Final project overview

I have paired with someone different than the initial group intended. This is Clarissa.  She will be doing the pictures of the capital building in Olympia and one poem I shared with her seemed to fit the idea of how government is "viewed". The architecture being the obvious view whereas it's inner workings or people involved is another.

Small Class Writing Prompt

My writing contraint became writing using the influence children have upon my ways of teaching and learning as well as write.

The Rapture

There's nothing quite like living on a dying planet ravaged by war,  encircled by space based weapons platforms, to instill in the human heart a certain feeling of millenialism. We asked the citizens of Olympia how they felt about the coming Apocalypse at an undisclosed residential location last night.  Here's what they said:

Question #1:  If the Rapture were going to take place tonight, what would you do?
Question #2:  What if the Rapture has already happened, and this is the *THEN* what would you do?

Answer #1:  I'm not quite sure.
Answer #2:  I would look around to see who was left.  I'd be curious if the landscape changed at all -- buildings and natural landscape.

A#1:  Nothing different.  Watch some awesome bands.  Get tired. Go to sleep.
A#2:  Have sex in the streets.  Do a lot of drugs in public.

A#1:  Meet as many people as I can.  Have a party.  Have the time of my life.
A#2:  Then I guess I'd be fucked October 21st.  [ed note: supposed new date of the Rapture]

A#1:  I'd try to find my family.  My brother lives here, the rest live in Missouri.  I'd try to find my closest friends.
A#2:  I would just keep living how I'm living.

A#1:  I don't believe in the Rapture.  I would stand outside a bathroom drinking steel reserve  [what respondant is doing right now].
A#2:  (same)

A#1:  Same thing we do every night Pinky:  try to take over the world!
A#2:  I'd be doing this.

A#1:  Try to make a very strong connection with someone of the opposite sex.  And try to make the most of the time I have left, assuming I would be Raptured.
A#2:  Grab my dearest and run!

A#1:  Sit in the corner of Ladd's Inn (in Portland) and make art during karaoke, while Anna sings Barry White.
A#2:  I'd go to Olympia and go to the last show at [undisclosed location].

A#1:  Get loaded I guess.  I made burritos in honor of the Rapture.
A#2:  Go steal people's pets.  [respondant proceeds to relate the story of a man who started a business as a joke, offering to take care of people's pets after the Rapture, since they would be going to heaven, but he, being a heathen,  would remain on Earth, along with their souless pets.  It was supposed to be a joke, but people actually started paying him in advance for his services, and now he doesn't have to work any more].

A#1:  I wouldn't believe in it, even if it just happened.
A#2:  ----

A#1:  Lay on, in, or next to an old growth tree.
A#2:  Live as though my imagination controls my reality.

A#1:  I'd be happy because the conservative christians all got Raptured, and we're left to live out the glory days on Earth.
A#2:  Probably I would... party on!  We're still here!  It's a beautiful life.  -- do you have any drugs?

A#1:  Get baptized.  Convert to all religions.  Pray to every god there is.
A#2:  Party just as hard as I am now, and be so happy that all the conservative christian dicks are gone.

A#1:  Exactly what I'm doing now.  Searching for herbs.  Walking down the street.  Sex is always cool...  but I don't believe in the Rapture.  It reminds me of being a dinosaur, extinction... it doesn't mean Spirit doesn't still exist.
A#2:  it's no surprise.  do you know how many times I've thought that?

A#2:  Continue to do what I'm doing.  I'd have a lot of gratitude that the Creator, I mean, Decider, allowed me to continue this existence.  I guess I did something right. 

A#1: Everyone has to leave now or I'm going to go to jail.

Well there you have it folks.  The citizens of Olympia are an onery bunch, but they are clearly not without an appreciation for the Divine.

A Dream, After Notley

(Or some sort of lounge) (it’s very dark)

(‘cause they have) (these two women in) (white dresses)

(I tell her that I) (have just) (and she says)

(it happened to me too) (and I ask her) (when)

(and she says within) (a day) (and she says I know)

(the woman) (we move over) (to these couches) (we

start touching) (I notice that) (she’s a fish) (she’s a fish woman)

(she’s been transformed) (her body’s flat and) (her eyes)

(are almost drooping) (I know she’s from the ocean)

(I tell her) (that you look like you’re) (a sea creature)

(offend her) (by calling her a fish) (home) (and there’s

a string) (with a little sign) (and I can’t

read it) (I know it means) (you can’t come in)

(there’s a key-in code) (but I don’t) (want

to try) (because I think) (something bad) (would

happen if I) (enter)

-Whitney

And the Budget Work Goes On

Hey all - trying to get the word out about this event, put on by Fellowship of Reconciliation, that is continuing to work on the budget and war spending. Check it out!
 

