Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

I want to write, individually, to everyone who has helped me, been willing to talk about the call for commentary itself, who took the time to do a careful reading and make awesome stylistic suggestions (I’m looking at you Chuckie!).

For now, it’s going to be a group hug, a collective thanks.

Throughout this project, I thought a lot about how this kind of writing needs some sort of institutional infrastructure, something, so that you have a forum to play with ideas: float, test, experiment, toy, flesh out, exercise, elaborate… In academia, you have the daily exercise of teaching to help you think through ideas. You have places to test ideas with students, colleagues, opponents. There are the hallway conversations - and no, I’m under no illusions about the supposed “civic ideal” of academia in that regard. In academia, all too often, it’s impossible to ever appear as if you might not know something… I can’t fathom writing colleagues in academia with my Ellie Mae questions, the way I’ve done with you guys. I mean, I’d do it anyway – and did it anyway – but I suspect I would have eventually learned to stop.

The institutional infrastructure of conferences, brownbags, reading of student papers, presentations, the emailing, even the grading of papers, etc. – it all comes together, creating this place where, day in and day out, you can churn out ideas and thoughts and get feedback, even if it’s the ritualized void that academics too often experience.

Most important: time. You have time in academia. It’s not just that you are paid to spend your day thinking and writing or doing things that support thinking and writing. I also mean flexible time - more than anyone who has to have their ass in a seat by 8:30 and leaving no earlier than 5:30. It’s just different. Some day, I will explain.

So, time. I had to squeeze in this writing, editing, and thinking at lunch, after work, on weekends between cleaning, meetings, family time, etc. Never any sustained *time*: an hour here, 37 minutes there, maybe 4 hours over here, 10 minutes stolen from my employer between bouts of bug fixing.

The thoughts and ideas would come to me at the damnedest times – damnedest, as in no time to find a place, any place, to write them down. I had none of that, not even a daily churn at the blog. There was simply no time. All the interviews, the attending meetings, the observations, the fieldnotes, the transcription. The listening, again, to make sure I had it right. And then the writing, and editing, and writing some more.

So you guys *were* my academia, especially Dennis, Eric, Sean, Alan, Ken, Dwayne, Jeff, Charles. But there were others who replied early on: Chuck, SA, Michael, Justin, Carrol, Julio. You all helped kickstart me. There was Ruthless Critic, James Heartfield, Jim F, Ilestre, Mike Beggs, socialism or barbarism – all of whom, at LBO, poked and prodded at my questions as they came up. Most of those questions ended up forming background thinking, or just ideas that never went anyway in the essay itself, but shape it nonetheless.

And then there was WL, who I’ll leave initialized for now. But I have to say that her letters of invitation and response were, how can I say it? Inspiring? Sustaining? They provided me with something - an ideal? Something toward which to strive, aspire? I don’t know, but it was a calm presence, the gesture of smile and a hand extended through words… It was a lifeline, for whatever ineffable reasons. And the worst part is, I didn’t even really realize how important these letters were until, maybe, three weeks ago, when I finally really read them. I had been so buried in work, so bogged down with commitments that I could only skim. It never sunk in, then. I thought: I must have appeared oblivious, ungrateful, clueless. Yes, most definitely to the former and latter. Not that one there, squeezed in the middle. 

So, for the individual thanks, I hope to do that — on my vacation.

But right now, I am mentally and, weirdly, physically exhausted. I am writing a big fat collective: THANKS!

For those of you who don’t know, I was writing a commentary for a new section of South Atlantic Quarterly, “Against the Day.” The purpose is to take up current issues, in the context of a journal that is print-based and, thus, takes forever to produce, Because it takes so long, it’s hard to get timely commentary – especially when compared to the rapid transmission of thoughts, ideas, crackpottery, snark, bullshit we get so used to with Web 2.0! (Aside: I got half way through Jaron Lanier’s You are Not a Gadget and had to put it aside. He’s right that the very user interface and user experience — the design and experience with which you, the user, interact — of Web 2.0 inevitably generates that slide from thought –> bullshit. If the user interface were changed up, Lanier argues, things *could* be different. Alas, it just wasn’t compelling to read someone so relentlessly willing to posit, posit, posit and never ever ever offer anything to back him up. feh. Maybe I’ll try another time.)

