...holding two pieces of wood.
A little under two years ago, a friend wrote an essay on love as an inevitably politicized choice.
In a fashion common among friends of a certain variety in my circle/demographic, she blended what seemed to me then and still seem to me now Millennial concerns such as dating as a 20-something with grander political themes that encompassed things like black life and black death and intersectional consideration of the struggles faced by non-whites in America. The essay is of the same genre as the photo of Amandla Stenberg or some other black female icon on Instagram within whose caption rests a hash-tagged phrase like #blackgirlmagic, a celebration of the personal but which celebration is in and of itself a political statement. Frantz Fanon for Generation Y. I see him wearing a camo jacket and stylishly tattered boots with a hoodie in a M.I.A. music video.
#piratebae
Right now, this laptop sits on a pair of Detroit Red Wings sweatpants. Completing the outfit is a gray sweatshirt on whose front reads #DecolonizeTheCanon, with the French tricolor flag flipped vertical. On the back, a list of authors' last names descends, all authors from former French colonies: Lalami, Daoud, Fanon...
(I'd worn it in Albany while taking the Bar and in that interlude as we streamed into our room for the final half of the final day, a beautiful and wearied girl in a rust-colored hoodie came up and gushed and we encouraged each other as we prepared for the final battle, reminding each other whose good we would be fighting for. She'd seen me yesterday in a red hoodie with a Black Power fist emblazoned on the front and had pegged me accordingly.)
The idea for the sweatshirt, and its American analog lying somewhere in a pile by the suitcase out of which I still kind of live, came during a brief point during that spring in Paris when ennui and boredom had captured me. The process begun that previous Fall that saw me speaking at and helping to organize demonstrations, keeping the counsel of activists, and following the incendiary course of events back in the States had found yet another manifestation: apparel.
In my bedroom, in a small pile by my closet, lie a number of borrowed library books, casualties of my desire/compulsion to be surrounded by books I will never have the time to read.
A desire to plunge into literature by Commonwealth authors (Richard Flanagan's A Narrow Road to the Deep North, Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton) soon blossomed into a desire to tackle more post-colonial lit, a perhaps belated attempt to walk the walk after having, earlier this year, talked the talk.
The hashtag has become a catchphrase between I and a woman I met through my office's revived outreach efforts to the Muslim Community, an initiative I and a few other colleagues are spear-heading, and here again is that joining of the personal and the political.
Her family is originally from Pakistan and while talk of politics in the office is always loose and filled with candor, it is especially fiery with this woman, even as we swap animated GIFs of DJ Khaled imparting Snap-chatted wisdom and Diddy dancing in a music video. Some time last week, she came by my office wearing a shade of lipstick that raised in me the same sense of wonder with which I'd watch the enflamed trees lining I-84 during a New England autumn. Occupying much of her energies now is a presentation she hopes to put on for legal professionals in New York on cultural competency with regards to Muslims. On Friday when we last saw each other, we watched the horror unfold in Molenbeek, a community whose contours have become increasingly familiar having watched Europe over the past few months. And when we see each other again, we will likely discuss what's going on in France and in France's prisons, and I will send her the longreads I've just finished and we'll discuss them and commiserate and brainstorm, and I will tell her about Paris and Charlie Hebdo and watching soldiers occupy the Jewish Quarter in Le Marais, and she will tell me about Jersey and about Pakistan and about New York.
I joked with a good law school friend that I had this habit of mentioning, on early dates, that I had spent time in Palestine, intentionally referring to it by that name so that I could gauge the other party's reaction. I imagine quite a few tragedies were averted by the early sighting of red flags. Out of that most Millennial of marriages comes the #wokebae, and I joked with this same friend that I might have stumbled upon a potential subgenre of the same, the Postcolonial Bae.
Whenever I remember that notion invoked by one of the characters in Infinite Jest that maybe one doesn't choose what what loves, that often there is no deciding, I think of that line about the temple coming to Mohammed.
