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Jul. 4th, 2007 12:04 amAlan Johnston's been released.
Thank heavens.
Thank heavens.
Jul. 4th, 2007
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Jul. 4th, 2007 02:57 pmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/world/africa/04mauritania.html
In Mauritania the beauty standard runs counter to ours and fat is the ideal. The article makes it pretty clear that this is just as toxic as the crap people put themselves through here to be thin.
I could get into that whole thing about "Real women have curves" here. I could say, for example, "Real women aren't treated like animals -- starved or force fed or otherwise controlled to be a more pleasing and valuable commodity." But the fact is, real women are treated like this all the time. Often, real women sign themselves up for it, wanting, assuming -- or even knowing -- there aren't other choices.
That's why every sentence that starts with that "real woman" thing just gives me the hives.
The idea of the "real woman" as opposed to some other sort of living, breathing, woman is a dangerous fiction.
In Mauritania the beauty standard runs counter to ours and fat is the ideal. The article makes it pretty clear that this is just as toxic as the crap people put themselves through here to be thin.
I could get into that whole thing about "Real women have curves" here. I could say, for example, "Real women aren't treated like animals -- starved or force fed or otherwise controlled to be a more pleasing and valuable commodity." But the fact is, real women are treated like this all the time. Often, real women sign themselves up for it, wanting, assuming -- or even knowing -- there aren't other choices.
That's why every sentence that starts with that "real woman" thing just gives me the hives.
The idea of the "real woman" as opposed to some other sort of living, breathing, woman is a dangerous fiction.
New York in fantasy; New York in fire
Jul. 4th, 2007 10:48 pmNear my house is a pedestrian bridge for crossing the FDR and also for going to Ward's Island. I only know about it with any precision because Patty and I walked over it the night before she left for Cyprus -- to cross the highway that is, the rest of it is not open at night. Anyway, it seemed like a good location from which to watch the fireworks.
And it was, although the view was somewhat obstructed by a number of pre-war buildings on East End in the upper 70s and 80s, the elaborate stone constructions built to hide their water towers looking like the ruins of castles.
The seige lasted 72 days. It seems like too neat a number, as if 73 would make a better story, and I wonder if so may of the fireworks are gold and orange and red because these colors are regal, cheaper or merely more familiar to an exhausted populace.
It was raining, when I went out there, in shorts -- well, pants, rolled up -- and a t-shirt and no jacket, because I hadn't really intended to do it or remembered how long fireworks lasted.
Our view, it is only adequate, the cove we've made anchor at putting us directly behind the castle, of course, but men on the other boats set off their own fireworks, and they explode in silvers and purples overhead. It seems dangerous, but what do any of us care, truly, if it provides a good show?
While there were cops on the bridge, they didn't seem to care about the packs of eight-year-old boys in the basketball courts of the housing projects launching fireworks up onto the walkway, and up onto the bridge, even if most of us there were women, and children -- a dam made of baby carriages.
In the day to day of things much of life is easy to forget, such as that I am surrounded by Chinese and Spanish. We make do for simple things, but when they ask how the fireworks work, where they are launched from, it is harder to make myself understood.
The footbridge actually sways with the wind and the sound of the fireworks reaches us late, cracking over the water. If I look carefully, if I will myself to be distracted from the buildings of my childhood seemingly on fire, I see the echoes of displays all around our river, our island, flashes of light indicating launches on the West Side, faint traces of things down at the Seaport, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, much of it coming from random rooftops, much of it surely illegal.
The rain comes, but I'd be shamed to notice it, even with my hair strung in ugly tracks across my face with the wet of it. Some of the explosions are so percussive they do not so much make me jump as root me to the ground, my heart grown heavy, my mind vaguely afraid that the soundwaves will crack the Queen's tower, such that it will fall right into the river. But surely they've checked and studied for that. Our celebrations are well-planned, and I'd be a fool, really, to hope for a better view than this.
The birds, in these last months, have become inured to fire, to explosions I suppose. It takes until thirty, forty minutes into the show for them to flee, geese and crows skimming low along the water and then over us, a formation flight and signal of their displeasure as if we have taken to their trees and not merely to their waters. There were once no people here.
