Post-Sandy Narrative

I have been absent from the blogosphere since the onset of my graduate school experience largely because of, well, being inundated with reading and research. That said, my graduate experience is surpassing my expectations. I will leave the details of research out for the time being, but I will soon have some thoughts on a few eccentric topics you may find interesting. For now, my Sandy experience...

As I watch the local news two weeks after Sandy initially hit, I realize how many communities were devastated by the Frankenstorm. The tiny towns that line the ocean front are tattered. People lost their homes, and are devastated that they have nowhere to go. Imagine yourself with no home to go back to and nothing you can do about it. I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. It was late Friday when I heard about Sandy. I started watching the news that evening and took the news correspondents seriously. It seemed hard not to when 15 of the 17 models showed this massive storm heading right for my home. I had a tough time believing that it could miss, and, alas, I was right. I spent Saturday buying canned foods, bread, and cooking. I used up all of my perishable food in the fridge and only took a break to leave for Sears on Sunday where there was only one small light left on the shelf when I arrived at 11:00 in the morning. I frantically worked all day Sunday and Monday to complete what I could on the computer. My assumption was that the power was going out, but when? It was 7:19 PM on Monday evening...

The storm was a bit of an experience. The primal song of nature whispered, then chanted, then screamed... By the time everything went black in my apartment, the wind streamed wildly through the trees outside and the rain pounded against the sidewalk and windows. Kids were playing tag outside, obviously displaying their fearless Jersey (sound it out in the accent) nature. I spent Monday evening with my roommates Atul and Jing as well as my neighbor Yuling playing ukulele and guitar with the nifty little LED flashlight showing us our way to each fumbling chord. Since I had prepared beforehand, I retreated to my room at 10:00 to read by candlelight. The book was Eviatar Zerubavel's The Elephant in the Room, which is a sociological look at silence. It seemed even more fitting days later, when I realized I was seemingly one of the few that took the storm seriously, choosing not to treat the impending disaster as a matter of collective denial.

The next thing I knew it 4:30 AM and the loud pounding of resident assistant riled me. We were informed that we were being evacuated. We were swiftly lined up and retreated to a gymnasium nearby. Think thousands of kids in a gym and three other racquetball courts without food, blankets, or pillows. Yes, it was fun. The main issue was that not many realized they were going out of their places for more than a few hours. To me, this is pure naivety. One could expect that being evacuated may entail a couple of days of hurricane homelessness. As a result, the immediate class divide was the most interesting thing to see. Several Chinese exchange students huddled playing cards until nearly 7:00 AM. Others sat glaring at them, supposing that the going cross-eyed might somehow translate to Mandarin. It didn't. With my little light and cozy blanket, I could watch them, chuckling. In total, we spent the next three days displaced from our apartments. I might add, though, that this was a rather exciting three days. My foresight, or "projectivity" as we call it in Cultural Sociology, was the key factor for loving the disorder that ensued.

The next day, we were moved to a campus center that had power on the other side of campus.  We got relatively comfortable cots and free food from Tuesday-Sunday. The coolest part of all this was that we got to hang out together. Atul rarely leaves his room (actually, only to run and make this rice-yogurt-sugar combo and run), but was elated for several days to experience this overwhelming feeling of community. Yeh, we were evacuated, but we were all evacuated together. Besides the stigma of being the "evacuees", it wasn't too bad at all. Of course, I did banter at the onlooking undergraduates gawking at me. They are my new favorite group to lash out at needlessly. Good times, great oldies.

On Thursday of that week, we got to go back home. After cleaning out the fridge, we were all happy campers mooching off the free lunch tickets and stuffing ourselves... while we still could. However, that was hardly the end of the Frankenstorm. I was appalled to see the news. The top stories were about the New York marathon being cancelled. Several said this was an atrocity, and that the people of New York should band together to offer a symbolic gesture of strength. Are you kidding me? People were still found drowned in their basements in Staten Island after that. Outlandish, but not surprising. I can't believe people watch that stuff and believe it.