Currently reading: The Moor's Account - Laila Lalami
In a fashion common among friends of a certain variety in my circle/demographic, she blended what seemed to me then and still seem to me now Millennial concerns such as dating as a 20-something with grander political themes that encompassed things like black life and black death and intersectional consideration of the struggles faced by non-whites in America. The essay is of the same genre as the photo of Amandla Stenberg or some other black female icon on Instagram within whose caption rests a hash-tagged phrase like #blackgirlmagic, a celebration of the personal but which celebration is in and of itself a political statement. Frantz Fanon for Generation Y. I see him wearing a camo jacket and stylishly tattered boots with a hoodie in a M.I.A. music video.
#piratebae
Right now, this laptop sits on a pair of Detroit Red Wings sweatpants. Completing the outfit is a gray sweatshirt on whose front reads #DecolonizeTheCanon, with the French tricolor flag flipped vertical. On the back, a list of authors' last names descends, all authors from former French colonies: Lalami, Daoud, Fanon...
(I'd worn it in Albany while taking the Bar and in that interlude as we streamed into our room for the final half of the final day, a beautiful and wearied girl in a rust-colored hoodie came up and gushed and we encouraged each other as we prepared for the final battle, reminding each other whose good we would be fighting for. She'd seen me yesterday in a red hoodie with a Black Power fist emblazoned on the front and had pegged me accordingly.)
The idea for the sweatshirt, and its American analog lying somewhere in a pile by the suitcase out of which I still kind of live, came during a brief point during that spring in Paris when ennui and boredom had captured me. The process begun that previous Fall that saw me speaking at and helping to organize demonstrations, keeping the counsel of activists, and following the incendiary course of events back in the States had found yet another manifestation: apparel.
In my bedroom, in a small pile by my closet, lie a number of borrowed library books, casualties of my desire/compulsion to be surrounded by books I will never have the time to read.
A desire to plunge into literature by Commonwealth authors (Richard Flanagan's A Narrow Road to the Deep North, Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton) soon blossomed into a desire to tackle more post-colonial lit, a perhaps belated attempt to walk the walk after having, earlier this year, talked the talk.
The hashtag has become a catchphrase between I and a woman I met through my office's revived outreach efforts to the Muslim Community, an initiative I and a few other colleagues are spear-heading, and here again is that joining of the personal and the political.
Her family is originally from Pakistan and while talk of politics in the office is always loose and filled with candor, it is especially fiery with this woman, even as we swap animated GIFs of DJ Khaled imparting Snap-chatted wisdom and Diddy dancing in a music video. Some time last week, she came by my office wearing a shade of lipstick that raised in me the same sense of wonder with which I'd watch the enflamed trees lining I-84 during a New England autumn. Occupying much of her energies now is a presentation she hopes to put on for legal professionals in New York on cultural competency with regards to Muslims. On Friday when we last saw each other, we watched the horror unfold in Molenbeek, a community whose contours have become increasingly familiar having watched Europe over the past few months. And when we see each other again, we will likely discuss what's going on in France and in France's prisons, and I will send her the longreads I've just finished and we'll discuss them and commiserate and brainstorm, and I will tell her about Paris and Charlie Hebdo and watching soldiers occupy the Jewish Quarter in Le Marais, and she will tell me about Jersey and about Pakistan and about New York.
I joked with a good law school friend that I had this habit of mentioning, on early dates, that I had spent time in Palestine, intentionally referring to it by that name so that I could gauge the other party's reaction. I imagine quite a few tragedies were averted by the early sighting of red flags. Out of that most Millennial of marriages comes the #wokebae, and I joked with this same friend that I might have stumbled upon a potential subgenre of the same, the Postcolonial Bae.
Whenever I remember that notion invoked by one of the characters in Infinite Jest that maybe one doesn't choose what what loves, that often there is no deciding, I think of that line about the temple coming to Mohammed.
Currently reading: The Moor's Account - Laila Lalami