Turn the Budget Around!

Sunday May 22 from 1:00 to 3:30 pm

Heritage Park, 5th Ave & Water Street, Downtown Olympia

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation and our campaign to Bring our Billion$ Home invite you to enjoy peace, justice, music and fun.

Military spending keeps going up – at the expense of cutbacks in social and environmental needs, aid for state and local governments, etc.  Congress won’t take leadership to change federal budget priorities.  Only a grassroots movement can do that.  The “Bring Our Billion$ Home” campaign wants to stop the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, cut military spending overall, and use the savings to fund the many things that we really need.

Bring big cardboard boxes to build a symbolic wall with images and messages about our wars and military budget on one side and peaceful alternatives (better ways to spend the money) on the other.  Use the art supplies we’ll have available to decorate our boxes.  We’ll build this wall – and then Turn the Budget Around!  Fun for all ages!  Enjoy music by the Artesian Rumble Arkestra and other performers.  Participate in the “penny poll.”  We’ll provide ten pennies representing the federal budget and invite you to allocate in several jars to show how you would spend our tax dollars.  Enjoy other “Bring Our Billion$ Home” activities – fun for the whole family!

Information about this event: Pat Holm, (360) 357-4151 frogprin@cco.net

Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation (360) 491-9093 www.olympiafor.org

Western Washington FOR (206) 789-5565 www.wwfor.org

wallstanding prompt

my thumbs are having ntrouble bending
my breath was shALLOW OR DEEP OR I'M NOT REALLY SURE IF I'M SHALLOW OR DEEP BUT IT WAS NOT MY OWN VERY MUCH
and WHAT CAN I ECVEN OWN VERY MUCH
IT WAS LIKE FUCKING OR CRYING, LOSING CONTROIL
MY BREATH LOSES CONTROL
AND IT BECOME FLUTTERING
but less beautiful


i feel very small
me and mycracking thumbs
are no one
and nothing
to be feeling pain and suffering
i have not had it hard
but what is that value


sick breath art fuckery i feel like i should have a beard
someone is watching me no one is watxhing me i could simply lie
i want to simply lie
i need other people for myself to be who i am
who ami i alone, without anyone to hehar me moan
without anyone to \hear the soft simmer of a slightly uncofortable ssss simmer from my fingertips
why did that ringing just start?


i think


im scared and im alone
but im not alone
this small box of a room could be anywhree
and anyone could be knocking
and im scarted but not for my life
i know that my life is not at the hands of whjoever might be out there
its a different kind
im a dirreent kind
its so much deper than unkind


i know there is carpet and food and anythiong
but i dont know what i cant see
i dont know anything even what i do see
i dont know anythin g, even what i can read


because just as myu breathe became a moths wing
em itting its winged whisperings
the same what that it did when i first happened upon my forbidden clit
in the same shame and hiding
i sacrificed my breath
to some other thing
i can't know this
why am i so diligently trying


my fingertips dont hurt anymore
my calves arent anymore at all really sore
i am free
                             in bargaining units.




I did the exercise in one of the single occupancy bathrooms in the library, and while I was writing someone knocked on the door and a buzzing began. The capital letters and misspellings are a result of the trickiness of organizing that which spills from you.

Enclosure in Docile Bodies

Enclosure is the limiting of physical spaces with only one purpose for one target population. It involves the "disciplinary monotony" of time. Discliplining space leads to disciplining people: in the eighteenth century, enclosure was intimately linked with the rise of capitalism (e.g., factory towns). The aim of enclosure is to "derive the maximum advantages and to neutralize the inconveniences" as production becomes more intensified and more concentrated.

#1

On torture...

A good friend (and former 'boss') of mine wrote this a few years ago. I think it's worth a read.

http://www.lacuadraonline.com/the-surly-bartender/the-surly-bartender-the-unfortunate-logic-of-torture/

how did we get here

“How Did We Get Here?”
“We want you to enjoy good seafood”

There’s hardly any left
Baste the filet in lemon juice
Delicious destruction, we devour the dying

“catching unwanted species”
Implying there are wanted and unwanted animals
All animals should be wanted

Avoid best choices good alternatives
“Caviar and Sturgeon (Imported Wild-caught)
Chilean Seabass/Patagonian Toothfish”

“There’s a limit to the fish in the sea”
But It's Not Just Fish
How can you see?
The sea
You see
Is dying

“a state of silent collapse”
Just because the sea is silent doesn’t mean it isn’t screaming
I can feel the sea dying around me
The water is itchy, my skin crawls with disgust, I emerge stinking of poison and pain

Ocean friendly, people friendly
The sea should be free
We forget who she is her body is burned and bleeding we wound our mother

Future of the Oceans “help turn the tide.”

~Dominique