Anyways, all and all the storm hardly affected me. I did make some solid observations during the displacement process. People are blind to the relative lives they lead. Countless people told me afterward how bad they had it, and how awful the entire hurricane experience was. Yet, they lived. They have homes. They have their families, etc. Many people are still without power, and are clearly not happy about it. Still, I have my qualms with these people griping. Sure, this is 2012 and this is America. But guess what? People live like this everyday: cold, starving, and hungry. We hardly do them any favors by voting for pro-monopolistic law makers and the like. I hope that we, as a nation, can come to terms with our privilege and the inequality that we push on to millions in our own country. Whether it by the pompous Barbie doll or the Occupy protester, we have to be a bit more conscious of our situation.

Blue Velvet (1986)

You stay alive baby. Do it for Van Gogh.

-Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper)

American Basketball at the Olympics: Who's Dreaming?

I might start off by saying that everyone is certainly tired of this comparison by now, and justly so. I honestly think that the 1992 Dream Team would out do the 2012 Redeem Team 2.0 (in a best of seven series) if they were both able to compete against each other in their primes. However, I would like to make the case for the current team. I have avoided the large majority of the televised/blogsosphered debate, apart from Stephen A. Smith's substantive points made against a seemingly clueless Skip Bayless. Still, an analysis must be made. 

First off, we know that the '92 team was stacked: Laettner, D. Robinson, Ewing, Bird, Pippen, Jordan, Drexler, Malone, Stockton, Mullin, Barkley and Magic. What most may not consider is the status of some of these players. Magic had just retired because of his health stigma (HIV) and Bird had significant back problems, which would force him to retire immediately following the gold medal run. Stockton was coming off a broken bone in his leg, and not at his best. This, to me, is evident because he only played four of eight games. The outside threats would have included Mullen, Stockton, Magic, Jordan, Drexler, and, yes, Barkley (who shot 87.5% from beyond the arc in the Olympics that year). Let's face it: the strong point for the team was inside, a point which I will make more evident later on. 

The 2012 team is not too shabby either, however. They have Tyson Chandler, Durant, James, Westbrook, Deron Williams, Iguodala, Kobe, Love, James Harden, Carmelo, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis. Tyson Chandler (8.3 per) and Anthony Davis (yet to play an NBA game) are the only two averaging a career points per game total under 15.3 PPG. Five average career totals above 23.0 PPG (Kobe, Carmelo, Durant, LeBron and Westbrook). To me, the noticeable thing about this squad is who is not in it. Lacking Dwight Howard (three-time reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year and six-time NBA All-Star), Derrick Rose (2011 MVP), Chris Bosh (seven-time NBA All-Star), Dwayne Wade (eight-time NBA All-Star), Andrew Bynum and Blake Griffin (all due to injury or laziness), I ask how this is representative of the USA's Best of 2012? In comparison, who is the 1992 Dream Team missing: Tim Hardaway, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwan (in his prime) and a -fresh-out-of-LSU- Shaq. A great cast, but the fact that the 2012 is missing five players in their prime. In other words, I will make the bold prediction, even though they will lose Kobe, the USA team four years from now will be, hypothetically, much better than the current one. This is beside the point, since I am sure I will make this argument then.

