Occupy Seattle...

Occupy Seattle is like a drug that I can't remove myself from even when it hurts.

OCCUPY, to END CAPITALISM

Hey all,
This is a piece that BOC, a group I am a part of, put out today. It was produced in a hurry given that we have all been heavily involved in Occupy Seattle. Check it out:

http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/occupy-to-end-capitalism/

Caring: A labor on stolen time

Care workers, feminists, labor militants, read this and share your thoughts!

You can email the Jennifer Ng here

caring: a labor of stolen time

pages from a CNA's notebook

*                             

The Machine endangers all we have made.

We allow it to rule instead of obey.

To build a house, cut the stone sharp and fast:
the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way.

The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape
and its factories subside into silence.
It thinks it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys.

But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places
we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers
that -- when you feel it -- brings you to your knees.

There are yet words that come near the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own.

Rilke (Translated by Joanna Macy)

                *                             

This piece is dedicated to all nursing home workers, residents and their family members.                                       Be patient with me, as I share our silenced stories.

All names have been changed to protect the identities of my coworkers and residents

*                             

I work in a place of death. People come here to die, and my coworkers and I care for them as they make their journeys.Sometimes these transitions take years or months. Other times they take weeks or some short days. I count the time in shifts, in scheduled state visits, in the sham monthly meetings I never attend, in the announcements of the “Employee of the Month” (code word for best ass-kisser of the month), in the yearly pay increment of 20 cents, and in the number of times I get called into the Human Resources office, counting down to the last one that would get me fired.

The nursing home residents also have their own rhythms. Their time is tracked by scheduled hospital visits; by the times when loved ones drop by to share a meal, to announce the arrival of a new grandchild, or to anxiously wait at their bedsides for heart-wrenching moments to pass.  Their time is measured by transitions from mechanical food to pureed food, textures that match their increasing susceptibility to dysphagia, their appetite changing with the decreasing sensitivity of their taste buds. Their transitions are also measured by the changes from underwear to pull ups and then to diapers. Even more than the loss of mobility, the use of diapers is often the most fearsome adaptation. For many people, lack of control over urinary functions and timing is the definitive, undoubted mark of the loss of independence to dementia.  

Many of the elderly I have worked with are, at least initially, aware of the transitions they undergo, and respond with a myriad of emotions such as shame, anger, depression, anxiety and fear. Theirs was the generation that survived the great depression, armed with fervent missions of world war. Aging, that mundane human process, was an anti-climatic twist to the purported grandeur and tumultuousness of their early 20th century youth.   

“I am afraid to die. I don’t know where I will go, Jennifer,” a resident named Lara once said to me, fear dilating her eyes.

“Lara, you will go to heaven. You will be happy.” I reply, holding the spoonful of pureed spinach to her lips.

“Tell me about your son, Tobias.”

And so Lara begins, the same story of Tobias, his obedience and intelligence, which I have heard over and over again for the past year.  The son whom she loves, whose teenage portrait stands by her bedside. The son who has never visited. The son whom I have never met, but whose name and memory calms Lara down.

*

Continue here

"Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us"

"The body had to die,

 so labor power could live"

Silvia Federici 

Caliban and the Witch (141)

I am strongly influenced by Silvia Federici's "Caliban and the Witch." I read that book alongside Maryse Conde's "I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem." Conde's book is also really amazing, and Federici's historical and theoretical ideas give another layer of meaning to the depth that is already there. I hope to do a more detailed write up of these books sometime down the road.

In the meantime, I want to share a talk that Federici recently gave in Philadelphia, entitled, "Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us." The organizer has kindly uploaded the audio recording. Check it out. It's super helpful. I especially like the distinction between "sacrifice" and "suffering." The Buddhist instincts in me really like her acknowledgement and acceptance of aspects of life as suffering.

It's making me think alot about the importance of organization in helping maintain sustainable political lives. The 10% we can offer to political work while also studying, working, caring for family, self care, is small when it is alone. In fact, it becomes a small droplet that gets lost in the midst of a gazillion other things. But when many people pool their 10%, 5% - s together, then our joint (small) forces become bigger and more meaningful political activities.

I have been to meetings where people spend the only 2 hours of the week they have to spare, nearly dozing off because the work is not engaging or meaningful. Being present at a political meeting does not mean we are growing and engaging meaningfully. We need to have organizations that channel the only 2 hours of spare time someone can offer, into meaningful, inspiring, challenging work that helps us grow. For that, we need structure and political content.

We need to build that! Or we won't win against the capitalist scum bags that overwhelm us! We need to build that, so we dont burn out! Also so we won't conflate all forms of "sustainability" with self care that takes us AWAY from political work.  I believe it is possible to be sustainable and be engaged politically. I also do think there is need to take time away sometimes, but that cannot be the only way we conceptualize sustainability.

Family...

I feel a little silly that I can't sleep tonight cos I am excited for the first day of school tomorrow :P
I mean, I guess I'm kinda really excited to start (and finish! *fingers crossed*) nursing school. I had been preparing for this since...2007! O-M-G that's right! Pre-reqs!!! I hate you. Pre-reqs that expire? I hate you even more!

Anyway. I fill up my time by getting emo. I recently had a little conversion experience. I don't know how long it will last. I'm hoping it's not a temporary thing.

I realize how much I love my family!
My quirky, weird, atypical, problematic family! (which family isn't?)

