(only for one hot, frustrated second, and only with a "deeply-burning heart" grateful for the uncompromised loyalty & love that keeps it smouldering for that boy on the other side of the ocean...)



http://www.astralreflections.com/html/this.html

To continue those 17-year forecasts, let's look at TAURUS. Taureans move so slowly and deliberately that it seems they're hardly doing anything. Yet after a space of time - 2 months, ten years, whatever - somehow they're further ahead than anyone else. My Taurus son seems to never do anything, never rushes, never leaps. But at 22 years he has a house, a wife and a steady job - three things I didn't find until my mid-thirties.

Anyway, Taurus - you went through a decade of horrific times from November 1983 through 1995. Relationships went awry, loss and alienation ruled, opportunities glowed then dissolved. Lately (1996 through 2008) you've had the opportunity to find sexual and financial satisfaction in relationships - and you, more than any other sign, love a sexual and financial haven. I don't say "havens," plural, because you really only want one, for life - and that is your great strength. Many Taurus natives experienced divorce in the 1984-1995 period, and some in the 1996-2008 period. (Yes, I know, 2008 isn't here yet, but grammar gets in the way of time.)

The ending of a marriage, if it occurred, was one of the great blows to your nature, for you love to snuggle into one everlasting sensual nest. These days, many of you Taureans are acting more like the vibrant and scattered signs such as Gemini; your equilibrium has been upset by rending events. But the solution, the cure - the calm May meadows of life - are virtually here. 2007 brings both change and the renewal of your depths, and 2008 through 2024 brings your "natural state." During these 17 years, Pluto, your partnership ruler, moves into your sign of gentle love, weddings, far travel, higher learning and philosophical peace. At last, happiness will come. And it will involve at least one of those themes (far travel, marriage, etc.). If you are not yet in love, you'll find it, in a calmer, more enveloping way than in past decades. You might marry a foreign-born person, or someone met while traveling, a student, a lawyer, a philosopher. Whatever he/she is, he/she will be practical, hard-headed, with a deeply loyal, deeply-burning heart. For the first time in over a quarter-century, Taurus, you'll find the road to happiness is smooth and easy. Flow with it!



(could that description make me any more optimistic...? holy jeezus, score one against Project: Getting Over the Painterly Ex...)

it's spring in the Northern hemisphere, and humans are going apeshit.

i didn't realize until i heard the drums -- it must be Golden Week.

my soul is dancing in the largest volcano crater on the planet Earth. my soul is stepping around cowshit on a path through the fields of Mt. Aso, looking towards the teepees and the vast tent city, tasting the mist, listening to the rhythms of a drum circle 200 people strong; making audaciously for the centre of the circle to dance in a frenzy, in the bonfire light.

it wasn't New Mexico. it wasn't even Black Rock City. it was Aso.

sequence: activation.

bring it.

my body is stashing Cuban rum in a bag and heading for the Only bar. last weekend in Peterborough. moving to TO in a matter of days. one DH has already fled. one SD was packed up and moved out this morning. one AT drove by me in her moving truck this afternoon, as her brother FT waved out the window.

one SH shhhhhhhhhh... hasn't started packing. Battlestar Galactica is addictive, ever notice that, and holy FUCK, you look up & it's SPRING.

i've earned this one. i can't even process the thought of outdoor warmth. does not compute. watch out for Cylons...

have i mentioned i've been to the AAG in San Francisco & back? nothing is the same. nothing is, even, the same as when i presented on Arendt at the SPF conference at York, two weeks/six years ago.

in another week, i won't even remember this life.

sometime, when i have time: sleep.

for now: wash hair. it's been at least three years...

by an acquaintance of mine:

Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python

i finally just lost it over Ed's death. fuckin hell, man. rest in peace.

二級を合格できた！！

i passed Nikyu!! holy jesus, i am sooooooooooo happy!!!!

you wake up one morning and everything is different. the light has shifted; it is dark in a gloomy way, which means that a new pressure system has moved in, one in which liquid, not ice, falls from the sky. there are sounds; you can open the window enough to hear sounds, yes, but the sounds themselves were not there before, sounds of birds and the grinding hum of tires on wet streets.

you wake up knowing that you are done with alcohol, and coffee. one cup of ginger tea is enough to remind you that March is for fasting, to give you body-feelings of balance where you had been strung out. you begin to fantasize about cayenne pepper and maple syrup. about long, coastal bikerides and kuromitsu sandwiches.

you wake up, and it is done. nothing may come of it, but it is done. it was cheap to do it over email, but it is done. whatever the outcome (and circumstances have not led you to expect a good one), you can, at least, be certain that you have tried; that you have lived in accordance with your ethics by putting yourself forth -- honestly, frankly, and with integrity, yes, but the main ethical injunction is to put yourself forth; something you shy from.

there is nothing you understand of all this; only that you feel it, in spite of in spite of, because of because of, and that is enough. it does not matter the outcome and it does not matter what he does with this, because you have acted in fidelity with the voice inside that tells you when to speak.

outcomes are unpredictable things; you only know that there will be one.

it may not be for you. and that is fine.