The big thing you have to look at is how they fared against their competition. The 1992 Dream Team beat their opponents by a whopping 43.75. Wow, right? These teams were notable, though, in this sense. If we made a list of NBA players from each of the other teams the US played that year we would have an All-Star cast of Detlef Schrempf, Toni Kukoc, Dražen Petrović, Luc Longley, Carl Herrera, Alexander Holkov, and Stojko Vrankovic. Three of these players helped Croatia win the silver medal. The rest have won a total of five NBA championships (three from Longley, who played with some guy sporting a 23). This year the Redeem Team 2.0 had a different setting. They still won by an average of 32.1, but played more quality opponents. The only team they played without an NBA player was Nigeria, which they drubbed by 83. They actually had two close games against Lithuania, who has two NBA pros, and Spain in the championship game. Spain is an international oddity, as it is a promising cast: the Gasols (both NBA All-Stars), Ibaka (2012 All-Defensive First Team), Sergio Llull (Spanish League MVP), Calderon (NBA point-guard), Navarro and Fernandez (past NBA players who now play for Real Madrid). I would argue that this team has more star power than the "International All-Stars" offered for all of the other Olympic teams combined together in 1992. This goes without mentioning the 2012 team played eight of their thirteen games against top nine opponents in the world, all of which have at least four NBA players apart from Lithuania. 

Regardless, if we excluded the two games against Lithuania and Spain, the 2012 and 1992 teams have nearly identical totals for points won by (43.5 vs. 40.1) and points per game (117.25 vs. 115.5). Each team averaged five players in double digits, with one on each averaging nearly 20 (Barkley and Durant respectively). The big difference, which is obvious, is the style of play. The 1992 team dominated, and would continue to dominate, inside. Barkley (18.2), Ewing (9.5), Malone (13.0) and Robinson (9.0) had the paint covered, and to say that Love and Chandler could have handled those four would be a mistake. We saw that they could not handle Pau in the final, so to me it is evident that the 2012 team would perish in the half court game. The thing is that I am not sure how these games would be played out if we managed to manipulate the space-time continuum. Would it be a slow, laborious game with the 1992 team continuously passing inside to these big guys? Or would we see an up-pace scorcher from the Redeem Team?

The 2012 guys averaged over 36 three-point attempts every game while still maintaining a 44% average. Lining the perimeter: Durant, Anthony, Kobe and Paul. (LeBron hit a big three down the stretch as well that essentially clinched the gold medal game, but then air-balled one just moments after to cancel that out.) These threes would offset the course of play, in my humble opinion. If the tempo sped up enough, you would see a very different final. The ball would have stopped going low each and every time, and instead you would have likely saw Jordan try to take over. With LeBron or Kobe the most likely to guard him, foul trouble may have ensued. The real question is: Could the Redeem Team stand up to the type of pressure they would feel, and/or knock down the threes they needed? The Dream Team was older (relative to their average age in that Olympic year), but arguably more efficient. If the 2012 cast were to be slowed to a half-court game, would they look like the 2011 Miami Heat team that was better on paper, yet took stand up jump shots that ultimately culminated in their demise to the Mavs.

Oh, the hypothetical reality we can only imagine! As I mentioned before, I have the 1992 Dream Team winning. If you see the 2016 team play in Rio with Howard, Bynum, Durant, James, Melo, Love, Griffin, Rose, D. Will, Paul, Wade and your pick of any other American player in the league (Davis, Iguodala, Harden, Westbrook, Hibbert, or Rondo) that team will trump the Dream Team of 1992. I am already starving for more Olympics, and for good reason.

On Surrealist Liberty... in the Real World

La libertad es un fantasma.  Es un fantasma de niebla.  El hombre lo persigue, cree atraparlo, y solo le queda un poco de niebla entre las manos.

Liberty is a ghost, a ghost of clouds. The man who follows it, believes he can catch it, and only ends up with a little cloud between his hands. 
Luis Buñuel

a baron bridge of the missingippi (2012)

a baron bridge of the missingippi (2012)

brandon lee kramer

the floods of the past five years have caused havoc on the central united states. our so called bible belt is supposed to be exempt from such harsh reality, from the perverse punishment that noah had to endure. instead we, as a geographical entity, have gone through chaos. our crops, university buildings, homes and churches have been devastated by natural disasters; occasions one could hardly fathom, let alone prepare for appropriately. now god has begun his tricks once again. stringent heat for days -no- weeks on end. the sounds of summer have set in only to be overtaken by the biding sting of the sun. the photograph above depicts a reminder that he, or whomever you deem guilty, of such tumultuous cynicism still has a sense of humor. the lake that was once here and the bridge that once led children over the wetlands have both been devoured by his hands. this charlatan says little, but rather flicks his wrist with assertion. "i give you water to take it away," he posits, and destiny ensues. to me, it is funny how we regurgitate the myriad of information we have at our finger tips...

