to push others higher...I feel that maybe this is my ambition, my proposito.
i don't want to speak for others...i want to help them speak for themselves. and herein lies my quandry and my struggle with academia.
Friday, February 6, 2009
macro to micro
why is it so difficult for me to bring myself down a notch? just quiet my brain down so it stops obsessing over infinite complexities and the suffocating web of the world so that I can focus on one small thing at a time. it was that simple...
food access : number of grocery stores : poverty rates : food justice projects
OBVIO po.
maybe i need to start meditating to calm this sucka down.
food access : number of grocery stores : poverty rates : food justice projects
OBVIO po.
maybe i need to start meditating to calm this sucka down.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
por fin...
finishing that paper was exactly what i needed...
after I sent it i immediately went into my room in cleared off my desk of all last quarter's clutter...threw away extra credit assignments from all sixty students, filed away notebooks and readers, and amazingly, my head suddenly is light and clutter-free! finally!
now onto this quarter....eep.
after I sent it i immediately went into my room in cleared off my desk of all last quarter's clutter...threw away extra credit assignments from all sixty students, filed away notebooks and readers, and amazingly, my head suddenly is light and clutter-free! finally!
now onto this quarter....eep.
Friday, January 9, 2009
2009 mighty fine
return to seattle, not rain nor sleet nor snow will keep me away!
determined to make this year and this quarter more of a compromise, so that academia will not control my every move. other realms must be allowed to speak as well...the art and the words and the music and the physically stimulating, not just mental...if I am to survive this I need that balanza and sustainability.
the doubt is still there...if this is the right path...and despite many doors opening for me here and many words of encouragement, i still can't seem to find the groove that fits. prolonged sensations of writers block, or speakers block, or thinkers block, where i feel i cannot mold myself into this regiment. doubt that i am capable of fulfilling such a mold, doubt that i could be happy molding myself as such.
would it be so bad to get a masters and go teach community college? to establish myself in oakland and just teach, since i have already affirmed that teaching is what i am after, is what i am capable of and am most fulfilled by. it is not that i don't believe i could keep up with all these academics, keep up with the banter and dichotomies and loathsome jargon...if i really wanted to i could...but do i want to? everytime i sit in on a lecture such as today's, discussing the neoliberal neglect of black ghettos in the US, i get really excited about the subject until the lecturer starts spouting jargon so thick you lose sight of the injustice present....global tropes? c'mon now...this knowledge needs to be accessible, needs to empower....it doesn't need to be reiterated in a language so dense that it can only be discussed in a room full of academic ego-strokers. i was completely deflated...although his research interested me, his language left me with a sour taste in my mouth. it made me want to succeed in this arena, to conquer it all, only so that i could later unravel the very system that spawned me. to gain acknowledgement and credibility you must fit this mold of academic reason and robotic analysis...i want to shatter these molds of legitimacy...you do not need to conform to such a rigid structure for your thought processes, your knowledge, to have value.
if i am to continue down this path, which i will be for at least another two years, i need to focus my thoughts on what is important to me and what is important to my education. recognizing the legitimacy and voice of those who are normally deemed powerless, the 'subjects' who are not allowed to use their own voice to represent themselves. empowerment through education...local forms of knowledge and skills that we don't often allow access to the academic realm of knowledge. social movements, acts of solidarity, empowerment through disobedience...the sort of actions that make my eyes water everytime i see a group of people unified for acknowledgement....that surely is a sign that i should be involved with that.
the questions remaining are how and where. i want to draw connections between the local (domestic) and the local (international)...i want to create something that gives voice to others...but if others are writing there own could that still count for my dissertation? a patchwork quilt of voices, from three different regions, working towards a common cause? an activity they all partake in, in which they write what they believe is necessary for the future, for educating and empowering their community...could be! or maybe more than three regions...maybe several countries, throughout the americas...spending two or three months in each place...offering my time and labor and gathering voices in the midst of it...could such a dream be made a reality??
i just need to plow my own path amdst all this...i have never been conventional...now is not a time to start...
determined to make this year and this quarter more of a compromise, so that academia will not control my every move. other realms must be allowed to speak as well...the art and the words and the music and the physically stimulating, not just mental...if I am to survive this I need that balanza and sustainability.
the doubt is still there...if this is the right path...and despite many doors opening for me here and many words of encouragement, i still can't seem to find the groove that fits. prolonged sensations of writers block, or speakers block, or thinkers block, where i feel i cannot mold myself into this regiment. doubt that i am capable of fulfilling such a mold, doubt that i could be happy molding myself as such.
would it be so bad to get a masters and go teach community college? to establish myself in oakland and just teach, since i have already affirmed that teaching is what i am after, is what i am capable of and am most fulfilled by. it is not that i don't believe i could keep up with all these academics, keep up with the banter and dichotomies and loathsome jargon...if i really wanted to i could...but do i want to? everytime i sit in on a lecture such as today's, discussing the neoliberal neglect of black ghettos in the US, i get really excited about the subject until the lecturer starts spouting jargon so thick you lose sight of the injustice present....global tropes? c'mon now...this knowledge needs to be accessible, needs to empower....it doesn't need to be reiterated in a language so dense that it can only be discussed in a room full of academic ego-strokers. i was completely deflated...although his research interested me, his language left me with a sour taste in my mouth. it made me want to succeed in this arena, to conquer it all, only so that i could later unravel the very system that spawned me. to gain acknowledgement and credibility you must fit this mold of academic reason and robotic analysis...i want to shatter these molds of legitimacy...you do not need to conform to such a rigid structure for your thought processes, your knowledge, to have value.
if i am to continue down this path, which i will be for at least another two years, i need to focus my thoughts on what is important to me and what is important to my education. recognizing the legitimacy and voice of those who are normally deemed powerless, the 'subjects' who are not allowed to use their own voice to represent themselves. empowerment through education...local forms of knowledge and skills that we don't often allow access to the academic realm of knowledge. social movements, acts of solidarity, empowerment through disobedience...the sort of actions that make my eyes water everytime i see a group of people unified for acknowledgement....that surely is a sign that i should be involved with that.
the questions remaining are how and where. i want to draw connections between the local (domestic) and the local (international)...i want to create something that gives voice to others...but if others are writing there own could that still count for my dissertation? a patchwork quilt of voices, from three different regions, working towards a common cause? an activity they all partake in, in which they write what they believe is necessary for the future, for educating and empowering their community...could be! or maybe more than three regions...maybe several countries, throughout the americas...spending two or three months in each place...offering my time and labor and gathering voices in the midst of it...could such a dream be made a reality??
i just need to plow my own path amdst all this...i have never been conventional...now is not a time to start...
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