D is for Denouement (A Letter I Sent)
JY,
I am not much of one for loose ends. When asked a question, I ponder and respond. When I am asked out to lunch, I make time and schedule.
When I asked you to lunch, I hoped, considering the courage and sincerity behind the offer, that you would be responsive with your honest interest or disinterest and a moment of your time. I have not heard from you about a time. As contract has taught me, silence is not acceptance. As life as taught me, some things are better left unsaid; and later on is sometimes too late.
I wish you happiness and peace.
M
M is for the Man (I met on Myspace)
D,
It was absolutely amazing in Detroit last night. I normally catch a cab outside my building, but it was bumper-to-bumper traffic with more people flooding into the city than out of it. So, I started walking down Woodward. I live in Circus Park – I can see the stadium from my window – and was headed to the starting point of the crawl – Cass Café. Random people were high-five-ing me. People were lined up to get in bars. It was Detroit at its best, and it really moved me. (Oh, yes, I survived the pub crawl, but I feel a little like a Mejiers Goldfish in a plastic baggie being held by a spastic kid with a penchant for shaking things).
I am a big advocate of people living, working and playing in this city. Unfortunately, the major problems of Detroit don’t reside in and won’t be solved by its “downtown.” Even if the downtown was pristine, the neighborhoods would still be suffering from crime, poverty, and much despair. Back in the day what made Detroit such an amazing place was not its downtown, but its neighborhoods – each one had a factory where people worked and had higher incomes than the national average. These neighborhoods supported the city proper and when they declined (due to factory closures, riots, white flight, what have you), the city center declined as well. I hope sincerely that downtown revitalization efforts will have a trickle-out effect the neighborhoods, because otherwise, impoverished majority-minority areas are, more often than not, largely ignored.
If you are ever interested to know, I could also tell you how housing code laws to protect renters and cheap government-subsidized home loans led to rampant home abandonment in Detroit.
Back to the Tigers. I tend to be a play-offs only sports fan. I’ll watch anything but football, really. Yesterday’s game was amazing.
Yeah. I actually know that Starbucks is good to its employees etc. I just love to hate them (especially when they stomp out the ma and pop coffee places. The are also everywhere in Europe – can’t one continent be sacred!!)
Edward Gorey Burping Cloth: R is for Retch.
BMW M3: I’ve driven one. It’s worth it. Although a Maserati Gransport is more worth it. Excellence Through Passion…indeed.
I’ve heard interesting things about people who work in advertising. I wonder if it is all true.
The Rowland Café in the Guardian Building suits my coffee requirements. Have you been to the Guardian Building?
M
H is for hell and heaven
The first diet was made of multicolored cards labeled with “starch” or “fruit” or “meat.” If I had a piece of fruit, I moved a card over. When all the cards were gone, I had to stop eating. My mom told me a story of a family who put locks and chains on their pantry and cupboards, so the kids couldn’t eat. I was worried, so I measured success by the number of cards still left to eat at the end of the day. The next diet was by Richard Simmons. Yes folks, I did Dancing to the Oldies. I watched videos about people getting skinny and crying. I cried. Wait, I bawled. I wanted to be that skinny person. I went through diets where I kept the ice cream in the fridge. I wouldn’t crave it if I could have it at any time, right? Wrong. Diets where I systematically eliminated anything fattening from my fridge, pantry, and cupboards. I soon went nuts. Binged and well, didn’t purge. Next came Weight Watchers. Fail, repeat, fail, repeat. South Beach, fail, repeat, binging and purging, fail, no repeat (eating is my talent – not vomiting) Atkins, fail, repeat, liquid diet, fail, fail fail. If Oprah was a diet, I was on it.
Infatuation with the fat inside me incites inner inferiority and exterior imitation leads to illumination of my imperfections, illumination of imperfections, illumination of my imperfections.
Enter super-expensive food store shortly after the New Year. Resolution #1: Don’t eat so much. Buy ice cream determined to only eat it once a week. Resolution #2: Start exercising. Walk up and down isles twice. Resolution #3: Fuck it. Wait. This is too Bridget Jones.
JY and I go for Ben and Jerry’s at 9:45 on a Sunday night. We pass by a group of girls: skinny and dressed to the nines in the latest “I just left the gym” look, which is at odds with the meticulously applied make-up. As they discuss how much they ate over the holidays, I overhear Brunette #2 remark, “I’m soooo not eating.” I look at JY, smirk, and say, “I’m sooooo not eating.” He grabs me, hugs me, and gives me big-fabulous kiss. The girls stare; J doesn’t look like a guy who would kiss a fat girl.
L is for Letter (to a stranger)
Y,
I think the world may be coming to an end; I put up a myspace profile. It's called , and not quite complete. I sent a request to add you as a friend. The funniest thing was when I looked at your pictures and noticed your picture of (yourself?) as batman. I also have a picture of myself as batman, but I was probably 6 years old. Awesome.
My apologies for the delay in response. I've had a busy week. Kimberly Crenshaw was at my school last week. I think she's amazing and brilliant. She spoke on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) & Affirmative Action and on intersectionality & critical race theory. In Michigan, my lovely state, a bunch of lovely people are trying to do away with "preferences" by making affirmative action illegal. They call it "civil rights," which makes me beyond angry. But I have to give them props. They will confuse people into voting yes because they read "civil rights" and think it means the opposite of the proposal's aim. In fact, a court has said that there is significant evidence that this measure got on the ballot by fraud, but the Voting Rights Act provides no remedy for it.
So, my mind has been full of what political parties do with rhetoric, especially the republican party. In a way, they have it easy because everything is black or white, unwavering, clear, resolute etc. Family values means republican and christian and surely not gay and at least middle class and the kids are probably home schooled. Flipflop means indecisive. Liberal is a dirty word. Affirmative Action means preferences and quotas and under-qualified people going to elite schools. They reach their audience quickly and efficiently through the use of a catch phrase or catch word. In regard to Affirmative Action or Iraq or any pressing issue, it's impossible to form a response when the response requires something resembling shades of grey and subtlety. So, I asked Prof. Crenshaw how, when faced with this co-opting of language, do we reclaim the words that mean something entirely different to progressive people? How do we use language in a similar way, to reach our audience quickly and efficiently, without reducing the complexity of the issue to, well, a flip flop (especially in regard to the MCRI)? She had a really powerful response where she said that we should use symbols with which people are already familiar. You can tell the nature of a tree by the fruit it bears. Have you seen what has happened in California when similar measure have passed? It's very sad to me.
On a lighter note, I saw the movie Little Miss Sunshine and almost peed my pants. Seriously.
I also treated myself to a concert: Etta James. She was incredible. Have you seen her live? You mention in your profile that "I Forgot to be your Lover" is a perfect song. I would counter that with "A Lover is Forever" by Etta James. Her rendition of "I'd Rather Go Blind" almost made me cry.
In other mundane things, I took a nap today with my cat. Read the Help America Vote Act. Had whole wheat pasta, salad, and red wine for dinner. Tried to come up with a good name for the progressive student organization pub crawl that I'm putting on with my friend M on Saturday in the Cass Corridor. I came up with Revolutionaries Drinking Progressively.
So, how was your weekend? What are you thinking about? Learn anything new?
Best,
M - who thinks you look especially hot dressed as a super-hero.
