Reason #67 We Don't Have Children

We can't even make our cat behave!




We haven't been able to keep her off the kitchen counters lately and last night she jumped up on them right in front of us!!

the parental unit has arrived

She: You know why your dad likes me so much don't you?

LoA: Why is that dear?

She: I know how to use power tools, I build work benches, I plaster the wall when you knock a dent in it with the vacuum cleaner....

[momentary silence]

She: I am like the son he never had.

back in the desert again

hello to anyone still reading!

it has been a good month and a half since i posted and many things have happened including my annual bout of winter depression and anxiety: fun, fun. why am i so arrogant every year as to think, this year it will be different? if i can be permitted self-indulgent moping for a few moments -- and since i am probably the only one reading at this point, why not -- i reach that point where answering the phone becomes a serious challenge and is exhausting.

anyway, i came back from the holidays and completely crashed. this, combined with a move into a new home, and the beginning of a new semester of teaching, has made for no writing. hopefully this has now passed.

i have missed reading and interacting with so many of you. i hope you are well. i owe a special thanks to koonj and roohi hussain. koonj because she promoted this blog last year, and roohi, who read that promotion and put me in contact with people she knew. i am now in the process of writing an article on the art of iman maleki and alaleh alamir for the pakistani journal NUKTA. thank you very much. that opportunity has made me very happy.

best wishes to everyone, and i will be talking more here soon,
LoA.

tragedy; or, two sides of the road

LoA, "The North-Side of the Road #1: 1 of 4" (Christmas 2006)

tragedy does not refer to just any old sad event, nor it is a term to be used to describe catastrophes without some further qualification. according to hegel at least, tragedy is a technical term that is used to describe the inevitable moment in which a conflict arises between two relative goods. perhaps his most famous example, and certainly one of the triumphs of hegelian literary interpretation, is the play Antigone, with its conflict between antigone and creon over the burial of their brother. the brother participates in an attack against their city and is killed. he lies dead in the field beyond the city walls. creon, the ruler of the city, declares that anyone who goes out to bury the dead will themselves be put to death. but antigone does sneak out and bury their brother. creon follows through and puts her to death by enclosing her in a cave.

this play is the height of tragedy for hegel and represents one of the most fundamental conflicts: the conflict between family and city. this the tension that arises between one's family or the ties of blood, especially symbolized by the female for hegel, and political, which is an expression of one's free rationality. but just because each is a relative good does not mean there is not an order to preference in hegel. the family is, in the tradition of roman law, the foundation of the state in hegel, but it only becomes a solid foundation for the state by being transcended, and seen in its relativity. in other words, the political is the consummation of familial ties. it translates natural family bonds into rationally formed free relations between persons -whether blood relations and not. without the family the state cannot be, but if the family is taken as an end in itself it will disrupt the functioning of human freedom in the political sphere by fragmenting the human community. it is a good that must be defended (antigone), and it is a danger that must be overcome in favor of what is higher (creon).


LoA, "The Sound-Side of the Road #1: 2 of 4" (Christmas 2006)


today antigone lives to the East'ard and in a manner that would be considered low drama to most people, tragedy is slowly unfolding again. how else can one explain the actions of the native residents of the island than through recourse to the very insightful hegelian category of tragedy. in novemeber of 2006 a ballot initiative was put before the full time residents of the East'ard: ought the island incorporate into a town with a local government or should it remain an unincorporated area. the idea of incorporation and the formation of a local government was roundly defeated.

the initiative came to the ballot in the wake of certain real estate developments that had taken place over the course of the last couple years. on the west end of the small island, just as one comes over the bridge that links the East'ard to the West'ard a fairly substantial housing project had been undertaken, and while a few locals bought homes there, the prices were such that the project was clearly aimed at wealthier outsiders who were looking for either retirement homes, or summer beach homes. the homes were beautiful but beyond the reach of most native residents. then, in the summer of last year, a small home, more towards the eastern end sold. it sat on a moderate sized piece of property and the home itself was hardly remarkable: brick, old construction, in need of some moderate repair. there was nothing remarkable about the home other than its view of the water. it was the type of home that residents of the island, with a small family, could eventually hope of having for themselves. until that day, when the home sold for approximately 1 million dollars. this radically changed the landscape of the East'ard, and as i travelled around the island over new years it became clear that the island was for sale. long time residents were cashing in.

and so the ballot initiative: would the people of the East'ard incorporate and take control of the now inevitable development their long time home, or would they refuse to incorporate and allow it develop in a manner completely beyond their control. while it may seem counter-intuitive, it is not surprising that they refused to incorporate, and indeed was rather easily predictable. government is not looked upon with any sympathy by locals, as they have fought long battles with the foreigners of government who try to regulate their fishing: what can they catch, when can they catch it, how can they catch. the government comes along and interrupts their livelihood and the long traditions of fishing that they have practiced for generations. why would they want to invite 'government' to come and set up shop right on their very island, to come along and tell them how to live their lives. they have always handled their lives just fine themselves through the long-standing ties of familial relations that bind all the residents together by nature.


