Of Cha and the Absence

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee was published in 1981 to critical acclaim.  An artist and poet, Cha ruminates on her struggle against gender and cultural oppression with dazzling originality and daring format choices.  Cha was murdered outside a New York City gallery showcasing her artwork, days after the publication of Dictee.  She was 31.

What follows is not an elegy, but, rather, an appreciation of a living voice.

See me now.  You see me now.  You regard and dismiss.  If I speak it is softly for it is too easy to curse at you.  If I spoke Spanish, you wouldn’t even bother to listen but I do not speak Spanish well so it is only an issue for some of my relatives and my psyche.  If I speak English, you might listen and perhaps feel slightly uncomfortable that my articulation and enunciation betters yours.  It is not mimicry.  No no no.  There is power in my voice, in my assertion that I am right to assert.  I write and you are forced to regard me sans appearance or concentrated social assumption.  If you judge me based upon my surname then I have no use for you.  I write these words and become.  I always was.  I never knew I had a voice.  Then one day I screamed and scared myself awake.

Cha found her voice.  In writing, she found her voice and that of her people.  I hear Cha in her attempts.  Attempts at.  There is no absence, only voice.  You strangled her to death rudely forced her from this world.  Too late too late.  I read her text.  I hear her voice and you lost.

You lost.

Other

“You lie!” so the shout went

and the loss of decency was complete.

Discourse and debate

have no place in this

nation of hate.

Instead,

we stage wrestling matches

at town hall centers.

We scream, “I want my America back!”

when America

already made her choice.

We whisper and we scare,

like parents employing

the bogeyman

to scare their children to sleep.

In the brazen, toxic breeze of fear,

we whisper…

“Muslim…Black…Communist…

Terrorist… Socialist… Animal…”

* * * * *

Other.

* * * * *

And as the walls tumble down around us

we see that all we have is each other.

Without the veil of American might,

unable to hide behind the myth

of God’s chosen ones,

we see that all we have is each other.

* * * * *

Yet we choose to stew and feast on hate,

to drink from the poisonous well we dug

when we buried our genocidal birth

and laid to rest

the corpse of ill-gotten truth.

* * * * *

The past is never past, I’ve read.

* * * * *

When will we understand?

Typically Lovely

Ocean, wise, your salty breeze

Beckons me to your sweet tide.

The Ocean Child is calling me,

Her whispers swirl invitingly

Into my beating heart.

Our rhythms dance as one.

* * * * *

Nobody else could ever understand.

How typically lovely.

* * * * *

Ocean Child, the winter snows,

Deconstructed by the sun,

Led you slowly to the sea,

Where you emerged fully-formed;

Body and spirit uniquely free

To take the world and make it your own.

* * * * *

This is your time, as though you didn’t know.

Every ancient city you see,

Every culture you embrace

Serves to remind that you exist

In every  time, in every place,

In every flower, in every face

In every song, in every tear

That stems from every broken heart—

You were there then and are here now.

You are one and everyone.

* * * * *

In the books the poet reads he feels

Eternal echoes of your sweet breeze,

The whispers of the words you soothe

He finds imbued within the glosses

Of the great dialogue that has endured

Since man first thought and talked and wrote.

He finds, in you, a gentle muse,

Who reminds him that he exists

In every time and place,

In every cosmic inch of space.

He finds you and cherishes you

And on the days he doesn’t feel you

Life is just a bit subdued and grey.

* * * * *

Nobody else could ever understand.

How typically lovely.

* * * * *

I dreamed I found you near the water’s edge,

Inviting me to sit and talk.

“Release the hold the binds your soul.

Tell me the dreams you’ve in your head.”

So I spoke and you listened.

So you spoke and I listened.

For a moment, we knew the world complete.

We walked its land and swam its seas,

Took our place in every time and space.

We sat bundled on the beach’s edge,

The dancing sparks from the bonfire

Waltzed deftly above the flames.

You smiled your knowing, glowing smile,

and asked, “Shall we dance?”

* * * * *

The crackling of the burning wood

Befit unshackled chains thrown down

As we became the wispy fire’s smoke

And slowly floated up away.

* * * * *

I awoke and believed in dreams again.

* * * * *

The poet has your face in mind,

Your voice, Ocean Child,

An imagined aria…

Still,

I have your essence,

Eternal, On my page.