Someone has a radio, that sounds old and tinny, like they listened to the 1968 World Series on it, but it's playing the music from the show, lest we get confused about how all of this actually works. Some fireworks explode into the shape of hearts. People ooooo and ahhhh, but I actually sort of disapprove. Fireworks are a martial display, and it is dishonest, I think, to make them look like cartoons.
I wonder, how far the news has travelled. How far the rain extends. Are all of us and this not quite forsaken city merely a signal flair? Something, something is ours.
I repositioned myself on the bridge so many times. A better view. An avoidance of looking at the sky through chains. Dog shit.
Even the pugs have come up to see, wretched things that somehow emit even more waste than they ingest.
Smoke and clouds obscures most of the sky now, making the look of the thing more familiar. But sometimes, there is green fire, and I wonder if the alchemists approve.
I know from watching TV earlier, that these displays are launched from computers now, as opposed to men running in danger from tube to tube. I suppose this is good, but it also makes me sad. Progress takes things out of the world as much as it brings things into it, but I know not to talk about that too much. Or rather, that I do.
That I cannot smell this spectacle seems unfair. I cannot smell the sea either. They've negated each other, and it confuses me.
The habits we acquire over time are strange. I have a rail to lean on and people to chatter with. But I stand straight and do not move, composing descriptions -- a letter to you -- in my head. I must not have moved very much at all, for I am stiff now, sore, my skin burnt from the wind. It is almost daylight where you are.
In the walk down the bridge people are slow. Some idiot shoots a firework practially into the crowd. No one runs. I expect hair to be set on fire. I know not to flinch when the little boys in the basketball courts set things off. They laugh when people do and then aim for them. The walk along the highway is difficult for me. Although my night vision is slowly improving now that I no longer eat bread, I can be blind in the dark, and with the car headlights, my eyes can't even attempt to adjust to the world around me. I can't see the ground and only refrain from falling because of fencing.
I love the sword and must I note that this statement is not a mere literary device? I have, I hope, made you smile.
By the time I get up here, to my computer, it is pouring again. My fingers are stiff, and I am baffled by how few people know about the bridge, at how watching the firworks from such distances makes it all seem like the celebration of another country and us, just to the north of its borders. Up here, in these days, this is perhaps not so untrue.
We all think about when the city burned, all the time. We think about where the farms were, the fruit trees, and wonder what they will put there next. But no one thinks about us, silent, in the cove behind the castle. Why would they? And why would we need to speak?
When the displays were over, fireworks still went off, largely silent ones, that trailed into the air at random, like ghosts escaping from a pyre of witches, silent, and without explosion, just the tiniest, slightest sizzling noise, like champagne and all manner of bubbles.
Do souls, I wonder, pop or fade?
I wonder what it will be like, next year. Certainly writing this has been a most considerable amount of fun.
Perhaps it will not rain.
And it was, although the view was somewhat obstructed by a number of pre-war buildings on East End in the upper 70s and 80s, the elaborate stone constructions built to hide their water towers looking like the ruins of castles.
The seige lasted 72 days. It seems like too neat a number, as if 73 would make a better story, and I wonder if so may of the fireworks are gold and orange and red because these colors are regal, cheaper or merely more familiar to an exhausted populace.
It was raining, when I went out there, in shorts -- well, pants, rolled up -- and a t-shirt and no jacket, because I hadn't really intended to do it or remembered how long fireworks lasted.
Our view, it is only adequate, the cove we've made anchor at putting us directly behind the castle, of course, but men on the other boats set off their own fireworks, and they explode in silvers and purples overhead. It seems dangerous, but what do any of us care, truly, if it provides a good show?
While there were cops on the bridge, they didn't seem to care about the packs of eight-year-old boys in the basketball courts of the housing projects launching fireworks up onto the walkway, and up onto the bridge, even if most of us there were women, and children -- a dam made of baby carriages.
