per aspera ad astra

i decided today that if i ever get a tattoo i'd want it to be of the phrase per aspera ad astra - a Latin phrase meaning "from hardships to the stars." there are so many beautiful reasons i would want this on my body, that i'm tempted to rescind my prejudice that tattoos are tacky and have it inked into my inner arm.

first, i'd like to think that when i die, i'll be borne into the stars. and the idea of my body bearing this phrase, this philosophy, through life until death is exactly what i want my tattoo to be, a comment on im/permanence.

furthermore, this phrase was one of a few audio messages selected to be cast off into space aboard the Voyager, to represent peaceful intentions from humanity. this message was encoded into morse code and recorded on the Voyager Golden Record, along with samples of music, greetings in 55 different languages, animal and nature sounds, and a meditative message from Carl Sagan's wife.

i've never been terribly interested in astronomy nor fascinated with the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. and yet, i find myself regretting the lack of this kind of fantasy and curiosity in our modern collective imagination. it seems my generation was the last to experience the height of the american space program, and current youth are perhaps untouched by the influence of these ideas and the accompanying sense of infinite exploration, as well as unquantifiable humility in the impossibility of ever being certain in the great big galactic scope of things.

i think that humility, that unknowingness, accompanies a healthy sense of imagination that in turn keeps people from being too ... material in their living. what i feel like we have now is lots of kids growing up and becoming bankers and not enough dreaming of being astronauts.

today's Voyager research (i got lost in a research loop on wikipedia today that started with me trying to sort out my tracklisting for the Dark Was The Night compilation, which led me to read about Blind Willie Johnson and his wailing gospel-blues slide guitar and how it was included as an example of loneliness on the Voyager record to be, potentially, discovered by future extraterrestrial lifeforms) also led me to consider the absurd task of writing and communicating messages to infinite space. in the Voyager capsule, Carl Sagan et al. included a letter from then-president Jimmy Carter:

We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.

i think it's somewhat indicative of the zeitgeist of the 1970s that our president took time out of his schedule to write a letter to the cosmos. imagine what that conversation must have been like, "uh, hey jimmy, we want you to write a letter to the future. to be read by aliens. state our intent as a galaxy. btw, humanity may be completely gone by the time this is picked up by anyone. kthxbye." but that's what i'm talking about, you know? we're missing a little galactic humility and imagination in our present-day thinking.

on the intimacy of clothing: an analysis of what's in my drawers

yes, that is my closet, but i hardly wear half of it. really, the middle shelf is all i wear and the rest are keepsakes. read on...

i'm sorting through my desk drawers at home. oh desk drawers. they're so fun to clean! don't you agree? drawers are like the limbo of office supplies and personal effects. if they get shoved into a desk drawer they're probably on their way to the garbage, but for some reason, you decide not to toss it just yet, and hide them away in the back just for yourself to find later when you're trying to cut down on all your material possessions.

i read an essay or short story a long time ago about a middle-aged man confronting the reality of his father's death. he realized he never knew his father in the way he wanted to, and now, after his father's passing, was trying to reconstruct his father's life from his possessions. in the story, the author finds his father's wallet tucked away in a nightstand drawer, and clutching it close to his heart, tells the story of the object: how its edges were worn from everyday use, how he imagined it snuggled close to his father in the back pocket of his jeans, the smell of the old leather (isn't it amazing how that smell never completely fades?), imagined the stories that wallet could tell: all the places it'd been, the kinds of things his father bought, the touch of his father's hand, the pace and rhythm of his walk as felt from a jeans pocket (i remember the story being particularly striking to me when i read it, however many years ago, b/c of the significance of the wallet being so close to his father's bum, tucked into a pocket and nestled beside his father's buttock - something so peculiarly taken for granted and yet so beautifully described that it made me wish more things could be kept in back jeans pockets.)

of course, i read that story a long time ago, but something about it lingers with me still: the idea of closeness, how use and physical contact transforms our objects into possessions. old shoes, worn and hole-y shirts...