Where others see only words,

I see dreams of hope and grace.

* * * * *

Nobody else could ever understand.

How typically lovely.

Rogue Shoes and the Collapse of Order

Confession time:  I possess aspects of O.C.D.  Or, rather, I am possessed by certain aspects of O.C.D.  There, I wrote it.  I am a neat-freak, am anally-inclined (as a friend once shockingly put it), I like order in my universe, damnit.  I tell you this because I want you to understand that when things—things, in the sense of anything that has anything to do with my daily routine—are out of place, I am, on some level, miserable.  Now, usually my misery is easily self-contained and I am able to get on with life with just a modicum of anxiety.  Think of it as a mental paper-cut.  It’s annoying, yes, but, really, you know, get over it and move on.

I write all of this in preparation.  I believe that a person’s house is an extension of their personality, character, discipline, etc.  If I am in a person’s house and that house is dirty, then, like it or not, I’m making certain private, mental judgments.  Now, when I say dirty, I don’t mean cluttered or out-of-sorts.  I have children.  If you have children, then you well know it doesn’t matter if you clean the house  military-style.  Your house is going to be a little out-of-sorts.  But that is not dirty.  Dirty is measurable dust build-up on the coffee table.  Dirty is a bathroom you’d rather not visit under any circumstances (or, as my wife puts, “a single man’s bathroom”).  My house is not dirty.  My wife and I both clean the house and neither of us are slobs.  Our house is clean.  I have children, so it is out-of-sorts.  Like a paper cut, I’ve learned to deal with it and move on…almost.

Shoes.  Most of us wear them.  I’m a fan of the shoe.  I wear them.  What I cannot abide is the shoe left aside, not put away, not kept with its partner, just tossed aside on the floor to bedevil me in the middle of the night when it’s dark and I’m trying to get to the bathroom or the kitchen or wherever.  Order.  I like order.  The lone, rogue shoe, lying low, hidden by darkness, is an affront to order.  It is the anti-order.  Chaos.  Ugh, what a word.  My wife owns many pairs of shoes.  My children, two girls, aged ten and 9, own several pair.  From this mostly cooperative group of footwear, there are a few that are, unfortunately, villainous.  What follows is a short description of the more flagrant offenders:

Terri’s white Reebok jogging shoes.  I have found these shoes in every room of the house and on one, secretly sweet occasion, in the doghouse of Leela, our minature- pinscher, who was teething and used it as a pain-reliever.  By far, I have stumbled over this shoe more than any other.

Terri’s white Nike jogging shoes.  The other pair.  Leela has yet to get hold of one of these shoes, though I have seriously thought about just tossing one in her doghouse.  Of the two pair of jogging shoes, the Nikes seem to have taken the most wear-and-tear, Leela’s attacks notwithstanding.

Author’s aside: on one particularly surreal night, I stumbled over a complete pair: one

Reebok and one Nike!  And both of them were the left shoe!  I didn’t ask and I’ve never

allowed myself to think on it deeply.

Nadia’s Dora the Explorer chanclas.  Now, what everyone calls flip-flops were called chanclas in my day, and I choose to call them that still.  Before they were a fashion statement, you could buy a pair of chanclas for about $2 at any K-Mart.  So, the fact that many of you are paying upward of $30 or more for a pair of chanclas delights me to no end.  While I’m on my soapbox, let me assert that chanclas are house shoes!  If you’re not at home, the beach, or the park, you really shouldn’t have them on.  Especially in conjunction with white socks or suit pants.  Please, trust me on this.  You’ll look back someday and cringe.  As a stumbling block, chanclas are interesting because it is possible to actually get your toe intertwined within the actual frame of the shoe.  So, there is the possibility of not only stumbling, but also of breaking your child’s beloved house shoe.  If you have children, you know this is road to Hell.

Maya’s Sketchers.  This is a tank of a shoe and, as such, the most dangerous of the bunch.  There is no give in these heavy, leather tennis shoes and the right shoe was the culprit the night I tripped and almost fell into the coffee table.  How Maya can do any of the exercises in her P.E. class is beyond me.  They are like two bricks of  concrete.  I sometimes use them to work out my arms.