the american narrative is rich: "the end is coming," we say. we are compelled by that notion. columbus said we would find the garden of eden in america. i think we have, and adam/eve were not alone. we have become that manifestation: the ultimate sinners. we deny our responsibility, the truth that we produce our own illnesses, that we cause the lakes to dry up, and that the end is, in fact, not going to happen (like the mayans supposedly said). the irony in it all is that we won't blame ourselves. "how could something so horrific be because of me? the goodhearted, loving parent/sibling/child? i mean no harm... i am just afraid." it is this fear that pushes us forward. we can't take a step back to stop our rampant use of resources, especially amid an economic crisis. we cannot stop production, making more jobs, etc. this just is not in the cards.

i had always wondered what we are in such a big hurry to do. where are we going? surely, we must have some destination, no? is it heaven? is that where our three cars are taking us (we need that many to be american, right)? or is all of this for another reason? to me, it seems that we are not going anywhere, but rather trying to create as many detours as we can to obscure the line of where we are going: to death. though it seems morbid, is this not what all of this is for? we buy fast cars, tvs, bigger houses and more ornate visions only to block the reality that none of this really matters. we are going to die and there is nothing we can do about it. america facilitates the ultimate lie, that of complete self-denial that we have to die. we live for the "embedded now." this point in space-time that we are shielded from the lions and tigers that hunt us, from the starvation that would ensue if a plague really existed in today's usa. it is our middle/upper class relativism that blocks a pure vision of america. we need to wake up and realize that the end is not near, but rather here. we need to do something now, so that the poor that most do not seem to care about do not turn out to be the same goodhearted, loving parent/sibling/child you claim to care about. please, start caring america.

an anonymous assemblage

this photograph sums up a complicated, yet compelling, year thus far. draper (because of the glass and the hat, at least) clearly shines through, but tinged -maybe even tainted- by the surrealistic qualities of what is/is not. are we here? dreaming? or there? before, after or both? i have always felt a deep attraction to donnie darko, an eccentric film about time travel and less obviously about a mythical reenactment of the passion. some would debate the latter, but i think the meditative potential of that statement is something one must truly ponder. regardless, the notion of time travel was brought back to my attention last night after finishing david lynch's twin peaks. i have always pondered what ghosts may be, and have even heard some unsubstantiated claims that science could explain what we perceive as ghosts as overlapping bits of space-time crossing into now. i would not go as far to say i agree, but it is intriguing. this year has brought the eerie, surrealistic nature of life and death to the foreground. ernst becker's pulitzer prize winning the denial of death has been treating me to some of the best reading i have ever come across. it speaks to me: reiterating the hyper-analytic posturings of kierkegaard with post-freudian psychoanalytic theory. it makes me wonder about death, meaning, myths, and the stars. yet with all of this "profound" and indecisive speciousness looming, we our confronted more directly with things that "matter" like society, structure, marriage, love, jobs and money. how and why should we care about these mysterious things when we have reality bashing us in the face everyday? like the picture, this year has made me ask myself: is "it" there? where is "it?" this money they speak of and the millions of jobs that our president is supposed to be creating... where are they? are they real? is any of this real? and when will "it" happen? consider these things in the words of gaston bachelard's wonderful words:

"who speaks? the dreamer or the world?"

photograph taken by koel gibbs 2012. edited by brandon lee kramer © 2012

the ethics of david foster wallace

“This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values, and it’s our job to make them up.”