one of my friends said recently that the idea of our bodies conforming to our clothes made him squirm. at the time, i imagined a body with the qualities of a liquid, taking the shape of its container (we are, after all, how many %'s water?) i imagined a huge fat man (or woman) squeezing into a pair of pants, and afterward, the shape of the flesh when it was declothed - the lines pressed into skin from pant creases, the bulge of stomach fat demarcating where the extra flesh flowed over the top of the waistband. yes, that was gross. but now i imagine the opposite, and think of our bodies shaping the clothing, stretching them thru wear and use, the touch of skin lingering in the fabric, the warmth exuding through the fibers.

i guess this explains my penchant for taking people's clothes. i love borrowing worn clothes. while packing and sorting through my closet for things to donate, i found a pile of clothes i'd borrowed indefinitely from my friends. almost every close friend of mine is now missing a shirt, a pair of pants, mittens, a hat, a sweater... i've kept them all this time because they really do have emotional value: i feel safe when i put them on, like i'm wearing a hug.

example: my friend John and i had a mud fight on the lawn behind Shriver Center my junior year. it was one of those spring nights when the trees are just days away from full bloom, and it was raining (i love the way night-time spring rain smells. the smell of cooling daytime pavement and saturated dirt and leaves). we got completely soaked, so we jumped in the fountain. it was wild and wonderful. we went to his house afterward and he lent me a t-shirt and a pair of old corduroy pants to change into. the pants were a little too small for him and they were a little too big for me, but i loved them. i put them on and felt like a little kid playing dress up. a week later, i gave the t-shirt back, but i never returned the pants. that summer, i packed his pants in my suitcase bound for Mongolia and wore them nearly every day (you can see, i'm wearing them here) - the air was so dry we hardly ever changed clothes.

i also have my friend Brittany's brown cardigan sweater. it doesn't fit me very well (the shoulders are bunchy), but i still wear it occasionally and hope that maybe, just maybe, it will fit this time.

i have piles of my mom's old clothes, which i love to wear and think about the prior life they had. was this the dress my mom was wearing when she met my dad? is this the skirt she wore out on their date when he proposed? i found an old color block sweatshirt that belonged to my mom which i wore all the time when i was in elementary school. i spilled acrylic paint on it once in art class and cried for almost half an hour in the bathroom when i realized i'd stained it and ruined it forever.

and i feel cliche about it, but i love wearing my (ex)/boyfriend's clothes. i found one of my ex's old t-shirts in the closet. i loved sleeping in it. i haven't worn it in about 2 years since we broke up, but i still appreciate its softness, and the smell, which i swear, still reminds me of his apartment and the Writing Center.

my boyfriend Ben lent me one of his shirts the other day b/c i was cold, and even though it didn't fit me too well (the sleeves were really long, it hung off my shoulders, the neck was really low), when i wore it, i felt safe and warm, like he was holding me close - closer than would be physically possible with just our arms alone (sometimes i wish i could pull someone into me so tight, and eliminate all the spaces between us, the way you can pull a shirt around you and your body heat fills in the remaining spaces in between). i thought of all the times i'd seen him in this shirt, the way it hung on his shoulders, the way it felt against my cheek when i hugged him, and how much i wanted to be able to take that feeling with me to L.A., when we will be half a globe away from each other starting in the fall. lucky for him, i didn't decide to steal it right then and there, though the thought had crossed my mind.

borrowing clothing is a really intimate act, like sharing a personal space with someone else. think about it: getting into someone's pants (literally, rather than idiomatically speaking, that is). walking in someone's shoes. wearing your heart on your sleeve... i'm out of examples but i'm sure there are more...

this is why i hate packing. i always go to my closet convinced i am going to cut down so much of the stuff in there, that i'm gonna donate half of what i have and make room for new things. but, i always end up putting things back on their shelves. i just can't bear to throw them out or give them away. my dad chides me for being over-sentimental, but he doesn't understand! - this is love i can take with me and tuck away in drawers...

with love and a pair of hand-knit mittens,
stephanie

Colin Powell at Miami University and the culture of materialism

from a pro-peace/ending the occupation in Iraq listserv:

"Colin Powell's second visit to Miami University, bookending the Bush administration, brought to us a message that recalls Indiana Jones: Fortune and Glory.

