January 27, 2003
Winter Morning
Oh, how wonderful the city looks in the winter morning, its scope animated by plumes of steam from every building! The clear winter air is all made brisk and bustling by the warm activity beneath. The city breathes and I can see it's breath, whistling out from a thousand proudly vaulted roofs! If our heat was collectively held, what a cheerful place it would be by the stove.
Posted by Sam on
07:59 AM
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January 23, 2003
1/23/03
2:34 AM
The New Yorker (which I hate) had this article (which I read because I am often compelled to read things I hate). All along I'm thinking: "Wait...they don't want windmills near their houses?" The article even had the audacity to call these people "environmentalists" instead of "reactionary boobs." I mean, what's cooler than a windmill? (I mean, other than a solar panel?)
OK...so that Zeh guy is cool (and so are offshore windmills). But the point holds.
There’s a defunct windmill on top of a building near mine! (pic to follow)
Posted by Sam on
02:34 AM
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January 21, 2003
Crappy
Aggh...a week of lost links, lost time, and mental instability. My job as a catering cook has all but dried up, and the checks from the Christmas/New Years rush (which was a war hell ride it took me until last week to get over) have turned out to be insultingly small. I have got to look for a new job. The Parks Department has also put off my request to work in Tompkin's Square Park for another 6 months. <&> (the evil eye!)
Also, Molly has been sick, first with a cold, then from some tainted supplements from GNC. <&> I have had many thoughts, but felt too uneven and blocked to write them out...also, I've working to get the blog online (which is to say, to make it a blog rather than an electronic diary).
One of the themes that has been developing, however, is the relationship between power and responsibility. It started with a quote I read in the ground rules to the First Workingman's International, written by Marx: "No power without responsibility, no responsibility without power." It didn't make a particularly strong impression on me at the time, but I found my thoughts returning to it over and over again, and I began to realize just how profound it is. (and oh yeah, I lost the link, but here is a link to a crappy translation at marxism.org) It is more than a rule, it is even more than a matter of justice; there is a fundamental ethical unity between power and responsibility. Without responsibility, power is asocial and dangerous; without power, responsibility is an empty promise.
Think about it. How many times did you hear about the imperative for the unemployed to take "personal responsibility" during the "Contract with America" period of the '90s (remember that crap!?). What form of responsibility, exactly, are the unemployed supposed to take over someone else not offering them a job? Now think about when the last time you heard "personal responsibility" mentioned in the recent corporate corruption scandals...hmm? The people in power love to talk about our responsibilities, but they rarely offer the power that would make it possible to fulfill them.
Personally, I have realized that I often try to push myself to work beyond my capacity by using a feeling of responsibility. Oh, will I never rid myself of the mental habits of a Liberal upbringing! Of course, the end result is an unresolvable sense of guilt, made all the more difficult to displace because it is purely fictional, or "motivational." I don't know, is it just me, or does this shit ring a bell with anyone?
Oh...I promised above to talk about the problematic blog/diary divide, but I done run otta gas, so y'all 'll havta wait...
Posted by Sam on
12:33 AM
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January 13, 2003
1.13.03
There are easily 50% more suicides than homicides in the U.S. every year, and today I know why. Yes, I have been dealing with the NYC bureauocracy yet again. I am trying to get a permit to operate a food cart in Tompkins Square Park, and the lazy oafs in the parks department are putting up every form of passive resistance possible. These fools have been entrusted with my neighborhood's greatest public resource, and they are content to let it atrophy and die. In fact, under the urging of local landlords, they have been doing everything in their power to kill it for over a decade. Did I say oafs? I meant murderers.
But I digress. Molly has been reviewing the CDCs cause-of-death records for 2000, and this fact stood out: the number of homicides per year is dwarfed by the number of suicides! Public policy has been corralled by the pressure to "make the streets safe," under the pretense that murders are the number one social problem.
Of course, driving claims enourmously more lives than either. That, together with the prevalance of suicides, points to a much different conclusion--our communities need to be reformulated on the basis of providing public space rather than restricting it.
Oh yeah, one more thing. I also happen to know that even most murders are committed by someone the murdered knows, so the application of murder statistics to the treatment of public space is doubly corrupt.
My head is spins with confused rage at the sensless hash that has been made of urban policy...
Posted by Sam on
12:51 PM
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1.13.03
I pity people who live in the suburbs.
Posted by Sam on
03:46 AM
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1.13.03
We were watching Naked New York on metroTV, and switching to finale of Lethal Weapon 4 during the commercials, when I was quite suddenly struck by the utter unending solemnity of our society. I mean, good lord! How's a body supposed to function?
I mentioned it to Molly, and asked her when she thought it got to be that way. She said it was a process that had begun in the '70s, but only come to fruition in the 90s. I wonder whether Baby Boomers understand the depth of the failure of the '60s revolution in America.
This solemnity was certainly not just post 9/11. If anything, New York loosened up a little after the attacks--granted, some of that was stunned incomprehension, but I think a good proportion of it was catharsis. The worst has happened to us all, and there are likely no harder hits in the immediate pipeline.
Perfectionism hangs over New York City like a pall. The spectre of the "perfect" body lurks just behind every gaze. I mean, people are denying themselves basic nutrition in the service of weight loss. Whatever else this may do to you, it does not give you a robust sense of humor.
There is a deep need for public space where we cam be funny. And I don't mean an empty street late at night (although that does hold its own special joy), I mean a place where you will be seen by other people, and there is some chance of them joining the joke. I go to Luxx to dance sometimes and be silly--I think most mixed gay/straight clubs would probably have much of the same magic.
Perfectionism has become too deadly serious for America to have much of a physical sense of humor. Everyone with even a half-decent sense of humor finds themselves almost totally driven out of their bodies. People are just too jumpy and humorless to take a joke. Chalk it up to 10 years of brutal layoffs.
Most funny people withdraw from their bodies entirely, but a rare few, like my friend Dave, develop a physical humor so laconic that most people miss it entirely. Physical humor, like any sort of erruption, is dangerous--now more than ever.
MTVs Jackass (sign-in req.) works well (when it does) by making an extreme sport of humor. Humor as a physical test. The body is assailed and tested by a humorous situation. The real danger is not from the outside, the crude danger of flying projectiles and immobile poles, but from the inside, from the very real need to prevent humor from tearing apart their personas. Can they keep a straight face? Watch and find out...
Just look at Lethal Weapon 4 if you don't believe me about American solemnity. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson's hammy mugging against the smooth animal grace of Jet Li says it all.
Posted by Sam on
01:08 AM
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January 03, 2003
1.12.03
I am on the bus. The Chinese bus, to be precise, taking me from Boston, where I was born and where my girlfriend's parents live, to New York, where we live, me and my girlfriend, Molly.
I get a very special kind of delirium when I ride the bus. It's something about sitting still but moving so fast across the landscape. Sometimes I sleep, but more often I prefer to stay awake and let my thoughts go wild. Mostly I dream about cities--the cities of the future. And that is why I have decided to write this weblog: to share these thoughts in hope of hastening the arrival of these new cities.
Posted by Sam on
05:42 PM
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