Written on December 1, 2006
My dissertation defense is in five days and i have just been a zombie of late. All this work for all these years and as the moment draws nigh, I am just N-U-M-B. I try to flip through texts, review, cram etc.,. And I just get bored, then overwhelmed and then just close the texts. All I can do is think about traveling and how to go somewhere between the defense and Christmas and mark the moment.
The thing I keep trippin' on is my feelings of "shouldas and couldas and need toos" and yet I just languish in inertia. So how am I feeling these days?
---The dissertation is difficulty to personalize now because it has cost so much for so long.
---I realize how much teaching anchored and grounded me through the process now that I am not teaching.
---I'm not managing my loneliness with anything except TV and Jazzercise.
---Yet, I do feel like my body is physically altered without the weight and pressure of the dissertation weighing down on it.
---I now realize how few ties I have to the communities i've lived in during this gypsy life.
---I just have the overwhelming desire to be somewhere warm and away to cry and heal from this journey. Somehow, only warmth will aid in mapping a new course. More importantly, I must begin to map out a life for myself beyond Chicago and Champaign which includes who I want to be as a professor, a writer, and a woman.
As I think and write, I am coming to terms with the fact that:
---As the dissertation process reaches its conclusion, it is like watching my life begin to thaw out before me and beginning the process of remembering what was there before all this began.
---Such an opening allows me to move beyond the sleepwalking and existing to begin to think about what living truly is for me. Its like feeling my limbs begin to awaken from years of neglect. I am coming to feel what it means to take time, look at myself, reinhabit my body, my space, my point of view in new ways.
---10 years (yep, Master's Degree, 2 years of research, PhD post-Master's to completion), 292 pages to date, four continents, thousands of people, millions of pounds and calories, oceans of tears and countless telephone units of venom, doubt and delight/despair are just a few ways to calculate the journey.
---I'm coming to realize that the process of completion required a fever over the last eight months---the fever to complete at all costs---but now that fever is breaking.
---I just feel a bit like the caterpillar must have felt in the process of becoming a butterfly. And while others may want me to be the same, do give yourself permission to be different, renewed, enlivened on the other side.
---It is indeed amazing to work so long for the approval, greenlight, completion that the end is this overwhelmingly numb. The magnitude of it is so great that I don't think I feel it...or at least my body is not letting me feel it .
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Katrina: One Year Later...
Hmmm....
Well, it's 9:26 pm on August 29,2006
One year after the Hurricane Katrina disaster
I've been watching specials over the last few days
Forcing myself to remember
And yet, a year later, I still have so few words
Just fragments of ideas that sputter to the surface
How does one understand this as an act of nature?
...As a Christian?
...As an American?
...As a Black woman?
...As a decendant of Southerners/Mississipians?
So what come up
People that keep saying that "this doesn't happen in America"?
"How could this have happened in America?"
The continued references to New Orleans looking like a war zone
For me, I hold the Katrina Disaster constant with the war in Iraq
Because they are interconnected, intertwined in my mind
It just seems to me that the Gulf Coast can't be rebuilt while we fight this second Middle Eastern Gulf war
Our government and our resources have made solid commitment to that Gulf rather than our own Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf
I think my deepest fear is that Yes, the storm revealed the race-class problem in America
But I fear it will become yet another instance of Black folk as continued spectacle in the American media.
Images of Katrina reinforce Black fragility in America and reflect an America that is enamored with Black pain
Well, it's 9:26 pm on August 29,2006
One year after the Hurricane Katrina disaster
I've been watching specials over the last few days
Forcing myself to remember
And yet, a year later, I still have so few words
Just fragments of ideas that sputter to the surface
How does one understand this as an act of nature?
...As a Christian?
...As an American?
...As a Black woman?
...As a decendant of Southerners/Mississipians?
So what come up
People that keep saying that "this doesn't happen in America"?
"How could this have happened in America?"
