Across the world it is the same. When those with money arrive, those without cannot remain.
From the Beyoglu District in Instanbul
To the Kathputli Colony in Delhi
To the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver
To the small piece of land I visit every day
—–Just north of the railroad tracks
—–Beside an empty parking lot
—–With a few picnic tables and parking spaces
—–With free
———-Showers
———-Coffee
———-Computers
———-Wifi
———-Laundry services
———-Toiletries and clothing
———-Chairs for sitting or sleeping
———-Tables for visiting or playing cards with friends
———-TV for watching and
———-Radio for listening
—–With love and affection
—–Safety
—–And someone to welcome you and rejoice that you are present.
Across the world it is the same. When those with money arrive, those without cannot remain.
Homo Sacer
—–The Sacred One
Homo Sacer
—–The Accursed One
Homo Sacer
—–The Left-For-Dead
Homo Sacer
—–The Human Detritus
———-Of Civilization
———-Of Colonization
———-Of Neoliberalism
———-Of Revitalization Without Displacement
—————(also known as Gentrifuckation)
Homo Sacer
—–Drug Addict
—–Criminal
—–Chronically Homeless
—–Community Health Concern
—–Mentally Ill
—–Dual Diagnosis
—–Complex Trauma
Beloved
Alas
I know the path but my feet cannot walk to you today, my feet cannot walk with you today, my hands cannot greet your hands today – cracked and dirty and beautiful hands, old and young and impeccable hands – my eyes cannot look on you with love today. Nor can I receive your love today.
Alas
We are overrun
—–By Apathy
—–By shifting Funding Priorities
—–By Developers
—–By Greed
—–By Incident Reports
—–By Law and by
—–Death
Alas
And the words tattooed on my collar
—–καί πάλίν άναστήσομεν
Call to me like a voice rising from the grave
Wither, Thou, Spirit of Life?
My loved ones are ever only crucified.
—–“I love you,” I whisper
———-And burn.
Uncategorized
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September Reviews
Discussed in some manner in this post: 8 Books (White Rage; The Will To Power; Campo Santos; Bluets; The Red Parts; Selected Poems; Men in the Off Hours; The Man Without Qualities [Vol. 2]); 3 Movies (I Am Michael; Window Horses; It Comes At Night); 6 Documentaries (Oklahoma City; Bobby Sands; Mommy Dead and Dearest; Fire At Sea; Nostalgia for the Light; Rocco).
August Reviews
Discussed in this post: 4 Books (Caliban and the Witch; Exile and the Kingdom; Roughneck; and Alone); 3 Movies (The Lure; Innocence; and A Cure For Wellness); and 4 Documentaries (Kids for Cash; Kedi; All These Sleepless Nights; and The Memory of Justice).
July Reviews
Discussed in this post: 6 Books (The Drowned and the Saved; After Nature; The Great Leveler; Salvation by Allegiance Alone; The Remains of the Day; The Last Western); 4 Movies (Boy; Raw; Nostalghia; It’s Only The End of The World); 2 Documentaries (Nobody Speak; The Stairs).
Anti-Oppression Action: Flight, Infiltration, Criminality & Non/violence
[What follows are a series of theses co-authored by Alex Hundert and I for a workshop that we co-facilitated at the Cahoots Festival on June 10, 2017.]
Mandating Passivity: On Liberalism, Loving Enemies, and Punching Nazis
These are the faces you want to remember from this post.
1. The Butcher of Lyon
The past is never dead. It’s not even past. ~ William Faulkner
Towards the end of Hotel Terminus, Marcel Ophuls interviews Ute Regina (or is it Regine?) Messner. It is difficult to discover anything about Ute or her husband Heinrich (Heini?) or their family. Their presence on the internet is practically nil. I was able to find only one undated photograph of them together in Bolivia. One wonders what Heinrich was doing with the German community in Bolivia but no answers are forthcoming. What one finds about Ute are references to one or two documentaries and in a few press releases related to her presence at her father’s trial. About Heinrich, I could find nothing. Is he the Austrian Olympic skier of the same name, about whom one can only find records of his ski results and nothing at all about his personal life? That Ute was reported to live at an Austrian ski resort at Kufstein, where her husband worked as a teacher makes this a tempting proposal. When Heinrich Messner, the alpine skier, retired from professional skiing, he taught at a ski school, but Wikipedia says this school was at Steinach am Brenner in the Austrian province of Tyrol (a one hour drive from Kufstein) so it is hard to know what to make of this, if anything. Were this to be a Borgesian tale, and perhaps in a way it is, one could also mention a Reinhold Messner – another mountaineer from the Italian Province of South Tyrol (which, one soon discovers, may be the same place as the Austrian province of Tyrol), whose picture, speaking at an event nine years ago in the Kufstein Arena, can also be found online. Reinhold’s father, Josef Messner, like Heinrich Messner, is reported to be a teacher. I could find no pictures of this Josef (was Josef one of Heinrich’s names?), although I did discover a Franz Josef Messner who, of all things, was a leader of anti-Nazi resistance in Austria and who, after being betrayed, was sentenced to death in the gas chamber at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.
Last evening, it began to snow.
Last evening it began to snow. The snow fell until this morning, a slushy combination of water and ice, falling more in globs than flakes, that never quite turned into rain because a cold north wind was blowing and causing the temperature of the air to drop by about six degrees. Walking into the wind, shortly before noon, wearing long johns, gloves, and a balaclava, I felt as though I was journeying through the heart of winter. For the last few months, it appears as if the seasons are blurring together and moving rapidly in and out of each other. Time has become confused.
March Reviews
Barely discussed in this post: 7 Books (The Mush Hole, On the Natural History of Destruction, The Silent Angel, Satantango, The Failure of Nonviolence, They Chose Life, and The Evidence of Things Not Seen), 5 Movies (The Love Witch, Moon, Goodbye to Language, Get Out, and The Tribe); and 5 Documentaries (Just Do It, The Sorrow and the Pity, The Eagle Huntress, I Am Not Your Negro, and The Russian Woodpecker).
“A Faceless People On This Land”: Exploring the Christian History of the Mohawk Institute
Introduction: “A Magnificent Work”
On November 6, 1944, the Most Reverend P. Carrington, Archbishop of Québec and Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Canada, wrote to the Secretary of Indian Affairs to express his dismay that the federal government was considering altering the dynamics of the Mohawk Institute – a residential school for Indigenous children located on the Six Nations reserve outside of Brantford, Ontario. For a century, the school Principals had been Anglican clergymen nominated by the New England Company (NEC) or the Anglican Diocese of Huron but the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) was seeking to change that.[1] Archbishop Carrington writes:
I am informed that the Department is considering the idea of radically changing the whole character of the School by putting it under a Layman as a Principal…
I was very much shocked when I heard of this proposal to bring to an end a religious and educational tradition which has been established for so long, and I am sure that Anglicans generally throughout Canada would hear of this decision with regret and amazement.[2]
February Reviews
Briefly discussed in this post: 5 books (one on apocalyptic stuff, another Sebald, dipped my toes into Lovecraft, failed to empathize with Didion, but smiled through Tiqqun); 2 movies (artsy French thing and indie thriller thing) and 6 documentaries (mixed bag of nuts here… with emphasis on the word nuts…).