himitsu

"Do you know what people did in the old days when they had secrets they didn't want to share? They'd climb a moutain, find a tree, carve a hole in it, whisper the secret into the hole and cover it up with mud. That way, nobody else would ever learn the secret..." -Tak, 2046

This is my tree with its hole carved sitting on top of a mountain. 

I'm an asshole. That's my secret. I am misanthropic, I hate everyone. The kicker is that secretly I hate myself.

Today was not a good day. Not a shining moment for me. I sped over to my car dealership at the last minute to see if they could figure out what was wrong with my nav system...this place has the most obscene parking lot in the universe. On top of that, I accidentally parked in the handicapped parking spot so I had to move my car twice. The second time I was stuck behind people in a car, while waiting for this woman to get out...I didn't know what they were doing at first, just seemed like they were sitting there in the parking lot...in the way. I honked lightly, not too much. I honked twice though. Then the old lady comes up to me and trys to talk to me threw the window but I'm shaking my head and mouthing at her to leave me alone and go away. I can't deal with it.

Later she comes in to the garage, calling me sir and stuff, telling me about how she's on chemotherapy and she doesn't move very quickly and she was stuck in between two kids trying to get out of the car. It's all I can do not to scream. I just want to die, right there. I'm still not clear on why she was even there in the first place. It's like the universe is teaching me a lesson...this whole month has been full of lessons. Maybe I should just kill myself and get it over with.

M. has been telling me that I need to let go of my anger. I don't even know how. I feel like my anger protects me from harm, until things like this happen. Then I am just humiliated and I want to disappear. I wish the ground would just open up and swallow me forever. 

So there it is, I'm an asshole.

Gay is NOT the "New Black"

Although the hubbub has died down around the catchphrase that so-called GLBTQ activists coined, “Gay is the new Black”, I feel like now I can coherently address the issues around it from my perspective as a queer-identified person of colour. 

The problem with this phrase, other than the obvious denigration of the Black experience, centres on choice. No, not the choice that the rabid Christian right is always squawking about…I am not talking about the choice to be GLBTQ, because as any educated person would know…it’s biological. I am talking about the choice to come out and identify oneself in the public sphere as GLBTQ.  This is key.

People of colour do not choose to identify as people of colour, we don’t “come out of the closet” so to speak about being Black, Latino, Asian etc. It is easily identifiable by our skin, our hair or our speech patterns among other things. It is written upon us for all to see. This is the difference between being a person of colour and being GLBTQ. Arguably you cannot “see” GLBTQ.

Identity politics aside, being identified as person of colour is not a choice. (White) GLBTQ people have a choice and the privilege to come out and be identified as GLBTQ. Those of us who are not White, and regardless of our sexuality, do not have that privilege. Therein lies the difference and should point out the issue in claiming that “gay is the new Black.” Black is still Black and the last time I checked, the civil rights struggle for racial equality was far from over.

Dead on the Vine

This whole new years shite isn't really working out for me. I thought it would be differently. The second week of unemployment I got two interviews but both of the turned out to be busts. I've applied to over thirty jobs in the past few weeks. 


I feel thinly spread, like I'm a tablespoon of butter over too many pieces of toast. Or maybe I'm the toast? I got sick too, mostly throat crap with some lovely feverish things. I think it's probably because I'm drinking too much. On the day of the interviews I holed up in a bar and got drunk on one-to-many martinis. It probably doesn't help that I started smoking again. I can smell the desperation on myself. It disgusts me. I'm fading away like smoke on a funeral pyre. 


I'm angry too. So angry. My old coworker has been ignoring my text messages and I'm frustrated by her passive jab at my dignity. Bitch. At least tell me you don't want to be friends any more. I yell at the smallest things. I just want to crawl into a hole and die.

Bad Seed

Esta noche

We gonna make art

Dicen que "Eres la mala semilla"

The Bad Seed.

I am the seed.

The seed that grows

Grows into victory

Get outta my way

I gotta grow into Beauty

We live this Art

It’s the only thing we got

Tu no me jodas

Those cold rain of words

Can’t drown me now

Flourish and expanding

Into newness

This newness

Beauty, art.

Esta semilla no es mala.

Recap.

It's been a difficult year.
Today is December 26th, 2011. I am well into finishing up Hannukah, my resignation is looming and the New Year is only a few days away. Honestly, I can't wait. This last year did provide me with a choice few wonderful things but in the end it is time to say goodbye. I wait in anticipation to be able to leave behind all the bad decisions, people and memories of 2011. They say we are living in the end times and that the world might end next year. All I know is that, it might not be so bad. Let's see what 2012 is going to throw my way. I'm ready.


And thanks for all the learning experiences. 

Curses

We use them like curses

Cut away the gauze

Make you Think

Scream at

Your face

Shatter that facade

Don't smile at me

With your plastic eyes

Glazed

Your bubblegum countenance

Is like dried cum stains

You say nothing

Despite incessant chatter

Driving Us mad

Like the buzzing of flies

We use our Words

To break your System

Hack this

Our curses fly

Straight arrows

Bleed you dry

The Semite in Anti-Semitism

[Ed. note: I find it very fascinating that almost all spell-check programs, including the Microsoft package, do not recognize "Anti-Semitism" as a word. Think about that.]

I admittedly hijacked the conversation in the comments section on a Racialicious blogpost entitled "Racial Fractures and the Occupy Movement", but every time this particular subject arises I feel compelled to say something. The commenter wrote this: 

"Antisemitism as being under the umbrella of racism defines Jewish people as being a Jewish race.  One can be racially White, Asian, Latino, Native, and/or Black, and also Jewish.  Anti-Jeiwsh sentiments, actions, and negatively impacting behavior in general should included too, but I don't think it is appropriate to generalize it to race.  That would be a major oversight.  Also, the term "Semite" refers to many different people, or which those who identify as Jewish are included.  By using that term, did you mean to highlight oppression of Jewish people in the United States, Middle Eastern and/or Arabic people in the United States, or specifically all of the groups under the definition of the term "Semite"?

I'm using the definition from wikipedia, so I am open to discussion to continue disambiguating this term."

[...cont. edit]

My response to his comment is as follows:

"Dear Gregory, 

As a Sephardic-Jewish linguist and activist, I have to contest what you wrote. The word “Anti-Semitism” and the word Semite have historically been used to refer to anti-Jewish bias and Jewish people for countless years both as a racial/ethnic group and a religious minority.

The use of “Semite” in the linguistic sense of the word can and does refer to Hebrew, Arabic and Geez-speaking (among others) groups of people but does not refer to an ethnic group outside of Jewish people. The Wikipedia article you referred to actually points out this explicitly by informing us that the term was coined in the 19th century in Germany and roughly translates from German as “Jew-hateness” or the hating of Jewish people. 

There are many arguments for including other ethnic groups in the term Semite, but the word anti-Semitism continues to refer to the hatred or bias against Jewish people and personally I believe that using it as an umbrella term does disservice to the awareness of anti-Semitic actions against Jewish people. I would also just like to point out that the last two FBI hate crime index reports have listed Jewish people as one of the consistently attacked group in the religious tract (above Muslims even after 2001). 

Perhaps it is contradictory of me to end on this note but this is not the time to be watering-down terminology and discussing terminological problems. We need to be fighting racism in all its form, not being distracted by pedagogy.  

Thank you."

I am honestly not sure what else to say on the subject. I just find comments like his quite contradictory and also troubling. It is troubling to me that people want to gloss-over the problem of anti-Semitism as something of the past...it is still a problem here in this country! It's racism! Racism is still a problem too.