The continued references to New Orleans looking like a war zone
For me, I hold the Katrina Disaster constant with the war in Iraq
Because they are interconnected, intertwined in my mind
It just seems to me that the Gulf Coast can't be rebuilt while we fight this second Middle Eastern Gulf war
Our government and our resources have made solid commitment to that Gulf rather than our own Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf
I think my deepest fear is that Yes, the storm revealed the race-class problem in America
But I fear it will become yet another instance of Black folk as continued spectacle in the American media.
Images of Katrina reinforce Black fragility in America and reflect an America that is enamored with Black pain
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Not My Momma or "Yo Momma": Addressing the Cult of Black Female Ridicule
A friend recently sent me an email about MTV's Yo Momma reality show and it gave me the opportunity to offer my own reflections.
So here goes:
---------------------------------------
Hey Girl:
Greetings from Nicole.
Oh, no this show is no joke(no pun intended).
I watched a few episodes last time I was visiting family and by the 2nd episode the novelty had worn off and the academic in me just began to struggle with this thing.
I didn't share all my beef with my partner cuz he found it relaxing and humerous at times, but it was just troubling to me to watch predominantly AfricanAmerican men attack each others fictional "mamas". Then, by show's end, their real mommas are there in some instances to act as prompts for each other's abusive jokes as the ambiguous Latin host howls with laughter along with his two brutha-man sidekicks.
It was like something out of Spike's Bamboozled, but ferociously worse---SINCE IT IS AN ACTUAL TV SHOW!!! It was an emotional blood sport as Black men battled one another over whose "mommas" were blacker, more impoverished, more immoral, more sexually explicit,etc.,.
As I overheard some of the jokes from another room, the show just gnawed at me. In a culture where Black mothers have been much maligned over the last 40years (and back as far as slavery is we push back muchfurther) CAN SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMEEEEEBODY MAKE THEANNOUNCEMENT THAT IS IS NOT ALRIGHT FOR BLACK MEN TO CONTINUE TO MOCK AND DEMEAN BLACK WOMEN---YOUNG AND OLD---FOR SPORT, LEISURE, COMEDY OR PROFIT????
When will we move to a space where Black women could possibly be celebrated, valued, affirmed---hell, atleast by our own men??? Why does African American entertainment always have a destructive, divisive quality? Our genius is often born out of pain and struggle, but we always seem to turn that genius against each other---while white folks stroll to the bank with the proceeds.
Can't wait to read the article below and glad to knowthat someone else ain't laughin'!
It's time to get well sis, WE GOTTA GET WELL!---Nicole
(P.S. It makes Oprah's Legends tribute all the more timely...and poignant!!!)
So here goes:
---------------------------------------
Hey Girl:
Greetings from Nicole.
Oh, no this show is no joke(no pun intended).
I watched a few episodes last time I was visiting family and by the 2nd episode the novelty had worn off and the academic in me just began to struggle with this thing.
I didn't share all my beef with my partner cuz he found it relaxing and humerous at times, but it was just troubling to me to watch predominantly AfricanAmerican men attack each others fictional "mamas". Then, by show's end, their real mommas are there in some instances to act as prompts for each other's abusive jokes as the ambiguous Latin host howls with laughter along with his two brutha-man sidekicks.
It was like something out of Spike's Bamboozled, but ferociously worse---SINCE IT IS AN ACTUAL TV SHOW!!! It was an emotional blood sport as Black men battled one another over whose "mommas" were blacker, more impoverished, more immoral, more sexually explicit,etc.,.
As I overheard some of the jokes from another room, the show just gnawed at me. In a culture where Black mothers have been much maligned over the last 40years (and back as far as slavery is we push back muchfurther) CAN SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMEEEEEBODY MAKE THEANNOUNCEMENT THAT IS IS NOT ALRIGHT FOR BLACK MEN TO CONTINUE TO MOCK AND DEMEAN BLACK WOMEN---YOUNG AND OLD---FOR SPORT, LEISURE, COMEDY OR PROFIT????
When will we move to a space where Black women could possibly be celebrated, valued, affirmed---hell, atleast by our own men??? Why does African American entertainment always have a destructive, divisive quality? Our genius is often born out of pain and struggle, but we always seem to turn that genius against each other---while white folks stroll to the bank with the proceeds.