Meanwhile, there was that commentary to write, which was on the effects of Obama’s presidency on the Left. You can imagine just how inspired I was by that topic. Obama who? Oh. Yeah. That guy. President is he?. Wevs. I mean, I just don’t care. I don’t even get the venom directed his way. The venom. I’m reading Dennis Perrin’s Savage Mules here ‘n’ there. I just can’t care about democrats and their bloody savage history. Read it and think, yeah, so? Maybe I just never loved loved loved Democrats. I admired *people* who were Democrats. But the party? Maybe I’ve been around Dennis et al., exposed to the critique already, but it just doesn’t snap my britches and set me straight.

So, Obama? His effect on the Left? Zero, OK? Next question? In fact I think in the first rough, I said something like that.

Thus, there was the demotivation, in a way. I was highly motivated to want to know what others, who called themselves “left” said. But then the constraints of the form cut in and I was unable to pursue that.

For someone, like me, who can pump out wordage in no time flat when I’m on a roll, it was huge exercise in NOT being able to do that effectively. Why? No clue. I’ve never had a problem typing. It’s not that I can’t write at a computer. That’s all I’ve ever really used. It’s not as if the ideas don’t come at a keyboard. So, why, all of a sudden, did I find that I was more productive sitting outside at a cafe table in front of a bookstore, at 3 p.m. when no one’s at lunch but me, writing away in longhand? Fuckifino.

After three weeks of this, people finally decided to drop by and ask, “What exactly are you doing?” I realized that I’d been so self-absorbed; they probably thought I fancied myself a Big Important Writer Who Writes At Cafes. *chortle*

They would stop to ask: Are you grading papers? Whatchya writing? School paper? I have one of those due. Ugh.

This woman I now from work, she sits at the next table sometimes. Before this, we would talk, sharing details about what we are reading, talking about our kids, she telling me about her struggle to raise two kids, work, go to college. Wanting to be a photographer, but having to settle for social worker or special ed teacher - to be practical. She told me that she’d see me writing, absorbed, as if I was in my own world. She’d looked forward to seeing me that day because she was reading a bio about a well-known black photographer, whose name escapes, and she wanted to know if I’d heard of him. But there I was, writing as if I was unaware of the world around me.

Another day, I was trying to get something down, a thought had occurred to me - I swear, fifteen different book ideas are floating around this place after this writing jag. I was desperate to get it out b/c it was just piling up and I was going to forget it if I didn’t write it down. This girl comes flying out of the building next door, full of piss and vinegar. She apparently needed someone with whom to talk about the interview she just had and how she was psyched she was going to get it and it was a bartender job and, by definition, a step up from waitressing and probably more money too and where was her boyfriend, oh where? He’d be so excited when he dropped her off, hoping… And oh did I interrupt you? You were writing. writing what? Oh, yes, I like being a waitress, real fine. It’s just that tending bar, so much more opportunities. You know what I mean, so yes, you used to tend bar? Really? So you know what I mean? Oh there’s my boyfriend now. Do you have a light? Sir, do you have light. Shit, I needed a drag so bad. Oh this is going to be great weekend. It’s my birthday weekend. 21, thank you. I can’t wait. I’m gonna get a new job Monday, I just know it. And I’m going to turn 21 this weekend. It is my year. MY year.

I was exhausted just listening to her.

In grad school, one of my cohort told me that she smoked because she found it easier to write and think. Apparently, she’s read somewhere that a lot of writers smoked or had certain habits that formed these teensy distractions, just enough, to allow you to think better. If that makes sense. So, the idea is, sitting in pure quiet would make it hard to write, better to have the radio on. maybe sitting at the cafe at 3 p.m. with the buses driving by, the downtown Greenies stopping by to offer candy and hello, the scent of women walking by… all comprised my distractions.

Having so much to say and so little wordage to say it in was a challenge, and one I loved and hated. It was a great learning experience, that’s for sure. I can see, now, why writers sometimes love what they do. It’s fascinating to dump it all out there and whittle away, to concentrate meaning into as few words possible. It’s bizarre to step back and see the writing evolve, see what you get attached to and find hard to give up, see what comes out when you finally, reluctantly, let it go. It gave me renewed appreciation for writers like Ehrenreich and Henwood who say it so eloquently, concisely - and humorously!

The “ethnography” part was difficult. I have standards for ethnography - critical, feminist - but they are impossible to uphold in the space of a commentary. Pretty much everything has to go. You simply can’t employ the tools of the trade.Hell, you can’t really even do it in an article length piece. So, it’s not ethnography. In fact, it does everything that feminists, critical theorists, and postmodernists rejected about conventional ethnography. You don’t know the people particularly well. They are reduced to their demographics: race, gender, age, occupation. They are merely a springboard from which to say something that I might have said anyway. Alas.