*********

"Once A Flame" was mounted in its final performance(s) last night. a second performance was added due to insane demand; the phone at the Arts Umbrella was reportedly ringing off the hook all week, and they (he) had to lock the door during the second performance because the room was filled well beyond capacity. (fire regulations be damned; a mimetic intervention in the mounting.)

apparently a woman wandered in through the backdoor during the first performance, and peeked her head out from behind the set, not realizing she was onstage. ha.

relatedly but coincidentally, today i am interviewing the female lead for my article on racism in Peterborough. interesting times...

more about Marie-Joseph Angélique, the Portuguese-African slave who was hanged in Montreal in 1734 for purportedly burning down a large section of the city, upon whom "Once A Flame" is based:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Joseph_Angelique

grumpy thought-of-the-day, in honour of International Women's Day:

why it is that the world's oldest profession, construed as a relation wherein men pay women for sex, is taken to involve the domination of men over women, rather than vice versa? why is the economic power that comes from this profession not recognized in the same way as, say, providing Coca-Cola or personal computers to a market? why does acquiring money through the providing of a sought-after service not result in women having bigger dicks within society?


yesterday's thought-of-the-day:

huh, taking the crura into account, the average clitoris occupies the same volume as the average penis.

huh, it is really fucked up that assessments of female genitalia, even within my own head, still follow the Aristotelian model wherein women's parts are inverted men's parts... why the constant comparison to men's genitalia in order to assert the worth of women's? "mine is as big as yours, motherfucker!" ...so what??

Hiroshi just wrote to say that he failed the 2nd stage JICA test. i.e. he won't be moving to Canada in the near future.

aaaaaaand he's just starting up a relationship with someone new. he sounds happy.

freakin good timing. just when i thought i was stable...

icicles are pitching from the roof and making thunder. i guess it's warming up? water is dripping down from the eaves; shocking. "outside" is no place for running water; not in the white world, where even water is hard and dry and lips freeze to the pills of woolen scarves.

what would it mean to be impaled by an icicle just before Valentine's Day? they are sharp and could pierce the corporeal. the instruments of a Bulgakovian cupid? an apt metaphor for love?

i am on strike from men. i do not want to think of my worth in terms of marketability for the time being. i do not want to feel sad about the unintelligibility of the people i am getting to know, as i stream a simultaneous comparison with the transparency of the one i left behind.

leave me opaque. let me think of you as bounded substance; of our meeting as an accident of substance. if ideas are inert and God is the only active volition, the only cause Berkeley, then my slip into unrepresentable shadow was determined by the first vibration of the naam; the first birth and separation into two. let us think of property as private, and democracy as rule-governed. let icicles numb their points against the imbricated roof tiles, shatter and crack against the concrete that is, after all, there beneath the moistening snow.

never mind guerilla snow angels imprinted on the lawns of the unsuspecting. let them fade into indistinction as the grass pokes holes in their substance. which was only ever an accident; Locke was mistaken.

in Vancouver, the cherry trees must have buds by now. verging.

soon to split.

am i just delusionally tired after the Student Day of Action in all-day minus-17? laughin so hard i've got my hands clapped as tightly as possible over my mouth so as not to wake up my roommate, who sent this to me.

********

I'll bet Stephen King's worried with talent like this around!!!! Enjoy!


Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit
their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high
school essays.

These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of
teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners.....

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two
sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking
alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience,
like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without
one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country
speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar
eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog
makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had
disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a
surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the
way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty
bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had
an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another
city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a
sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots
when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced
across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one
having left Cleveland at 6:36 p. m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from
Topeka at 4:19p. m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket
fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds
who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she
was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel
trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike
Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from
not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck,
either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a
land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one
slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids
around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard
bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

In common law countries, habeas corpus (/'heɪbiəs 'kɔɹpəs/), Latin for "you [should] have the body", is the name of a legal action or writ by means of which detainees can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. However, habeas corpus has a much broader meaning in common law today. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a prisoner be brought before the court for determination of whether that person is serving a lawful sentence and/or whether he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

....

Suspension in the United States during the “War on Terrorism”

This section documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

The November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order gave the President of the United States the power to detain citizens and non-citizens suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism as an enemy combatant. As such, that person could be held indefinitely without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, and without entitlement to a legal consultant. Many legal and constitutional scholars contended that these provisions were in direct opposition to habeas corpus, and the United States Bill of Rights.

In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), the Supreme Court reaffirmed the right of United States citizens to seek writs of habeas corpus even when declared enemy combatants.

