The Branford Price Millar Library: as Peculiar as its Name is Long – WR 333: Advanced Composition

The Millar Library rests, nestled and weary, off towards the southernmost stretch of the South Park blocks on PSU’s campus. It is not the beating heart of PSU’s campus. All roads do not lead to the Millar Library. It is not, and may never have been, the crowning jewel of the university. Like many of the more middle-aged buildings that populate PSU, it is an architectural peculiarity, an amalgam of eras—a bewildering, unironic spectacle when observed as a whole. The building progresses, built in waves, with a pragmatic eye and budget. From behind, it menacingly hovers: a sturdy, elephantine muddle of drab-grey, concrete curtain walls with dark, ominous windows at a narrow interval. It is wholly utilitarian, reinforced by a series of buttresses, and apparently without structural or strategic weakness.  Its bastion-like quality broadcasts fortitude. It suggests that someone labored severely building it—and insisted that this building could withstand time’s aggressive onslaught.

As you round the chiseled, jutting corners of Millar’s spine, something is amiss: the concrete yields reluctantly to earthen, taupe brick. It’s suddenly suggesting chateau with a hint of southwestern adobe. The wall echoes the mid 90’s with its generic, unintrospective, post-grunge, too-perfect and generally general style. Tan, pretty, and marketable: it is the boy band of walls. It lacks windows and therefore, it lacks perception or the ability to be truly perceived. This square, brick face becomes quickly overwhelmed by the crescent, glass façade that completes the illogical structure we’ve just circumnavigated. With a gleaming, glassy smile, it winks with the reflection of the sunlight, acknowledging—and reveling in—any confusion that it inspires.

A spectator perches in the center of this crystal semi-circle. It gingerly stretches its knotty, robust arms upwards, extending and reaching for the canopy of the building. The spectator shelters the glass and makes it opaque, protecting the hectic interior from naked observation. And for now, this guardian is aided by a cloak of foliage. This tree provides sanctuary to the students in loving respect to others who fought hard to protect it. If you tour the PSU campus, your guide will quickly quip that the glass wall curves to accommodate this oaky body—a victory fought for by a past generation of student activists. And the tour will move on.

But imagine for a moment, the immensity of the struggle that allowed the tree to remain roosted and centered here. Imagine the subservience to a higher power, the debt towards nature that these students felt. When something beautiful and natural was in their way, these students said “build the building around it.” Here, in that moment of time, nature did not serve to accentuate or adorn humanity, humanity bent to serve and accentuate the splendor of a single tree. They reveled in it and respected it. Over the years, the tree continued to grow, filling out its exhibit and pushing itself aloft. But like the tour guide’s tone implies, the tree is a relic—it is a snapshot of foolish, altruistic activism. It is a pillar of the hippie’s hubris; it puts nature before men; and it must have cost the contractors and government outrageous sums of money to house a single, solitary tree in this isolated habitat. They could have just planted another tree and started anew.

Brush encroaches over what—assumedly—was once manicured soil. The tree’s proud roots are immodestly overgrown, shrouded invasively in writhing, yellowing snakes of ivy, and stifled by brazenly verdant rhododendron. The tree’s leaves atrophy into tawny ochre, vermillion, and cinnabar. Faded to sienna, the autumnal resignation is nearly complete, tiptoeing onto the bed to rest and decay. The soil calls for tribute. Nature reclaims.

The tree will be barren soon and until spring, every body will be suddenly and starkly visible through the crescent, clear wall. Through unblemished glass, the barren, white walls will peak through as the exposed screen of a motion picture—a motion picture which, at times, has very little motion and even less picture.

Bodies pour out of and into the courtyard, past each other without delay. Contact is always brief, often accidental. A backpack catches an arm, someone drops their folder, and friends exchange fleeting banalities about course work as they catch each other’s path. Through the glass and on the screen, people hunch, ingesting the light from their devices; others stare at one another, exchanging whatever insight two people can. These pilgrims have settled here with the intention to work—a task which they achieve with varying degrees of success. Either way, they are too busy to move or be moved by much.

But occasionally, during this winter, their gaze will shift away from their wooden table and it will refract through the clear glass, out onto the cold, unblanketed tree. And the tree greets them with the passing distraction they sought and desired. It is brief, only made possible by the tilt of a head—a twitch, an itch—a sigh of defeat.

“Gazing at the Cock’s Roost” Critical Essay – WR 457: Personal Essay Writing

“Cock-a-doodle-doo”

It’s hard to say where I picked up the line “no one goes through the gate anymore; they just hop over the fence.” I attribute it to Seinfeld. But I’ve only watched two episodes of Seinfeld and I’ve never watched his standup. Google offers no evidence that anyone has ever said it. And since Google is my only resource to find authoritative advice, we’re taking it on faith that I didn’t just make it up. Regardless, it’s an awesome metaphor and it still captures a sentiment that I try to express to men as I help them select a new pair of underwear. Flies: the slit on men’s undergarments, dug into to pull a penis through and pee, are a thing of the past. And I defer to Seinfeld as the source of sage advice because people don’t trust me when I tell them that “eighty percent of men no longer use their fly.” I don’t always trust myself saying that either, it’s another canned one-liner that I’ve picked up and long since forgotten from where. That one, I’m pretty sure my boss told me. He probably yanked it out of trade magazine and is now misquoting it. And like a game of telephone, the source material has become muddled and unverifiable.

