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March 06, 2008
wednesday/thursday
i saw this young, white girl stealing mountain dew. i know that she was stealing mountain dew because she was using one of those clear cups. the ones that are for water and are clear so that you can’t sneak mountain dew. , of course, was pissed. but she did it, big as day. got her some soda and kept it moving.
what does it mean to have that kind of privilege? the privilege that allows you to think that it’s okay to take mountain dew without permission or without paying. maybe she isn’t aware of her privilege, which is what makes privilege all the more powerful and problematic. now, if i had taken some mountain dew, the swat team would have been alerted and rained down on me, guns drawn and everything.
news flash
“doctoral student was subdued at panera this afternoon after attempting to steal mountain dew. Patrons said that they felt uncomfortable with her presence and were not surprised at the attempted robbery. ‘I knew she was a thief,’ one patron reports.”
hyperbolic, perhaps. but not all that unbelievable.
perhaps that’s the difference between performance and performativity; the difference between the knowing and the doing; the “being” and the “becoming;” the difference between having a crush on a little boy...getting that little boy a valentine...having that same little boy shoot you in the back of the head in a computer cluster.
real time
across from me is a couple of its first date. she is interested, definitely. she leans in, cutting the space between the two. he, also feeling her but not wanting to show her just yet, raises his right eyebrow to show interest and sets his right hand on the table, hoping that she’ll brush it, gently, with her left hand. she takes another sip of the cold and stale coffee, laughs. he sits with his hands folded in his lap. i can’t hear the conversation, their voices are background noise to “bluehawk” by thelonious. i like this couple. she smells sweet, like a flowery bubble bath, maybe calgon. no, she smells like fabric softener, fresh laundry still warm in the basket. his spiky hair takes years off his face and makes me think that he probably has a Harley and likes to ride sans helmet in the summertime. i hope they have a second date.
it’s cold outside: everyone is rushing to and from their cars. running away from the cold wind that sneaks through gaps in coats, underneath caps, and through holes in gloves. gray, too. gray, almost always.
saturday
I went to the opening reception of “interrupted lives: incarcerated mothers in the us.”
i’m done for now.
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches."
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Posted by emnorris at March 6, 2008 01:43 AM