LoA, "The Sound-Side of the Road #2: 3 of 4" (Christmas 2006)

by nature and not by freedom. they failed to make the decision to transform, to consummate these unchosen and given relationships, into some freely chosen and political, and so they have agreed to the death sentence that is inevitably going to follow on their way of life. their life is being purchased from around them and soon they will no longer be at home in their own home. nature will be disrupted by something other. one of two things is bound to occur. north carolina has a very liberal law governing city expansion. it is for the most part a good law as it has kept urban decay to a minimum in nc. according to the law, cities can, of their own volition, and without the consent of party being annexed, include outlying, unincorporated land within their city boundaries if they provide certain basic city services to that area. so either, the Town, which lies a short distance across the water, will see the rising property values and decide to incorporate the East'ard in order to gain the revenues of those tax values and the natives will be unable to stay to due the sudden and dramatic addition of city property taxes, or the newcomers who are moving the East'ard, the so-called ditdotters and dingbatters, will, once they represent the controlling majority on the island, incorporate the East'ard to prevent its incorporation by the Town. meanwhile the natives can exert no control on the manner in which their island is developed or what is built there because there are no zoning regulations of any kind in what 'the government' views as essentially free territory. large homes are being built, on the water of course, immediately across the road from trailer parks. there is talk of condos being put in at one end of the island.


LoA, "The North-Side of the Road #2: 4 of 4" (Christmas 2006)


antigone is once again being shut in her cave, of her own choosing, to die. and no matter how she curses creon, her unshakeable belief in the ultimacy of the natural ties of family, against that autonomy which involves rational-freedom, political freedom, brings upon her her own condemnation.

-LoA

east of the east'ard

let us call the island "the East'ard": as the natives say, i'ma headed to the East'ard. it was the place i was born and the home of my mothers half of the family to this day. it is the site of my granny's home and the place i spent new years with my family. the East'ard is a small island: 5mi long and 3mi wide at the widest point, much narrower than that for the most part. the folks who have lived to the East'ard for the bulk of their lives are fishermen and dredgers, married to women who have raised large families and can dip snuff and spit t'bacca as well as any man and better than most. they are what one would call the salt of the earth, and indeed you spend much time on the East'ard and you will be a bit salty yourself. the East'ard is not the end of the earth, but it is your last stop before you arrive there. many of those who live on the East'ard have relatives on the Banks, especially on Ocra'co. in the not so distant past mail travelled from the East'ard to the Banks and back by means of the coast guard who maintained a post at the end of the East'ard, known as Shell Point, and on Cape Lookout at the Lighthouse. my mother remembers her grandfather running the mail back and forth on his boat.

Cape Lookout is no longer a coast guard station and the last of the homes over on the Cape were closed a few years back. but the light still runs...and it can be seen from most anywhere to the East'ard. i offer the view from Shell Point: Cape Lookout Lighthouse lies 4mi east of the East'ard.


LoA, "Cape Lookout Lighthouse from Shell Point" (Christmas 2006)

best wishes to y'all, and real posts to follow tomorrow.
good night.
LoA.

my first home

there are many pictures and posts about life on the Island that will follow once we get back from our christmas forray (as early as tomorrow). today i share a simple picture of the first place i lived. this was the lot where my parents trailer sat when i was born...many years ago.


LoA, "Baby-LoA's First Home" (2007)

best wishes and happy new year to you all,
LoA.

christmas cheer

my sister clarifies her feelings...


Christmas Bag, (Christmas 2006)

north carolina: its about the tobacco, stupid!

for those of you looking for something a little less likely to put you to sleep than an account of poverty in a 1st century christian author, i offer the following...

let us call the year 1980: it is a nice round number and my memory is not so good when it comes to years. my life is divided by events: before saudi, saudi, after saudi, college, masters, ph.d, now. this falls in the years just before saudi.

we referred to my maternal grandmother as 'granny'. now my granny was quite the character, and indeed i should start a new segment called "granny stories" just for nancy, because i know she loves them so much (yes, that's right, i know you are out there, even if you are just lurking). anyway, one saturday afternoon, granny drives into town (where my family is from, 'town' is anywhere with a stop light, but generally refers to the western half of the county) to go shopping at piggly wiggly (a grocery store) and eckards (a drug store). upon arriving she promptly proceeds to lock her purse in the car. so, she finds a pay phone (what did we do before cell phones?) and calls my father to come and help her.