-David Foster Wallace, 1993 Whisky Island interview

oh woman, oh woman, why?

"...perhaps the most damning characteristic of women is that, in the face of horrifying evidence of their situation, they stubbornly claim that, in spite of everything, [they] 'love' [their] Oppressor."

-Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, p. 105

This is quoted in Hanne Blank's Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, which is a great read I highly suggest you take the time to read.

a footstep forward...

The Aymara Peoples of Peru, Bolivia and Chile have a unique manifestation of time. Where most European derivative time perception sees the flow of time as both forward and right-directed, the Aymara feel past as being directionally forward (nayra, which also means eye, front and sight). Backward then would represent the future (qhipa), something yet to be seen? This, of course, has not been passed down to the next generation (Nuñéz and Sweester 2006); something Steven Pinker probably could not account for with his rigid genetic determinism (Pinker 1994). It seems that temporal hegemony is not only limited to the rhythms and schedules of post-industrial socities (Bluedorn 2009), but also the temporal embodiment of acculturated indigenous of South America.

shrine of the dendrites (2012)

shrine of the dendrites (2012)

brandon lee kramer

between galena, il and dubuque, ia is a small abandoned stone building, pillaged by a unforgiving, weathered time. the western sunsets reign over its decaying last gasps. sprouting dendrites of a sickly brown grow at the base of its convoluted foundation, blurring the distinction of passer-byes: those still willing to feign a vacuous glance. there, amid the moss and mold is a morceau of what freedom was, what our homeland was founded on. when the fox co-existed with the bucolic whispers of mother nature. when the finch sang in an unabashed melody of adolescence, not fearing anything -one with the stars- before they were just that. would whitman or thoreau divulge petty secrets to the tree frogs if they were still here?  warn them to be patient, assure them of an eventual coup d'etat against the foolish harlequins of the mississippi harbor? or would they rather hold their tongues? like i, like we, should? waiting. waiting. waiting, for them all to devour themselves in the push-button politics of our au courant debacle. if we just sat quiet, minds deaf and hands still, maybe we could hear the echos of chernobyl and auschwitz, of waterloo and thermopylae, pleading for a tranquil homophily to bleed through. to espouse, not divide. we could, we can be a consort for the novel, the most romantic of sorts. one that finds a refined valor in the decay of defiled -tested and true- world we are now: the lost time of a lost world. 

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

fumar mata (2012)

fumar mata (2012)

brandon lee kramer

composed of used cigarette cartons from various european countries (18 total) and metal no smoking sign, mounted on cardboard, 61 x 51 cm

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

anselm kiefer

Schwarze Flocken - Für Paul Celan Artist Book, Germany

2005, Acrylic, charcoal and branches on photograph, mounted on cardboard, 62.5 x 42 x 15 cm

Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris

Salzburg Photograph by Charles Duprat

Kiefer is a personal favorite. I had the opportunity to delve into his work at a fairly early age, discovering him roughly six years ago now. I love the gloomy nature of his work, the blacks and blues being an aesthetic that attests to my natural projections of beauty; an "innate" sense of despair and suffering. I was blessed to stumble upon his work in 2009 while in Palma de Mallorca at the Museu d'art modern i contemporani. I remember being in a state of pure bliss as I stumbled in with a friend - amazed - that Kiefer's work was there. There were giant pieces of convoluted constellations doused in gloom that leaped of the canvases. It was a lovely experience. In fact, another favorite Am Anfang (origin or beginning in German) is still in permanent residence in Palma. If you ever decide to go to the Balearic Islands make sure you stop by the museum on your way to Ibiza.

vigilius haufneinsis

"whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate." from the concept of dread 


bonus points who anyone who actually knows who this is without using the internet to find it...

frederica mathewes-green

"it is possible for cultures to change for the better, once given a dose of truth. like a body, a culture has innate impulse to health. though this can be subverted in a million ways it can be nurtured as well. this should give us hope."