Though Powell's speech laid out a sports metaphor that on its surface seemed positive, underlying the entire talk was a pervasive message that money rules. By means of setting up an introduction of 9.11, Powell spoke of a materialism, vanity and power. He told the story of how upon retiring, for the second time, he didn't know what to do with himself so he bought a car. This was met with much laughter from the audience. He then told us about how he was considered by Time magazine to be aging gracefully--more laughter. Lastly, he said that when asked what he misses most about being Secretary of State he answers--"My own plane."

This story was filled with kings, dignitaries, red carpets, bands playing for him, "adoring crowds," and so on. These three stories seemed to me to be the most powerful of the night. They were distractions from real issues that he could have addressed while at the same time established the importance of money--buying cars, having planes--and looking good. Fortune and Glory. I imagine some might object to my criticism that Powell was being funny, entertaining, but I think such criticism only makes the point stronger. He distracted people from real stories about what it's like to be a General or Secretary of State, the difficulties, the rewards, the work, the decisions, and narrowed all of his experience down to possessions--the things he got out of it.

Later, when Powell outlined the four major issues he sees the US facing, I could not help remembering the earlier stories. So, when he said that government left us--his "young friends"--with some positives, that countries are on playing fields rather than battlefields, he was less than inspiring. The four games being played, according to Powell are 1) economics--we need to strengthen the economy to bring people out of poverty; 2) energy--we need energy to build up economics; 3) environment--careful use of the energy needed to build the economy; 3) education--better k-12 education in order to build the economy. Why aren't those things exciting? Because they're burdened with greed. Those stories about corvettes, Time and airplanes defined Powell's issues. Everything was about what you can get. He ended his speech by telling a story about how he gets free hot dogs from foreigners. It could have made you cry to hear him tell of the sheer pleasure these foreign hot dog vendors get from simply being in America. And Powell, who was paid how much to speak to his young friends, doesn't give up six bucks to help this person? His speech, however, let's us leave feeling that we too can achieve like he did, we can get things, but mostly we should be happy to be Americans."

- Aaren Yandrich

oh YUCK. now i am extremely glad i didn't go to see this Tuesday night. i had made up my mind to go and help my friends protest against the war, was gonna walk across the bitter desolate expanse that is the frozen landscape of the Miami campus to go sit in a stadium full of self-entitled yuppie brats and listen to this jingoist garbage??! thank god insane sinus pressure and debilitating nausea intervened!

i think my pure unadulterated hatred for American jingoism and its close cousin rabid consumerism would have exploded my head and splattered my mucus membranes all over Colin Powell's face. so much for glory, eh?

seriously tho, to hear that he came to Miami to give a speech about the beauty of American capitalism, to urge the (already) materialistic Miami student populace to join him in drooling over and jacking off to the ideas of fast cars, oil, money, youth, power, and fame without shame or conscience, makes me wish i hadn't been too sick that night to go over there and punch him in the neck and groin. what kind of message is he sending to our college students if the only thing he urges them to aspire to is the accumulation of ever more material wealth and wasted potential?

oh, it just makes me so angry. this is exactly the kind of perverted political philosophy i am putting to shame in my senior thesis, but what good is it if the leaders of our nation - and the future leaders, too - are too busy gawking at themselves in mirrors to see that everything is completely fucked?

an image capture from American Psycho - a satire deriding the American corporatism and materialism of the 80s, a fitting analogy that was just too easy to pass up.

Colin Powell and his ethos of Fortune and Glory are a disease and a cancer, and he's only bound to flip that Corvette and pin himself under it.

-stephanie