Can't wait to read the article below and glad to knowthat someone else ain't laughin'!
It's time to get well sis, WE GOTTA GET WELL!---Nicole
(P.S. It makes Oprah's Legends tribute all the more timely...and poignant!!!)
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Coming Clean: How Cable Got Me Twisted
8:18 am 4/6/06
I did it.
Today.
Had to.
And its kind of eerie just the same sitting here listening to the street.
Sounds and muffled voices up on the hill across the street.
But I had to.
Things were just getting out of hand.
I'd rise and get up in the morning feigning for my fix of Democracy Now
while chekcing my email.
Ear poised, eyes fixed, trying to be sure Amy's coverage lines up with Yahoo's top 5 news list for this moment.
Then check 3 of my email accounts letting the other two sit for a while.
Surely my East Coast folks are writing, emailing, talking about something being 3 hours ahead of me here in LA.
By the time I get through typing, surfing, dreaming, riding the highs of emails received (so sweet when they're good) and the lows of emails never sent (awful when the ones you are feignin' for neverarrive), it's at least 11:30 by now.
Time for a snack.
Then turn on C-Span just to see how immigration fight is going...that's a whole 'nother post to be sure.
Yep, there Kerry is droning on and on and on.
Then I cut C-Span with a lil' TBN...gotta see what my Christian folks are yammering about today.
This will always throw me into the lurch.
Between the politicians and the evangelicals i'm always caught in the middle cussing and fightin'.
By the way, how come the Xian network, C-Span and the Cable yappers all look alike?
Pasty silver foxes in blue suits with forked toungues.
Katie Couric ain't got a chance in hell...
Well, by lunch i'm ready for a toot of As the World Turns.
...(White) Girl (actress), get up off the floor or out the bed cryin', he'll take you back by in a few weeks...Jack always does.
Then i'll hop up and do a lil' cleanin', chat with mama as Guiding Light washes over me.
After venting about the days madness via TV or radio report, I hurry off the phone as we now move to the premium drug of the media junky---The Oprah Winfrey show!
Please let it be good today, please God let it be good today, I pray in my heart of hearts!
At least let her have on somebody Black talking about something substantial (hell, on really low days, i'm just happy when Dr. Robin is in the audience!)
But, alas, the best I can hope for is 52 minutes of white celebrity worship...
Or the latest best consumer item/age-defying gimmick...
Or I am forced to listen to Oprah wrap our nuckles about how fake we are as a society as she chastices us about celebrity worship or living inauthentic lives...
Ain't she a confused mess...yeah, all the way to the bank!
So I just exercise and while she blathers on...I love her...she works my nerves...what I'ze gone do???
After Oprah I invest in Hardball with Chris Matthews...clearly...by this point in the evening i'm fully out of control.
Hardball is a summation of C-Span's with jokes.
I do enjoy Matthew's style, but its like watching political strip club where senators, reporters and politicians do their best poll dance all the while flaunting today's breaking political ineptitudes...i'm repulsed and intrigued at once...why can't I look away?
By the end of Hardball, i'm wasted, sick on my stomach and just bloated and ill from the day's media binge.
I finally flop on the couch to come down, take the edge off with a lil' Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network.
I then begin the round of declarations: That's it...time to turn it off...that's enough...you've had enough for God's sake...turn the $^&*%& TV off.
So head to the kitchen to scrounge up dinner... and I wonder...hmmm, what's Rachel Ray cooking tonight...
SOMEHOW, the TV pops back on while i'm eating dinner and I peruse the channels for tonight's tv lineup
...sigh...it's a sickness, yall, it's a sickness...
------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, so that's how things have been looking for the last few weeks while i've been waiting for feedback on several completed chapters as I pack, clean, tie up loose ends and prepare to move.
At first, all this TV watching seemed harmless at the beginning. I've been working from home these days and the TV became a way to "stay informed", a company keeper, just some noise to break up the monotony of job hunting, writing and isolation.
But there is a distubring side to it as well that's affecting me.