fernando pessoa

“…since in life we all have to be exploited, I wonder if it would be less worthwhile to be exploited by vanity, glory, spite, envy, or by impossibilities. These are those that God himself exploits, the prophets and saints in the emptiness of the world…” 
          -Passage 58


Pessoa has been a source of intrigue since my visit to Lisboa in the Spring. I keep bringing up this trip as it was genuinely my truest escape from reality that I have fresh in memory, Slovakia being a near rival. Lisboa has an essence, one that Pessoa captures in the essence of his temporal misgivings, that I loved and is a location that I would ultimately hope to reside after "settling down" someday. The cobblestone streets and little shops capture the antiquated stains of a still impoverished European city, one that you still feel safe in, as if you were always meant to stay. It smells of the ocean; and the people gleam with joy. However, it is Pessoa's words that circle in shouts of banality, emptiness, and, ultimately, despair. All of this knowing he was still rather happy passing down the Rua dos Douradores. It runs off the page, I find myself beaming with the heartfelt empathy that I knew he saw in others and his quotidian notions of coffee shop visiting and subtle wine indlugence. What is it that God exploits? A good question, dear sir. One that must be fulfilled through our dreams, the purest of curses and the most fragile of impossibilities. 


“Even in the poorest of eras…There are few like me, addicted to dreaming, who are also lucid enough to laugh at the aesthetic possibility of dreaming about themselves that way” 
          -Passage 30


Both quotes taken from The Book of Disquiet, an unedited journal written under his various heteronyms from 1888-1935. 

dennis oppenheim

dennis oppenheim
reading position for a second degree burn (1970)

third piece from roma's contemporary art exhibit. this is me every time i go to the beach, especially last summer in lisboa. i used sunscreen but was still so read that people stopped at intersections when they had the right-away. they assumed i was a stop sign, of course.

gina pane

gina pane
azione sentimentale (1973)

another piece from roma in 2009. miss pane's work may seem grotesque to some, but is very intense. it is what the spanish refer to as "morboso," something wrong yet has an essence that keeps pulling it back to attention.

hema upadhyay

hema padhyay
where the bees suck, there suck i (2008)

a great piece i saw in the museo d'arte contemporanea roma in august 2009.

Salazar on the Poor

“Begging is not a sign of poverty but a vice,” said Antonio de Oliviera Salazar, the former Prime Minister of Portugal, who suggests that a society should “punish the false beggars and place the rest, those left over, in asylums." This is what Foucault deemed "power-knowledge," the production of social knowledge through discourse with the intent to create a power hierarchy. Salazar sought to force his conservative mentality onto the populace, claiming that the poor were the malignant and should be forced into mental institutions. If one reads Foucault's Madness and Civilization, they could find where the roots of "mental insanity" lie and learn the power institutions had in shaping those standards of our contemporary reality. Though this is certainly a complicated ordeal nowadays, convoluted amid the various social discourse we have from politicians, civilians and the field of medicine; I found this short blurb meaningful enough that it may provoke one to delve deeper into understanding power, class and mental health. The initial inspiration derives in the Chiado Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon where I visited last Spring. 

Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments

From Henry Miller on Writing, New Directions
via BIBLIOKLEPT

the nose

Alberto Giacometti, The Nose (Le Nez), 1947, Bronze, wire, rope and steel, 81 x 97.5 x 39.4 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, © Alberto Giacometti, BY SIAE 2007.

When God was a Woman

"She who knows the orphan, knows the widow, seeks justice for the poor and shelter for the weak"

-Merlin Stone

a big hand for a little lady (1966)

a must see.

compliments of pleaded jeans tumblr

this was my last sunday afternoon-monday evening.

Our Rich Futures

"The idea of the future, pregnant with the infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality."

Henri Bergson
1927 Nobel Peace Laureate in Literature
Time and Free Will