Then there is the issue of characterizing exchanges where I got a glimpse of what it must feel like as a fiction writer. It occurred to me, during the successive rewrites, that whatever it is that is this thing we call postmodern, it has to have been inevitable with the emergence of the modernist novel form – or maybe just all the writing people do with modernity, at least the intellexshules. No other conclusion could have been reached that postmodernism, once you do all that writing and rewriting. Which is completely opposite to what I usually think. i.e., that’s a pretty darn idealist characterization that I’d never engage otherwise. Too much of a materialist for that. But all that reflection on reflection on reflection for the fiction writer… inevitable. postmodernity was inevitable. And why not? It’s not just the novel. There’s all that reflection upon reflection upon reflection that goes on if you are characterizing any text, yes? So, if I characterize what Marx said in his letters to Arnold Ruge, I become acutely aware, in the essay form, of all that I’m responsible for saying and not saying, how you can shape what people think of a text based on what you say - and don’t. All this writing with modernity. The printing press caused postmodernity I am pretty sure. …

What I’m thinking of his how Chuckie said, after reading the first draft, something about my use of the letters to Arnold Ruge and how they were a product of Marx’s thinking at the time and that his thinking changed and etc. I knew that, and yet I use the text anyway to illustrate a point. Which, of course, as Chuckie said, could be amply illustrated in other ways in Marx’s work.

What else did I learn? That I’ve forgotten about ‘death to passive voice’ since I stopped writing so much in corporatelandia. I still write quite a bit, it’s just not vetted through a communications department like it used to be. Oh, and I enjoyed the challenge of writing for a different kind of forum, more academic, and to an audience with whom I was totally unfamiliar. That’s hard to do.

When you write on blogs and email lists you may, at first, be writing into the void. But eventually you have correspondents and interlocutors and opponents and allies and fans and snipers and gripers, all of whom you get to know, and they are voices in your head as you write. You are writing to, with, for, against, on, and over them. But they are there, irrigating the field of your writing and thoughts. Which is true for most writers, I suppose. So, that was interesting, thinking about that. Now, I’m going to go have more coffee, see if I can perk up and find energy to clean the office and get ready to……………………

V.A.C.A.T.E. !!!!!!!!

I am off to relax in Ocracoke in the Outerbanks. I found a sweet deal on a rental, one block back from the ocean. I got my taste of being practically *IN* the ocean last year — and during a Nor’easter. After awhile, all that constant, unrelenting, pounding, crashing of surf…. Look: people never lived directly on the ocean for most of human history because it was fucking irritating!

The weatherguessers are predicting nasty weather. Of course! My second vacation in my entire adult life and it’s is going to be horrible weather, just like my first ever vacation. But! This time I rented a place with a pool table, game room, and home theater. This time, the place does not have wicker furniture. This time, there are three different sofas to lounge on. If I end up sick (like last year) or holed up inside keeping out of the rain, I have books galore, mending, a pack of cards, pool table, foosball, and movies.

Then, I’m going to visit Sonshine in Limpdick where I will, again, find a place to park my ass near the beach. Then, for the first time EVAR I will go to Orlando. I have never been to Disney. All that time in FL, never went. Too poor. And if I had money, it went to the kid. So…. I decided Seaworld would be much more fun. I can’t wait for the roller coaster or whatever it is they are called these days. All I know is: I see a picture of it on the Seaworld brochure I picked up when I got discount tickets at the Navy’s MWR office. Oh! The brochure says it’s called Manta, the Flying Sea Ray. Some kind of roller coaster-type ride anyway. And hopefully there will be water slides.

I also want to go to the Clearwater Aquarium which was damned awesome when we went years ago. It’s a working aquarium and all the animals were rescued because they lost flippers, got stuck in a oil slick, were beached from some weather event, etc. Anyway, for my reading this year, this is the list of what I’m bringing. Yes, more than I can read, even me at a-book-a-day speed, but that’s because I want to have variety in case I decided I’m just not into it:

Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
Censoring an Iranian Love Story, Shahriar Mandanipour
The Futurist, James Othmer
Wetlands, Charlotte Roche

Embedded with Organized Labor, Steve Early
The Meaning of Sarkozy, Badiou
Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri
An Illuminated Life: Bella da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, Heidi Ardizzone

If you’re still reading: thanks a ton, ton, ton!