Terri’s black heels.  Now, I have a love-hate relationship with the black heels.  They usually act as an accompaniment to a lovely dress or an enticing blouse and skirt worn by my wife, so that’s all good.  Left alone, however, a rogue heel is dangerous for obvious reasons.  A heel is never, never, never, never, never, never, left alone on its side or heel-down.  It is always heel up.  Anyone remember the Jaws movie poster?  Think of my foot as the unlucky girl swimming in the ocean and the heel of the shoe as the shark, gargantuan teeth salaciously awaiting the opportunity to tear into soft, unassuming flesh.  Just waiting.  Patiently.  Silently.  And suddenly…

I’ve addressed my concerns with my family more times than I care to recount.  I am always given assurances that shoes will be put away from that moment onward.  Within a day or two, I’m stumbling again.  I know, I know.  I just need to get over it.

The Great Albums: Achtung Baby

Achtung Baby
U2
19 November 1991

This is the first in a series of rambling blogs concerning the albums which have taken up permanent residence in my musical universe.

When I first heard Achtung Baby, I didn’t know what to think.  I certainly was not a typical U2 fan.  Except for a handful of radio singles, I was unfamiliar with their early work.  I did not yet fully appreciate The Joshua Tree (1987), which had publicly overshadowed the superior Prince masterpiece, Sign ‘O’ The Times. 1988’s Rattle & Hum, a double album, contained only three or four really good songs.  So, for the most part, I was quite underwhelmed by U2’s output to that point.

My first reaction to Achtung Baby was, “What the hell was that?”  The epic, save-the-world excesses of the previous singles were gone.  In its place were intensely personal, moody songs, complemented in their lyrical content by a darker, decidedly European brand of pop/rock music.  I was perplexed…and intrigued.  So I listened again.  And again.  And again.  I began hearing new things with each listen, unraveling new layers of meaning as time passed.  Within a month, I concluded Achtung was easily the best thing U2 had ever recorded.  Seventeen years later, my opinion stands.

The first two songs of the album usher in a new sound.  As mentioned earlier, Achtung Baby employs an industrial, dark, throbbing brew of a musical landscape.  There is distortion of instrumentation and vocals.  There are production tricks galore as sounds zoom from one channel to another out of nowhere.  The sounds of hammer hitting metal that open “Zoo Station” are appropriate; U2 is fashioning a new sound with which to explore.  The song sounds straight out of Berlin (in fact, much of the album was recorded there in the wake of the Wall’s fall).  “I’m ready…ready for what’s next,” proclaims Bono in a distorted, exhuberent tone.  The music thumps along moodily, preparing the listener for “Even Better Than The Real Thing”.  It is in this second track that The Edge delivers the first of several blistering guitar solos.  Who knew he’d go Guitar Hero on us?  Bono’s lyrics, in yet another surprise, center on sex, sex, sex.  At this point, it seems the band is ready for a full-scale party.  Bono wails, “Take me higher!” and it seems as if these surprisingly danceable songs are merely precursors of  what is to come.

“One” stops the party in its tracks.  And maybe, based upon a closer listening of the first two songs, it should have been evident it really wasn’t a party to begin with.  The opening tracks, danceable as they may be, convey a sense of desperation, a respite of euphoria in the wake of an unknowable future.  With “One”, U2 delivers a lamentation on loss.  In every way, from the sad guitar that opens it to the full band fervor that concludes it, the song is breathtakingly beautiful.  Of course, the meaning of any piece of music, lies in the heart of the listener; Bono has attributed its meaning to a monologue delivered by an AIDS- stricken son to his father.  For me, then and now,  “One” remains a rumination of a relationship’s dissolution.  Near the song’s climax, Bono delivers one of the most affecting moments of frustration I’ve ever heard:

You say, “Love is a temple…love the higher law”
“Love is a temple…love the higher law”
You ask me to enter…well then, you make me crawl
And I can’t keep holding on to what you’ve got
When all you’ve got is hurt

I could go on and on about “One”.  It’s truly transcendent.  I’ll simply add that whereas before I saw it is a song which offered no chance for redemption, I now see it differently.  There is a light, however dim: “We’ve got to carry each other, carry each other…one love.”  For whatever reason, this soothes me.

