being a bully, nursing a cynic

For proof that even the most racist/sexist/homophobic/all in all oppressive amongst us are happy, just see what it can still create beyond you.

I've come to terms with being an inwardly competitive person despite my pacified demeanor. I get irritated if amongst three mutual friends, I am the last one to be invited out or informed about good/bad news. Two days ago, after another team took over the coveted library space (it is the top rated working space within walking distance) which my group has long procured through our takeover of the dry erase board amongst other things. Then, after they refused to move, I stole all of their shoes and proceeded to spell out "F U" with each shoe in the middle of the sun baked parking lot while apparently everyone watched on.

Even with poetry, I apply my biases to poem and poet... that is to say, if I did not like the poet as a person, then no matter what they do, their poem is shit.

Proof that thinking vicious thoughts don't always translate into vicious actions... unless you count the shoe situation...

The way that I've come to understand identity politics in the U.S. better here in Thailand has been a lonely experience. I can articulate it now: There is something about Thailand that is hopeful. There is something about Thailand which is salvageable. There is nothing salvageable in the U.S. If you close your eyes and think of Wasteland, you know where it is, and it's imprinted with stars and stripes.

Because that's exactly what systems of oppression do! You know you are marginalized when you reflect on your experiences since birth, and note your severed realities. All this organizing, all this work, ridiculous hours, dodging (and sometimes indulging in) pretention/intellectual banter, blood, tears, movement and fracture is all in the name of forging a collective identity. To answer P'Biek's question of truths, this is the truth I know. Yet, because this is nowhere evident in normative values, you spend your life carving it out, and even at the end of your life, you know that your child, your child's child, and thenforth will restart the cycle again. You can only hope that your involvement as an activist, scholar, artist, etc. has left some marker that will someday alter these destructive norms... so that one day maybe, generations after, there is one less thing to fight for.

In Udon Thani, young people stand beside their parents and grandparents in solidarity against transnational corporation APPC/Ital-Thai which has conducted destructive potash mining actions on community land. They fight because they understand the connection and the necessity of the struggle. In the U.S., you begin first to struggle to find a purpose, and then you struggle for that purpose. And then you struggle for that purpose. And then you struggle.

I'm not saying one struggle is more valuable than the other, only the realities of oppressive paradigms. All this talk about State oppressive action in Thailand. Not enough talk about State oppressive action in the U.S. and by extension, everywhere (such is the reality for a nation that has such claim over the global economy).

You probably already know this without having to pay a shitload of money to be an educational tourist abroad.

End note: Maybe next time, end in optimism. Maybe next time, choose sleep over blogging.