My parents are not perfect. My mom has issues of internalized colonialism being from Taiwan and loving, absolutely adoring everything Japanese. Taiwan was a former colony of Japan. Japanese colonialism had different policies for Korea and Taiwan. Where they deprived Korea of any industrialization or technological transfer etc, they fawned over Taiwan and developed it as their lil model colony. It was the bad cop stick vs. the good cop carrot game they played.

My mom's racism is probably the hardest for me to accept about my family.

Growing up in Singapore/Malaysia, and seeing my mom despise all the people around me because they were "Nanyang" Chinese, or Malay, or Indian, was really poisonous. Because being a mixture of all this was how I grew up -- language, food, friends, education. Even with Singapore's racist anti-Malay, anti-Indian, Chinese supremacist education system, we still had an illusion that we were a multiracial society in my childhood years. Hell, I even *look* like a SEAsian Chinese! And it was never good enough. Where in school we learned about Japanese colonialism of SEAsia and all the degenerate racist things the Japanese military did under the name of "pan-asian unity," in my phase of deep nationalism and patroitism, my mom would simply squash all that by hushing me up. Shaking her head furiously and yelling madly, exactly showing how my young heart seeking a history to call home, was shattering her denial of how hers had merely been at another's mercy. I didn't understand why. And I despised her for it.

I have tried rejecting her. It succeeded for some years. But I think I am ready for some fresh memories.

I am ready to remember my mom's voice, not as echoes of memory from my childhood and teenage years. I want to hear her voice again, before it ends.

Somehow, having worked in a nursing home and interacting with all these elderly who have so many contradictions, and feeling this need to distinguish between their degenerate ideology and their humanity, because I need to reclaim parts of my own humanity, is, strangely, doing something to me in a deeper way.

I know women and many oppressed people have resisted historically by killing their oppressors. I will not condemn the right to self-defense, and related to that, the rage that emerges from years of pent-up oppression. But I guess I wanna say, that this form of resistance, as legitimate as they often are, is dehumanizing to us all, even if at times necessary. This system dehumanizes all of us, and so I am not positing an ideal humanity that is being disrupted by acts of violent self defense. It's not that. It's a deeper thing, a possibly deeper, tragic thing. Something I feel unqualified to talk about because I havent been in that position yet.

Anyway, I suddenly really wanna genuinely care for my parents. My mom who has lost her kidneys to a money-grubbing capitalist medical system. My dad, who has not found what he really wants and has illusions of grandeur, of believing that persistence and inspiration alone can help transform his village high school credentials into a Einstein/John Nash genius at age 66. Maybe so, most likely not. Regardless, I love them.
I never want them in a nursing home.

"Poetry" - A film about Alzheimers, Poetry, and Gender

I don't see a lot of films where elderly women are the center of the stories. "Poetry" by Lee Chang Hoon, is one of the few films that beautifully, sensitively, gently accomplish this. This film is about a woman who has Alzheimers, whose realization of the illness (and impending death) shapes the way she interacts with the world, shapes the way she acutely understands her gendered experiences and her empathy with other women (particularly a young deceased rape victim and her mother), but who does so in a very gentle and yet passionate and strong manner. She seeks poetry as a defined, tangible "poetic aspiration," and yet doesnt realize that as she wanders through the last leg of her life, she is experiencing and speaking poetry at every turn.

I like this film in part because the main character, Yang Mija, is seeking words at the same time that her body is losing them. Yet her body transcends language, and her physical presence in the world, her accidental encounters and experiences with other people in her town, embody what poetry is. In the end, the poetry she writes transcends language and time and body -- she and the deceased girl become one in the reciting. It is this merger of time and space that is the essence of poetry, at death. The gendered experiences of patriarchy in the film are subtle, but very present. Mija is a single grandmother, who brings up her daughter's child, Wook. Her daughter had left the town to find work after her divorce, in Busan. It is not a coincidence, that Busan is the 2nd largest city in South Korea, and Mija's daughter's move seems to be a larger picture of urban migration. Mija meets with the fathers of Wook's friends who are discussing how to cover up their childrens' involvement in the months-long rape of the recently deceased girl. Mija is the only woman present, in shock upon hearing the news, but also from the men's callous attitudes about the girl's death. She finds out later, to her surprise, how widespread this callousness is, both in her own grandson, as well as in the man for whom she cares for as part of her maid-job.

Anyway, watch this film. It's on Netflix! Here's the poem at the end of the film. It's beautiful, so it's here, but if you hate spoilers, don't scroll down below the trailer:)



Agnes' Song
How is it over there?
How lonely is it?
Is it still glowing red at sunset?
Are the birds still singing on
The way to the forest?
Can you receive the letter
I dared not send?
Can I convey the confession
I dared not make?
Will time pass and roses fade?
Now it’s time to say goodbye
Like the wind that lingers
And then goes, just like shadows.
To promises that never came,
To the love sealed till the end,
To the grass kissing my weary ankles,
And to the tiny footsteps following me,
It’s time to say goodbye.

Continued here

我不再潇洒了！：）

我爸说我这次回家，变得比较消沉，跟过去比起来，是比较“不潇洒” 了：）
挺搞笑的。我说“成熟”，“稳定”，他说“没威风”。。。

我想这过去一年所经历的哀愁，情绪的极端上下，锻炼出来的我，毕竟有些沉重。这也是岁月与人生经验所创造的，是无可避开的。虽然多年不见，父亲仍能观察到我的变化，也是挺不错的。

说起“潇洒”， 也让我想起叶倩文的 《潇洒走一会》。这首歌是那么地表征了九时年代的风各。我觉得父亲过去也非常喜欢这首歌。

video是有点过时。。。：）
  *warning: cheesy 90s Chinese video* :)