What follows in the wake of Achtung’s masterpiece is a series of dark, at times very cynical, explorations of love and lust.  “Until The End of the World” depicts Judas’ confession to Christ.  Bono’s lyrics are sharp and The Edge goes berserk with a funky, driving guitar solo that is topped only by the impossibly ascending climax which ends the song.  Adam Clayton’s rumbling bass and Larry Mullin, Jr.’s assertive drumming are in fine form here, as throughout the album.  The rhythm is undeniable.  Bono’s Judas openly questions Christ’s affirmation of complete, never ending love: “Waves of regret… waves of joy…I reached out for the one I tried to destroy…You, you said you’d wait until the end of the world.”  Apocalypse ensues.

The pure pop of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” follows, full of layered guitar fills, Bono’s desperate (and lustful) lyrics, and a wonderful opening string section that is only audible in one channel (another production trick!).  Side one (remember tapes and vinyl, kids?) closes with “So Cruel”, a cynical look at a relationship gone bad:

She wears my love like a see-through dress
Her lips say one thing
Her movements something else
Oh love, like a screaming flower
Love…dying every hour

The darkness that ends side one continues with side two’s opening, “The Fly”.  The boys rock hard in this track as Bono spews venom on the  nature of hypocrisy.  One section, in particular, strikes close to the heart:

Every artist is a cannibal
Every poet is a thief
They all kill their inspiration
And sing about the grief

Ouch!  “The Fly” is augmented by another Edge guitar freak-out, this time in the vein of Hendrix.

After the pervading darkness of the previous tracks, the band loosens up with some more good old fashioned horniness.  “Mysterious Ways” was a monster hit and deservedly so: it is funky as hell, nasty (“If you wanna kiss the sky…Better learn how to kneel…On your knees, boy), and dance club-friendly.  By this point on the album, U2 is on a serious roll.

“Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World” follows.  I’m not sure how to describe this track.  It’s a psychedelic, surrealist collage held together by a hip-hop beat.  I’ve read that the song relates the thoughts of a drunk man walking home.  Hey, that sounds as good as any other interpretation.  What I know is that Bono’s vocals are astounding and that this musical concoction is brewed to perfection.  Whatever its meaning, “Trying to Throw…” is irresistibly good pop music.

For the next two tracks, the band engages in more conventional arena-friendly rock.  “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” again finds Bono questioning, with exultation and frustration, the contradictory feelings experienced in a love relationship:

You bury your treasure
Where it can’t be found
But your love is like a secret
That’s been passed around

Initially, due in part to the magnificence of what has preceded it, “Ultraviolet” seems rather minor.  However, over time, it grows on you.  “Acrobat”, on the other hand, hits your head-on.  This is a roaring rock song, all momentum and snarls.  Bono again sees love, especially its hypocritical-inspiring elements, in a very cynical light.  The imagery he employs is harsh and lewd: “And you can swallow or you can spit…You can throw it up or choke on it.”  Not that he is proclaiming himself above reproach, mind you.  He finds himself as guilty as anyone else: “And I must be an acrobat…to talk like this and act like that.”  However, by song’s end, he is still holding on to love by a thread.

The thread snaps in Achtung Baby’s dark finale, “Love is Blindness”.  The title is certainly truth in advertising.  Bono laments, in a tired and defeated voice, of a love that is irrevocably lost.  The music itself is dirge-like, highlighted by a bitter, angry Edge solo.

Love is clockworks
And cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle
Blow out the candle
Love is blindness

Taken as a whole, Achtung Baby is about loss.  Even the upbeat tracks hint at a certain desperation.  The characters who inhabit this album’s musical landscape are holding on to ideals, even as those ideals seem to slip from their grasp.  I was a twenty-one years-old when Achtung was released and, at the time, was involved in a relationship that I felt was mirrored by these songs.  The album became a kind of soundtrack to my life at that time- an incredible testament to the power of music and a common element of all the Great Albums I’ll be writing about in the future.  I’ve since become a devoted U2 fan and have found their music, while not always of the highest order, nonetheless intriguing and well worthy of exploration.  To my mind, Achtung Baby, in its fearless shattering of boundaries and in its unblinking, unsparingly personal examination of love, remains the finest album U2 has ever released.

