NINA FARINA

I just turned in a sub par paper (or at least sub my par) just so I could be done with it. I am ashamed of myself. :-(

I demand an apology.
From the New York Times down to the
smallest local papers
of the South, a decorous silence is observed
to soothe the delicate ears of
the democracy. --M. Agosin

I am beginning to wish we were more like other countries whose newspapers openly admit they are socialist, conservative, or whatever else have you, because at least then we could get some honesty and some accuracy in our media. This vain attempt to be objective leaves so many blank spaces unfilled, so much we just don't know. We do know certain newspapers are biased either to the left or to the right. Maybe if they admit their bias and took a no hold barred approach to presenting their view of the news I could get the facts by reading multiple newspapers and putting bits and pieces together. This half attempt at journalism has got to stop. Nothing gets said but everyone gets distracted.

In response to Rick's post

Definately two sides of the same coin, but I'ld rather be known by my head than my tail ;-)

Tribalism

We are a neat little tribe.... I think.... sometimes. I wish I could draft a poem about bodyart. And why people get them and how they get them and where they get them. Of late it seems every young woman I know, myself included, has gotten the above the ass (or in polite terms small of the back) tattoo. I am guilty. It is kinda the girls equivelant of guys bicep wraps (which I have always been fond of).

There is the spiritual tattoo. The one about my ass is both a spiritual and hey look at my ass tattoo. It is a lotus. (I also have a dove on my upper back, I like how they look if I am wearing something backless).

And the tribute tattoo (for the dead or the living...I plan on putting my kids names around my ankles) and the this is what I do hey know about it tattoo (I know a certain couple who both have typewriters that I think are awesome).

FOR THE LIFE OF ME

I cannot figure out why someone would walk into a tattoo studio, point at something on the wall and have it injected into their flesh permanently. That to me seems ridiculously stupid.

Reading Dicken's Bleak House

The writing is amazing and making me realize I haven' t read enough Dickens.
See P 66 the 2d paragraph.
I am like Mr. Skimpole, at least in that paragraph. Broke and leisurely.

Interacting with Writers

I was saw Alanis Morrisette being interviewed, the interviewer asked her, "Do you think that when men date you they are afraid they will end up in one of your songs?" She replied, "I hope so."

Dating a writer is a dangerous thing. Be it fiction, non-fiction, poetry or songs you will end up in their work. Just by interacting with them you become fodder for characters or poems. And it is not necessarily that people want to paint you in a terrible light either. We all have truths we do not want aired...okay most of us.

I once saw Julia Alvarez speak and she volunteered that her mother had initiated lawsuits against her several times. Martin Espada told me that on a couple of occassions family members had ceased speaking too him.

I am wondering if writers should come up with warning labels. I mean even the simplist interactions can lead to to permanent embodiment in their writing. Maybe before we speak with people we should hand them a business card, "Warning, I am a writer...anything you say or do may be immortalized." I mean at least we should give them a fair shot to avoid being in our work.

Shrug

A Logic Proof

.................truth is beauty
..............Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
therefore truth is in the eye of the beholder

sad but true

True Story ...kinda

Last night I dreamed that the United States was going to let in 10,000 refugees from the Sudan. Highly unlikely, but it was the nicest dream I've had in a while.

Tales of the Strange

Now I don't know if the gentleman I was out with last evening has found my blog or not, I have told him it exist. But for this one I don't really care. I already told him that what he said was friggin strange.

So, what did he say you ask? Well while we were out on a quasi date like thing (meeting up it is called I guess) he made a remark as to how cute I would look pregnant.

Me+ cute + pregnant

It was the oddest thing I have ever been told by someone I was "out with". I told him it was strange but I couldn't precisely tell him why it was strange. For once I wish I had a comment thing on my blog.

I guess I just don't want someone I am romantically involved with speculating on how I would look if my belly was full with child...not right now anyway.

Here is the thing I like my life
Really I like most of my life
and the shit I don't like, I try to steer away from.

So why I people trying to convince me to sign on for a two year prison sentence?
If I hear one more time- Yes, it sucks but you make a lot of money and it is only for a few years--I am gonna smack someone.