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. ___ (2006), Salim Ahmed Hamdan petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging that the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay “violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions.” In a 5-3 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected Congress's attempts to strip the courts of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Congress had previously passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006 which stated in Section 1005(e), “Procedures for Status Review of Detainees Outside the United States”:

“(1) Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“(2) The jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on any claims with respect to an alien under this paragraph shall be limited to the consideration of whether the status determination … was consistent with the standards and procedures specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals (including the requirement that the conclusion of the Tribunal be supported by a preponderance of the evidence and allowing a rebuttable presumption in favor of the Government's evidence), and to the extent the Constitution and laws of the United States are applicable, whether the use of such standards and procedures to make the determination is consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

On 29 September 2006, the House and Senate approved the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), a bill that would suspend habeas corpus for any alien determined to be an “unlawful enemy combatant engaged in hostilities or having supported hostilities against the United States”[2][3] by a vote of 65-34. (This was the result on the bill to approve the military trials for detainees; an amendment to remove the suspension of habeas corpus failed 48-51.[4]) President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law on October 17, 2006.

With the MCA's passage, the law altered the language from “alien detained … at Guantánamo Bay”:
“Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.” §1005(e)(1), 119 Stat. 2742.

Under the MCA, the law restricts habeas appeals for only those aliens detained as enemy combatants, or awaiting such determination. Left unchanged is the provision that, after such determination is made, it is subject to appeal in U.S. Court, including a review of whether the evidence warrants the determination. If the status is upheld, then their imprisonment is deemed lawful; if not, then the government can change the prisoner's status to something else, at which point the habeas restrictions no longer apply.

There is, however, no legal time limit which would force the government to provide a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) hearing. Prisoners are legally prohibited from petitioning any court for any reason before a CSRT hearing takes place.

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Gonzales asserted in Senate testimony that the United States Constitution does not expressly guarantee habeas rights to United States residents or citizens.[1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnO_FxmHes

and did i mention my baby sister is walking around with an enormous heart-shaped diamond on her finger?

craziness!!

: my new public art project.

darkness means falling backward into random yards of virgin snow.

: an inverted trust experiment. the powder caught me, but can you trust a person who leaves impish presents on your front lawn?

trust in god but zip your pockets first! i gave more than i meant to -- coins slice nicely into fresh snow.

i hope to be riding the devil's elbow by nightfall, four days hence. fuck yeah! SD and i bemoaned the lack of snow, and look! the world turned white!

my dad had a cabin on Grouse when i was three, and i learned to ski before i could hold a pole; is that why minus 15 makes me elated? the world is snow; the world is play. that tickly frozen nose-hair thing is actually pretty cool.

we need a sled! ...i wonder if my growed-up roommates could be persuaded to pull me through the Avenues on a green garbage bag?

i have been trying to catch up on some email, but there is waaaaaaay more of it than i have time for right now. apologies to everyone for being out of touch.

but don't stop writing! people's support has been amazing this week. i really appreciate it.

peace.

Meghann's engaged!! i feel like a typical sister -- sooooooooo excited!

and i got mugged in Havana. chased the bastards, and got one of them arrested. i e'd a summary of the events to many people; if i missed you & you wanna hear it, lemme know. it is a great story that i am going to exploit for monetary value someday; between that and the ridiculous amount of work i've come back to, it's unlikely to end up on lj soon. (eventually, i hope. but i said that about the Aki story in Okinawa & still haven't finished it...)

H wrote back to the mugging story with "i am elf kissing on your shoulder." just when i think i've got a little mental distance... is it okay that i am reconciled to adoring this man forevermore? Alia tells me i need space from him. ha. ha ha.

Havana is fucking amazing. India has been bumped to number 2. India is the matere-land, but nothing tops a city that is 50% beautiful men and 50% amazing hips.

and school? i am fucked. fucked fucked. maybe there is a part of me to whom this degree is important, but most other parts of me are considering running away.

to where? to what?

in the wake of the mugging i've been told i'm spy material by two different people. should look into that. one of them might have an in.

...huh, i guess i just blew that career.

da junkanoo be cancel, mon.

but i did eat dinner where the pirates were hung, by woodes rogers whose name is on the plaque of the door of the room of the hotel where we're staying. apparently he was a turncoat pirate 'imself. bastard.

mary read and anne bonney woulda taken 'im. if they wasn't knocked up. which did save 'em from da hangin.

...meantime the lurgey's got my sister, and now the bugs have seized my belly.

bah.

1/ i will write my thesis on Mothertalk. oh wait -- that was Tim.

2/ it will rock.

3/ i will return to Vancouver for the summer, do thesis research & interviews, earn some freaking money, and enjoy.

4/ i will move to Toronto come September & commute to Peterborough.

5/ i will apply to Cultural Geography for my PhD, possibly SFU, possibly concurrently with Anners.

6/ Hiroshi & i are good together:

"you should work on that!"

"working on it!"

7/ Hiroshi should get into JICA, learn French, and move to Montreal when his two years are done. oh wait -- that was me.


there is nothing i love more than having my decisions made for me.

such a sub! ha!