Friday, March 07, 2003

My mom's going on vacation to Paris this Sunday.  The last time I was in Europe, Texans were somehow exempt from the strain of Anti-Americanism that runs through the continent.  I had lunch with my mom today, and I am given to understand that this is no longer the case, as Texas is now perceived as the home state of our great leader.  I don't support the pending war in Iraq.  That said, I also don't support the manner in which the French, Germans, and Russians are choosing to conduct diplomatic efforts to halt or postpone the war.  France has a horrible history of colonial exploitation in Africa, and every time Villepin assumes the ostensible high road in regard to the United States' intentions in Iraq, I get highly annoyed. He is appealing to Anti-American interests every time he opens his mouth, and I can't help but see that as dangerous and damning behavior on the part of our ally. The United States is clearly trying to work the Security Council's process, and predicating diplomacy on the assumption that our government will eventually decide to move on without that support is sheer presumption at this point.  Clearly, great efforts are being made to secure the support of the Council, although I do think the U.S. contingent is engaging in a bit of saber-rattling to get their way. On my drive to and from work every day, I pass a house on Oltorf with a handmade sign in the yard that reads "Vive Le France!"  I am just absolutely appalled at the historical shortsightedness of that.  I said it before - I don't support the war, largely because I don't think the President has compellingly made his case to the American people regarding the reasons why it must happen now, as well as on larger moral principles (which I worry and question every day).  That said, I don't think it appropriate to place such signs in one's yard - it is inaccurate, not to the point, and unpatriotic.  By 'patriotic' I certainly don't mean flying a giant American flag atop one's SUV, or blindly agreeing with everything that falls out of the President's mouth.  I'd even argue that it could conceivably be a patriotic gesture to determine that the Bush administration has not one iota of true authority, given the manner in which Bush took office, and that our central government (executive, judicial, and legislative) should be forcibly thrown out for hoarding power and conducting business in direct opposition to Constitutional principles. I don't support that either, I suppose.  I'm simply trying to limn my notions of patriotism, given that is a widely misunderstood principle.  I am also not implying that our allies should unconditionally support our proposed action in Iraq. I just think it unbecoming, and of no useful end, for the French to conduct diplomacy at such an hysterical pitch. The Bush administration occassionally disgusts me with their hamfistedness and downright stupidity.  I cannot believe that George Bush's response to the largest anti-war demonstration in human history was "I disagree."  So what if he disagrees?  He seems to have forgotten the simple fact that he is the representative of every single one of those American demonstrators.  He should have told the American people that he acknowledges their dissent, and is actively seeking a peaceful diplomatic solution to the issue (that's what he's doing, after all), and that he applauds them for engaging in a largely peaceful expression of their wishes and desires. He should say that his ultimate goal is to provide the Iraqi citizenry with exactly the same rights of assembly and protest.  It is just not smart to alienate that portion of his constituency that does not share his notions of the proper means to that end. Enough of that.  I've recently been reading the weblog of a woman who is horribly plagued by a song that has been playing in her head, continuously, for ten months.  She recently underwent surgery for parathyroidism, in an attempt to silence this song (and isn't it interesting to think of attempting to silence some purely internal, and therefore already wholly silent, sound?  It's really the silencing of something modelled or remembered as 'song').  Her weblog reminds me, very strongly, of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, by Daniel Schreber.  It's very poetic and detailed, and she seems to look upon her ailment with something close to affection, even as she recounts day after day of emotional paralysis, depression, and pain.  Both her memoir, and that of Judge Schreber's, seem to circle round and round issues of power, and both seem to be in utter thrall to the medical profession, even as their bodies and minds rebel against the prosaic diagnoses of 'fleeting-improvised-men,' to borrow Schreber's description of the doctors who sought the oppression of his gorgeous mental fancies in their attempt to cure.  Certainly they have both constructed very powerful monuments to their pain, even as those monuments dwarf and perhaps ultimately consume them. I've been listening to the new Cat Power album (I don't say 'album' because I am old-fashioned or simply inaccurate.  I'm listening to the vinyl LP, which is my preferred recording format), You Are Free.  I love this record, so much.  Her previous album of original material, Moon Pix, was written in a brief flurry of creative activity, just after she felt as though she had been 'visited' by spirits during a spell in a rented house in North Carolina.  It is indeed quite haunting, and I find it that record's mode of expression very much in line with the writings I've discussed above.  Very beautiful, and very very sad, but still somehow on fire with the particularities of the body's strangeness and mystery.  Some sort of absolute alienation that comes to circle back on itself, and eventually connect with something dark, almost forgotten, and always burning. And by the way - you are.  Free, that is. 6:10:37 PM