You see next year I graduate law school which means right now I should be interviewing to work at a firm that will give me a shit load of money but will also work me like a dog. 18 hour days, weekends, sometimes longer than 18 hour days. For instance, our former legal secretary just took a position at another firm working from 5pm to 1am. Why the hell does a law firm need a secretary at midnight? And why would I want to work someplace where I would so routinely need a secretary that late that they have two secretarial shifts?
I have lawyer friends who suffers from depression, knows it is because of his job and yet won't leave cause the golden handcuffs are on too tight. I have a friend who literally gained 40 pounds her first year at a big firm cause she had no time to work out OR eat right. Excuse me if signing on for that strikes me as a little insane.

How the hell am I to know that I won't die before my two years are up without having ever enjoyed the money?

Cause guess what--I LOVE my broke ass poet life. I love my job. Even when I am velobinding my own legal briefs I love it cause I know I can leave at 6 to make it to bar 13 or Acentos. And no pricky partner is gonna drop a ridiculous assignment on me at 5:55 on a friday when they know I am leaving on a trip for the weekend.

So my TV is old. I prefer books anyway. And my furniture is second hand. My apartment is cute and I can tell you a story about how I got each item. Being broke is not so bad when you are lounging on a chair, catching the last few rays of summer sun. So please stop trying to convince me to get a job that enable me to buy shit that I don't want and take up way too much of my time, which I do want.

How many times must you forgive someone who repeatidly hurts you?
What if that person is your father?

Thank God for my friends

Read this

Below is a portion of President Chapman-Walsh's commencment speech to the class of 2004. It was amazing, she didn't give my class a speech like this. I highly suggest reading the excerpt and if you like you can find the whole test here (it even includes a Neruda poem it's so good!)

On this your graduation day, then, I want to suggest to you that because of the unusually tragic backdrop against which you have lived your college years, because of the emotional highs and lows through which you have worked and walked with such grace, your class, the Class of 2004, has been given an extraordinary opportunity to practice what the Dalia Lama calls the art of happiness.

I’ve been contemplating this question of happiness all through this roller coaster ride of a year. It was your classmate, Kristina Chan, who brought it to my attention -- at our first private meeting in early September, president-to-president, College Government and the College, both just back from a summer of readying for another new beginning. I asked what she hoped her impact would be, as CG president, expecting to hear a list of initiatives and goals. Without a moment’s hesitation she answered, “maximum happiness.” There was in the way she uttered those two words something that struck me then, quite viscerally, as moving, deep, profound.

And so I’d like to suggest to you, as you prepare to move on, that you take seriously the possibility that seeking happiness could be your goal – not in a shallow or self-indulgent way, but as a sophisticated intellectual project, worthy of your most disciplined thinking, as philosophers through the ages have known it to be. This business of maximum happiness is a high-stakes proposition, not only for individuals and the quality of their personal lives but also for the public sphere and the ideal of a good society.

As the world’s great philosophical systems and religions attest – and as we know from our own experience – reaching out to others in kindness and empathy enhances inner peace. In fact, Aristotle defined happiness as “an activity of the soul that expresses virtue.” Far from being a transitory feeling or emotional state, happiness was, he believed, the culmination of a life well lived, one guided by our reason, the one quality that makes us human, that defines our shared human history and can shape our shared human project. What could be more important, especially now?

Like everything else worth attaining, being happy involves serious work – learning what you value, making difficult choices (none without costs), exercising self-discipline, recognizing dissatisfaction as the springboard for motivation and yet not becoming paralyzed by perfectionism and jealousy, understanding that there can be no happiness without effort, at times even pain, and that the most reliable sources of satisfaction are pursuits that have meaning and purpose through their intrinsic value.

If we take up life entitled, expecting all things to come our way, we court disappointment and we miss out on gratitude. So I want to suggest to you today, perhaps paradoxically, that the taste you have had here of loss, and grief, and disillusionment -- much as I wish we could have shielded you from it -- actually offers you a special opportunity to walk through your lives with humility, amazed at your good fortune, grateful for your blessings, appreciative of every moment you are able to enjoy. “If you miss the joy of it,” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “you miss it all.”