In the day to day of things much of life is easy to forget, such as that I am surrounded by Chinese and Spanish. We make do for simple things, but when they ask how the fireworks work, where they are launched from, it is harder to make myself understood.
The footbridge actually sways with the wind and the sound of the fireworks reaches us late, cracking over the water. If I look carefully, if I will myself to be distracted from the buildings of my childhood seemingly on fire, I see the echoes of displays all around our river, our island, flashes of light indicating launches on the West Side, faint traces of things down at the Seaport, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, much of it coming from random rooftops, much of it surely illegal.
The rain comes, but I'd be shamed to notice it, even with my hair strung in ugly tracks across my face with the wet of it. Some of the explosions are so percussive they do not so much make me jump as root me to the ground, my heart grown heavy, my mind vaguely afraid that the soundwaves will crack the Queen's tower, such that it will fall right into the river. But surely they've checked and studied for that. Our celebrations are well-planned, and I'd be a fool, really, to hope for a better view than this.
The birds, in these last months, have become inured to fire, to explosions I suppose. It takes until thirty, forty minutes into the show for them to flee, geese and crows skimming low along the water and then over us, a formation flight and signal of their displeasure as if we have taken to their trees and not merely to their waters. There were once no people here.
Someone has a radio, that sounds old and tinny, like they listened to the 1968 World Series on it, but it's playing the music from the show, lest we get confused about how all of this actually works. Some fireworks explode into the shape of hearts. People ooooo and ahhhh, but I actually sort of disapprove. Fireworks are a martial display, and it is dishonest, I think, to make them look like cartoons.
I wonder, how far the news has travelled. How far the rain extends. Are all of us and this not quite forsaken city merely a signal flair? Something, something is ours.
I repositioned myself on the bridge so many times. A better view. An avoidance of looking at the sky through chains. Dog shit.
Even the pugs have come up to see, wretched things that somehow emit even more waste than they ingest.
Smoke and clouds obscures most of the sky now, making the look of the thing more familiar. But sometimes, there is green fire, and I wonder if the alchemists approve.
I know from watching TV earlier, that these displays are launched from computers now, as opposed to men running in danger from tube to tube. I suppose this is good, but it also makes me sad. Progress takes things out of the world as much as it brings things into it, but I know not to talk about that too much. Or rather, that I do.
That I cannot smell this spectacle seems unfair. I cannot smell the sea either. They've negated each other, and it confuses me.
The habits we acquire over time are strange. I have a rail to lean on and people to chatter with. But I stand straight and do not move, composing descriptions -- a letter to you -- in my head. I must not have moved very much at all, for I am stiff now, sore, my skin burnt from the wind. It is almost daylight where you are.
In the walk down the bridge people are slow. Some idiot shoots a firework practially into the crowd. No one runs. I expect hair to be set on fire. I know not to flinch when the little boys in the basketball courts set things off. They laugh when people do and then aim for them. The walk along the highway is difficult for me. Although my night vision is slowly improving now that I no longer eat bread, I can be blind in the dark, and with the car headlights, my eyes can't even attempt to adjust to the world around me. I can't see the ground and only refrain from falling because of fencing.
I love the sword and must I note that this statement is not a mere literary device? I have, I hope, made you smile.
By the time I get up here, to my computer, it is pouring again. My fingers are stiff, and I am baffled by how few people know about the bridge, at how watching the firworks from such distances makes it all seem like the celebration of another country and us, just to the north of its borders. Up here, in these days, this is perhaps not so untrue.
We all think about when the city burned, all the time. We think about where the farms were, the fruit trees, and wonder what they will put there next. But no one thinks about us, silent, in the cove behind the castle. Why would they? And why would we need to speak?
When the displays were over, fireworks still went off, largely silent ones, that trailed into the air at random, like ghosts escaping from a pyre of witches, silent, and without explosion, just the tiniest, slightest sizzling noise, like champagne and all manner of bubbles.
Do souls, I wonder, pop or fade?
I wonder what it will be like, next year. Certainly writing this has been a most considerable amount of fun.
Perhaps it will not rain.