The sum total of all of the email, voice mail, leftist radio pro-po-ganda, soap (opera) dopes, WWF cable news, and talkshow-tainment is wiggin' me out, fa' real yall.
It's information overload.
It's stess inducing, anxiety producing and frying my brain and emotions.
Furthermore, I am exausting my loved ones with conversations heavy-laden with my own stress AND global madness...you know it's bad when your mom who loved our daily chats begin to find reasons to cut me off and run like hell from my calls (smile)!
So, I am happy to report that i'm working on taming this beast TODAY.
I'm fighting the pull of needing to know.
Puting some distance between myself and the fear the world-spend yo' money-inadequacy machine today.
It's now 8:56 am...and so far so good...i'll keep you posted...
----------------------------------------------------------
Nicole wrote this email at 4:37 pm on April 6...and happy to report that neither the TV nor radio have been on today...Cold Turkey Like A Mother Baby, Uh-Uh-Uh...
I did it.
Today.
Had to.
And its kind of eerie just the same sitting here listening to the street.
Sounds and muffled voices up on the hill across the street.
But I had to.
Things were just getting out of hand.
I'd rise and get up in the morning feigning for my fix of Democracy Now
while chekcing my email.
Ear poised, eyes fixed, trying to be sure Amy's coverage lines up with Yahoo's top 5 news list for this moment.
Then check 3 of my email accounts letting the other two sit for a while.
Surely my East Coast folks are writing, emailing, talking about something being 3 hours ahead of me here in LA.
By the time I get through typing, surfing, dreaming, riding the highs of emails received (so sweet when they're good) and the lows of emails never sent (awful when the ones you are feignin' for neverarrive), it's at least 11:30 by now.
Time for a snack.
Then turn on C-Span just to see how immigration fight is going...that's a whole 'nother post to be sure.
Yep, there Kerry is droning on and on and on.
Then I cut C-Span with a lil' TBN...gotta see what my Christian folks are yammering about today.
This will always throw me into the lurch.
Between the politicians and the evangelicals i'm always caught in the middle cussing and fightin'.
By the way, how come the Xian network, C-Span and the Cable yappers all look alike?
Pasty silver foxes in blue suits with forked toungues.
Katie Couric ain't got a chance in hell...
Well, by lunch i'm ready for a toot of As the World Turns.
...(White) Girl (actress), get up off the floor or out the bed cryin', he'll take you back by in a few weeks...Jack always does.
Then i'll hop up and do a lil' cleanin', chat with mama as Guiding Light washes over me.
After venting about the days madness via TV or radio report, I hurry off the phone as we now move to the premium drug of the media junky---The Oprah Winfrey show!
Please let it be good today, please God let it be good today, I pray in my heart of hearts!
At least let her have on somebody Black talking about something substantial (hell, on really low days, i'm just happy when Dr. Robin is in the audience!)
But, alas, the best I can hope for is 52 minutes of white celebrity worship...
Or the latest best consumer item/age-defying gimmick...
Or I am forced to listen to Oprah wrap our nuckles about how fake we are as a society as she chastices us about celebrity worship or living inauthentic lives...
Ain't she a confused mess...yeah, all the way to the bank!
So I just exercise and while she blathers on...I love her...she works my nerves...what I'ze gone do???
After Oprah I invest in Hardball with Chris Matthews...clearly...by this point in the evening i'm fully out of control.
Hardball is a summation of C-Span's with jokes.
I do enjoy Matthew's style, but its like watching political strip club where senators, reporters and politicians do their best poll dance all the while flaunting today's breaking political ineptitudes...i'm repulsed and intrigued at once...why can't I look away?
By the end of Hardball, i'm wasted, sick on my stomach and just bloated and ill from the day's media binge.
I finally flop on the couch to come down, take the edge off with a lil' Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network.
I then begin the round of declarations: That's it...time to turn it off...that's enough...you've had enough for God's sake...turn the $^&*%& TV off.
So head to the kitchen to scrounge up dinner... and I wonder...hmmm, what's Rachel Ray cooking tonight...
