New Millenium

The other day I booked a table for tonight (I hope... I made the reservation online and have not had any response from them yet) for dinner with a few friends at an Ethiopian restaurant. I wouldn't normally worry too much about reservations at an Ethiopian restaurant. It's one of my favourite cuisines in the world, but I guess others aren't as enthusiastic because the restaurants tend not to be too crowded.

My complacency got a bit ruffled this morning when I heard on the BBC news that Ethiopia is just now (as in today) celebrating the new millenium. Apparently sometime during the sixth century, the birth of Christ was pushed back a few years for everyone (at least for those who noticed and cared) except the Ethiopians. Now thrifty Ethiopians can break out the "2000" shaped glasses they've been hoarding for the past seven years and celebrate in style.

I hope we can still have dinner tonight.

Sunni Patterson

Amy Goodman had Sunni Patterson and Truth Universal on Democracy Now! the other day.



So we know this place,
for we have glanced more times than we'd like to share
into eyes that stare with nothing there
behind them but an unfulfilled wish
and an unconscious yearning for life
though death rests comfortably beside us.
At night their moans are louder.
They come to visit the guards at the gate,
and they stay until morning
torturing their guilt-ridden insides.
The silent cries of the keepers are louder
than the booms that come from the guns
they use to occupy the space.
And we know this place,
for we have seen more times than we'd like to imagine
bloated cadavers floating through waters of a city gone savage,
foraging the land for what can be salvaged.
But what can be saved when all is lost?
It happened in August, twenty-nine days in.
We are now five days out of the only place
we knew to call house and home.
Few things are certain:
one, we have no food;
two, there are more bodies lying at the roadside
than hot plates being distributed
or first aid being administered
or recognition as a citizen.
Fourteenth Amendment, X, refugee, check.

And we know this place.
It's ever-changing yet forever the same:
Money and power and greed, the game.
They suck and devour the souls of the slain.
What a feast for the beast at their table of shame
with napkins around necks that catch the blood that drains
from the flesh they chew, it's hailed again.

And we know this place, all too well,
dank with the smell of death and doom.
It hovers, it smothers, no growth, no room,
no pretty, no please, just grey, just gloom,
just burned me of hope, and it died too soon,
just juckin’, just jiving, just living, we just fools.

And we know this place. It’s decked in all its array and splendor,
golden streets with good intentions
capture our attention, gadgets and inventions
pesticide the food supply, flu-like symptoms,
diabetic condition, a cancer in the system,
held on hold, it’s a pistol to the temple.
Go run to the churches, tell reverend it’s simple.
Good works and good deeds is what equals redemption,
but tell me, please, Jesus never mentioned,
how do churchmen get extensions on freedom,
while children are being fondled
from the altar to the streets, then back to the sanctuaries?
It's kind of scary, ain’t it?
to know that both the prophet and the priest practice deceit,
then come to the people and claim peace, peace,
come to the people and claim love, love.
But where is the peace, huh?
Where is the love?
Where that balm in Gilead
that can heal the wounded soul
or make the half-man whole?

I swear, we know this place,
because we have vowed before never again to return,
but here we are, back in the desert,
dry mouth and thirsting for waters from Heaven.
But come, come, children, rally around,
and maybe together we can make a sound
that will shake the trees or rattle the ground,
make strong our knees,
we's freedom bound.

And we know this place.
Reclaim the crown.
Hold onto the prize,
never put it down.
Be firm in the stance,
no break, no bow,
got to forward on, Mama,
make your move now. Forward on, Papa,
make your move now.
Forward, dear children,
’cuz freedom is now.

-Sunni Patterson

Books

I brought almost no books with me to London, attempting to keep the weight of my luggage to a minimum. While here, I've bought very few books, due to constraints in budget and the heavy thought of carrying or mailing them back home next year. I have been making extensive use of my local library here, which has its own delights, and I've been keeping a list at goodreads.com to remember what I've read.

But I really miss having my favourite books around me. I miss favourite passages and poems that I look up and reread regularly. I miss friends' inscriptions in books that were gifts. Whenever (in spite of the risk to my bank account) I stop by a bookstore and catch sight of the uniform row of the Patrick O'Brian series, I reach out and caress the spines longingly. But the books I visit in bookstores are not mine. They don't open at the right places. They have the wrong covers (or it's wrong that they have a cover at all). They weren't devoured and absorbed and broken and stained by me and the people I've chosen to share them with.

My books are stuffed in boxes in my parents' attic, waiting for me to return and dust them off and restore them to their places of honour.

Blind Light

Yesterday I went with Alicia and some other friends of hers to the "Blind Light" exhibit at the Hayward Gallery. The installation for which the exhibit is named is a rectangular, brightly lit room of fog. Standing in the queue snaking around the perimeter, we watched people inside suddenly appear against the glass and then fade back into the fog. Some would smash against the glass with a loud thwack like birds flying into big windows. Others would tentatively grope for the wall with trembling hands.

Before we went in, I couldn't understand why everyone felt the need to actually touch the glass. Once you're close enough to discern the seams between the panels, and see outside, why would you need to actually press up against the glass as everyone inside seemed to be doing?

Once inside, though, it becomes clear. You can't see at all. The fog is so thick, you can't see your own feet, or even much of your legs. Looking up into the bright white fog, you could very well be outside instead of inside; there's no way to tell. Sometimes shadows would loom up in front of you, giving you a brief warning that there's someone else there, but often you'd just run right into other people. If you weren't walking too quickly, you'd have some notice that you were approaching the glass wall because the fog would get a bit darker. But it was still extremely difficult to discern the distance to the glass. You'd reach for it, and even with your fingers just an inch or two from the glass, you couldn't be sure if it was right there or another foot away. Also, it was hard to tell if you were coming at the glass perpendicularly, or from some other angle, making the glass slope towards or away from you. We were delighted, but some people were clearly disturbed and tried to head straight back out as soon as they got in, though this wasn't necessarily easy.

Installations like this and the slides at the Tate Modern indicate that contemporary artists are appropriating the role of amusement parks. I don't intend that as a criticism. I think their aims have never been particularly dissimilar, and these interactive exhibits are fun. In "Skyblaster Man", Peter Mayer sings "To be convinced you’re alive/It’s a mighty big job for a three minute ride/So he brings his powers to bear/As if he’s in prayer/While they’re in the air". As it was the last day of the exhibit and a Sunday afternoon, we had the queues of an amusement park to add to the impression.

There's a great fountain just outside the Hayward Gallery, with walls of water that subside long enough for you to jump inside the little square rooms. We were already damp from the exhibit inside, and the weather outside wasn't all that different from the interior of Antony Gormley's fog room, so we scooted inside the fountain, leaving us quite a bit wetter and colder than we had been.

We warmed up at a gaudy tex-mex restaurant. So I spent the evening giggling with the girls over tequila. The waiter provided us with cowboy hats, making us look like a hen party instead of a bunch of mathematicians and computer scientists.

I've put a few more photos here.