the drive into 'town' is about 15minutes from where my parents have their house (about 25 mintues from granny's house, for those who are trying to draw a map), and my father was working in the backyard. so let's say he took 7 minutes to clean up a little, and get the things he needed to get her car unlocked and then add the 15minutes to drive into town. this adds up to a grand total of 22minutes. so let us say my father arrives at granny's location 22minutes after she calls. he arrives to find her standing by the car, the driver's side window broken in. granny has thrown a brick through the driver's side window so that she could get into her car. "why?" you might ask, has she done such a thing. it would be a very natural thing for you to ask, and not surprisingly my father also asked this question. granny's answer: "my ciggies were in my purse."

just by the way, in the way of a post-script...granny called the police to report that someone had vandalized her car!

-LoA.

god is not rich

i hate those people that tell you
money is the root of all that kills
they have never been poor
they have never known the joy of a welfare christmas

everclear, "i will buy you a new life," so much for the afterglow (1997)

Edward Blair Leighton, "The Charity of St.Elizabeth of Hungary" (c.1900)

i spent the better part of this past semester arguing to my students that francis may have been crazy, but if he was it was the good kind of crazy. i argued that francis needed to be interpreted not merely economically and politically, though this was important, but as a mystic, in the tradition of pseudo-dionysius and meister eckhart; that there was little distance between bonaventure's theory and francis's praxis.

partly i made this argument for my own benefit. i have always struggled a bit with the franciscan tradition and the belief that poverty was a good. in the 21st century the distance between the medieval mendicant orders looks small, but the franciscans really were radical in a way that, for instance, their nearest contemporaries, the dominicans, were not. for dominic, poverty was pragmatic. wealth symbolized corruption, decadence and heartlessness to those dominic was trying to reach. thus dominic insisted that the order lay aside wealth in order to reach those persons. francis on the other hand embraced poverty as a good.

i grew up in a home that was poor. the poor child of parents who were pulling their own way out of even greater poverty. my father spent most of his childhood in a small two room house that i only knew as a shed, leaning precariously to one side, used to store my great-uncle's lawn mower and a few other gardening items. it fell down a few years ago when a hurracaine blew it over. my parents were both the first in their families to get college educations. my father did not finish his until well after i was born. my mother, who was, in her youth, a better student, never used her teaching degree to earn money until after my little sister left home when i was in my 20s. i came along and interrupted her plans of being an elementary school educator.

we lived in a trailer in the middle of a large trailer park: the north carolina sun beating down and baking my mother in summers so that she would flee, me in tow, to the shopping mall or grocery store in order to find air conditioning. my first christmas was a green-stamp christmas. i have vague memories of our already outdated black and white television being broken for several years because they could not afford to fix it. there was a small (and later larger) garden through-out my childhood, not because my parents had any particular interest in gardening, but because it meant they did not have to buy so many vegetables. i could go on...

the truth is, i was so young i did not realize we were poor and by the time i was old enough to be able to comprehend it my father had completed his engineering degree and was working full time and we were not poor any longer. nonetheless it gradually became clear to me that we had been poor and that this was not the poverty of francis. this poverty hung about the necks of my parents like a millstone and they needed, desparately, to get out from under it. the poverty of francis was meant to be freeing, and freedom lived in pursuit of god. the goal was to create a situation in which one no longer desired anything other than god. and so, just as the great mystics would strip away every concept that stood between them and god, so also, francis insisted on stripping away every physical reality. it was a struggle to master not only the mind, but the desires of the body as well: to recover the beautiful edenic life, where body responded to mind, and reason and the will governed the material order.

it is a truism of medieval theology that god does not need anything. god is the Whole, full and complete. and if one is to be engodded, if is to be an alter-Christus, as francis's companions identified him, one must also desire nothing. this could only happen when one let-go and could simply be. god does not have nor possess, nothing belongs to god as a piece of property, god is the One that is also All, with nothing to lose or gain. for francis poverty was the way of capturing that idea, a way of reaching the point where one could simply identify in one's being and will with the divine in perfect love.

i am not poor; indeed i am, when looking at the world in its entirety - though this perspective is lost if one lives in america too long - one of the rich, one of the aristocrats, so fascinated by francis. i am elizabeth of hungary, looking for some way to lay aside my crown. having been spared the poverty of my family's background, i am now unable to find the poverty of francis and am instead trapped within the poverty of riches. i still have my theoretical issues with "voluntary poverty", but where will one find an alter-francis, in any case, that could show one the way?

-LoA