SOMEHOW, the TV pops back on while i'm eating dinner and I peruse the channels for tonight's tv lineup
...sigh...it's a sickness, yall, it's a sickness...
------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, so that's how things have been looking for the last few weeks while i've been waiting for feedback on several completed chapters as I pack, clean, tie up loose ends and prepare to move.
At first, all this TV watching seemed harmless at the beginning. I've been working from home these days and the TV became a way to "stay informed", a company keeper, just some noise to break up the monotony of job hunting, writing and isolation.
But there is a distubring side to it as well that's affecting me.
The sum total of all of the email, voice mail, leftist radio pro-po-ganda, soap (opera) dopes, WWF cable news, and talkshow-tainment is wiggin' me out, fa' real yall.
It's information overload.
It's stess inducing, anxiety producing and frying my brain and emotions.
Furthermore, I am exausting my loved ones with conversations heavy-laden with my own stress AND global madness...you know it's bad when your mom who loved our daily chats begin to find reasons to cut me off and run like hell from my calls (smile)!
So, I am happy to report that i'm working on taming this beast TODAY.
I'm fighting the pull of needing to know.
Puting some distance between myself and the fear the world-spend yo' money-inadequacy machine today.
It's now 8:56 am...and so far so good...i'll keep you posted...
----------------------------------------------------------
Nicole wrote this email at 4:37 pm on April 6...and happy to report that neither the TV nor radio have been on today...Cold Turkey Like A Mother Baby, Uh-Uh-Uh...
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Breaking Bread Together: America, Something's Gotta Give
Greetings all:
As the political season approaches, I feel the dread and loathing building. The looming pressure to sign up, get out the vote, support "your team", prepare for the mindless, bitter election warfare of us vs. them politics, vote stealing, fear mongering on all fronts (domestic and global fears of all "others") and other party-driven playground antics.
And i'm tired already.
I need a new way to engage in nation-building---beyond division and fear and excruciating partisan politics.
So, i'm reaching out to all those interested in meeting in the middle, crossing party lines and just getting together to talk about America's future with folks from diverse perspectives.
If you are interested in participating in reflection, a shared meal, dialogue across difference and compassionate organizing for future projects, i'd love for come and gather with you and others who share these sentiments.
If you are interested in planning and participating in such a gathering in your community, please contact me at breakingbreadtogether@yahoo.com.
Take good care and I look forward to hearing from you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicole Anderson is an educator and community organizer. I am currently interested in creating opportunities to diverse communities to come together and transcend division and spirit-breaking politics to forge a new vision for America's future.
P.S.:
Yeah, I know that such a project seems ambitious, but when you are tired of waiting for change and struggling with what is, you have few options: you either wither from within... or create the thing you want to see...and be.
Our fear and frustration with one another is devouring us from within.
I want more for myself and my country. And I know you do, too.
As the political season approaches, I feel the dread and loathing building. The looming pressure to sign up, get out the vote, support "your team", prepare for the mindless, bitter election warfare of us vs. them politics, vote stealing, fear mongering on all fronts (domestic and global fears of all "others") and other party-driven playground antics.
And i'm tired already.
I need a new way to engage in nation-building---beyond division and fear and excruciating partisan politics.
So, i'm reaching out to all those interested in meeting in the middle, crossing party lines and just getting together to talk about America's future with folks from diverse perspectives.
If you are interested in participating in reflection, a shared meal, dialogue across difference and compassionate organizing for future projects, i'd love for come and gather with you and others who share these sentiments.
If you are interested in planning and participating in such a gathering in your community, please contact me at breakingbreadtogether@yahoo.com.
Take good care and I look forward to hearing from you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicole Anderson is an educator and community organizer. I am currently interested in creating opportunities to diverse communities to come together and transcend division and spirit-breaking politics to forge a new vision for America's future.
P.S.:
Yeah, I know that such a project seems ambitious, but when you are tired of waiting for change and struggling with what is, you have few options: you either wither from within... or create the thing you want to see...and be.
Our fear and frustration with one another is devouring us from within.
I want more for myself and my country. And I know you do, too.
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