Review: Galileo’s Daughter

In the seventeenth century, Galileo Galilei, already a trailblazing scientist, challenged conventional thinking and- more perilously- the Catholic Church by advocating and expanding on the ideas presented by Copernicus, regarding Earth’s place in the universe.  Indeed, Copernican thinking rejected a Ptlotemyan view of the world, instead advancing the scandalous theory that the Earth moves around the Sun.  The implications of this were severe.  If the Earth was not the center of the universe, a belief held since the glory days of Greek philosopy, then what exactly was it?  Galileo, on a purely scientific level, held that the Earth (in addition to revolving on its own axis- another problematic notion), in its submissive adherence to the Sun, was but another celestial object in the universe, subject to the same cosmic laws that applied to all the heavens.  For the Church, this was heresy.  If the Earth was not favored by God, why then might man not be as well?  And, getting closer to what may have really scared the Vatican, might the Church itself not be so favored?

This fascinating dispute between religion and science permeates the whole of Dava Sobel’s wonderful Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker & Co., 1999).  Building upon the private letters of Suor Maria Celeste, Galielo’s daughter, to her father, Sobel presents a man torn by a scientific mind and a religious heart.  While Galileo privately believed in the ideas of Copernicus, his Dialogue, which detailed both systems through the imagined conversations of three diverse individuals, did not openly advocate the Copernican view.  The man from Florence was no fool.  This was still a time of the Inquisition.  That the Church ultimately persecuted Galileo, despite haven given permission for him to publish his work, speaks to the fear of the Vatican to allow any viewpoints which even hinted as alternatives to Heliocentrism.

If Sobel had concentrated solely on the facts of Galileo’s battles with the Church, her narrative would have been gripping.  However, she goes further and introduces the reader to Galileo’s illegitimate daughter, a nun who served as a constant source of inspiration and, as it became clear that her father would not emerge from his battles unscathed, his consistent shelter from despair.  What emerges is a haunting love story, father-for-daugher, daughter-for-father.  It is in the letters from Suor Maria Celeste, which Sobel has translated from the Italian, that one begins to comprehend just how much was at stake for all involved.  It is in these passages that Sobel’s narrative transcends dry, historical recountance, becoming something all the more intimate and heartfelt in the process.

The true tragedy of Galileo’s life is that it was so misunderstood.  It was never his intent to overthrow Church dogma.  Indeed, his was a mind in which both science and religion could co-exist; a ”conviction that God had dictated the Holy Scriptures to guide men’s spirits but proffered the unraveling of the universe as a challenge to their intelligence” (p. 8).

A Blog Is Born

And on the seventeenth day of the eleventh month in the ninth year of the second millennium anno domini, a blog was born…

Please, please.  Try and contain yourselves.  This is my blog, my first and, possibly, only attempt at this strange, mysterious phenomenon.  I have no game plan and I’ve not looked at the bigger picture.  I’ve simply decided to give blogging a try to see where, if anywhere, these posts lead me.  The only virtual fence I’ve placed around these musings is this: in terms of subject matter, I will concentrate on that sweet, sweet spot I call the conjunction of life and art- the center.  And yes, in my blogisphere, the center will hold.  As the mood strikes, I will blog away.  I consider it an extension of what I do and what I want to continue to do, which is to write.  Time will tell how long this blog will last.  Until then, if you happen to chance upon these words, I warmly invite you to stay and read a post or three.  If you’d rather not, it’s alright.  I’ll never know.

For those still reading, an introduction is in order.  I am Jesse.  Welcome to my blog.  I was born in Dallas, TX and grew up a fanatical Cowboy fan- a fanaticism I hold to this day.  I optioned for the seventeen-year undergrad plan before earning a B.A. in English, three years ago, from New Mexico State University.  I have lived in Las Cruces, NM since 2002 and share a cozy little house with my lovely wife and daughters (Boys beware! Enter my house and ye shall know despair!).  I currently work as a Technical Administrator (i.e. computer geek) for the local realtor board.  I have also embarked on an ambitious ten-year trek toward the M.A. in Literature.  Since I dream big, I envision a future in writing or teaching at the university level.  I write poetry and fiction, read voraciously, and love music more than any other person in the history of the known universe.

My daugher would say, Peace out.  I, being an original funkateer/poet, simply bid you, Namaste…can you dig it?