I work at a men’s underwear store, UnderU4Men and I’ve collected these sound bites and clips of artificial wisdom to be an effective sales person. I have a reputation to maintain and sales goals to keep. On any given day there’s almost always an older, modest man and his doting, cute, petite wife that come into the store. The store is marketed towards a “main street” customer; the target-demographic are those who spend the majority of money in retail: females.  Like so many women who have spent the majority of their adult lives buying themselves bras and panties at stores not unlike this one, the woman who’s just walked in is elated to be here. This man is not. My job is to bridge the gap between their disparate attitudes in the hopes that, through conversation, the wife’s excitement can meet the husband’s apprehension in the middle. The hope is that both parties can find a pair—or several pairs—of underwear that makes them both happy. Some couples are more willing to compromise; some husbands are happy to submit to the wife’s choices. Some men come into the store with a girthy list of specifications, based upon a pair of underwear they bought at Nordstrom Rack a decade ago that has become the paragon of men’s undergarments in their mind: they have to be unbranded, black, cotton, with no elastic, a wrapped waistband—not too thick—but also not too thin, with a fly and a low-rise on the waist. They’ll settle for no less, even if it means they’ll never find another pair of underwear to wear ever again.

Sometimes, these same men can’t be bothered to shop for themselves, so they send their partners into the store with this impossible list of demands. And I am stuck fighting the demands of a straw man who can’t even be here to make these requests on their own. But sometimes, they are both here—like the couples mentioned earlier. We talk about what the guy likes; boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, trunks: how substantial the underwear’s coverage should be, how tight it fits, how long the legs are, if there’s any leg at all. I usually don’t mention jock straps or thongs but those are options too! Then there’s fabric: do they want to stick to cotton? There’s 100% cotton, there’s cotton/spandex blends, nylon/spandex blends, polyester/spandex blends. There’s the “natural fabrics”: merino wool, modal—made from beech wood trees, tencel—made from eucalyptus, bamboo—made from bamboo (no joke). All are splinter free! Or your money back.

All this is to say that we get to talking about a lot before we start to talk about anything specific. But inevitably, there’s a man that’s been shown a few of my personal recommendations and starts to realize that most of the underwear—regardless of the size fit and fabric— doesn’t have a fly. And panic sets in. “Where’s the pee hole?” “Where’s the slit thing?” “How am I supposed to piss while wearing this underwear?” There are many, many things that I’m willing to answer but for these questions, but I let Seinfeld respond for me, to keep things light-hearted. But most of the time, their reaction, still looks a lot like this: “So I just pull my pants and underwear down and show the entire restroom my ass?” Internally, my response is “sure, that’s one way to do it. I mean, I do it differently. I myself, jump over the fence without mooning anyone in the process. Just breathe, sir; I was able to figure it all out without hyperventilating and having an aneurysm ” “The missing fly won’t accidentally invite some scandalous gay cruiser to motorboat your exposed buttocks.” But I have to say all that more gently. Something like: “well you just pull down the front of the underwear and still use the fly on your jeans. You don’t have to pull your pants down”. I can’t help whatever latent sarcasm my voice carries as I speak in these moments. It seems unreal that this is such a foreign concept to some men. But then again, I’ve never really used the fly, it’s a complicated apparatus. I try to be understanding.

Since a long, long time ago, people have worn underwear. Men’s wear and what is fashionable has changed dramatically and differed radically within cultures, social standing and a lot more. However, throughout all of this, underwear seems a relative—but not universal—constant. Most dudes have worn underwear, smallclothes, loincloths or grape leaves, Matthew McConaughey and a few other commandoes excluded. But Digging up where the fly came from is a tricky bit of archeology and I think it would have diminishing returns. At the end of the day, what are you left with? Knowledge that flies were put into underwear after some Victorian had too much trouble with his codpiece? It would be a fun, grotesque bit of trivia to know, sure—even if it were actually true. But would finding that out make you feel more enlightened—or like a more interesting cocktail party guest? Maybe; but I make my living selling man-panties and tracing the fly’s inception sounds like a total bore to me. Because we kind of already know why they’re there: they make sense. They may not be a necessity for everyone but they’re useful. It’s this sensefulness and utility that I find most intriguing anyway.

Flies are nothing, if not utilitarian. They’re used to pee out of. They serve no other purpose. Well, there was the one German woman who asked me, worriedly and in broken English, where the hole for sex was. So, clearly there are creative ways to use a fly, as her and her husband discovered. “How is the cow supposed to get out of the barn without a door?” she probed. I think she meant “how does the cock get out of the roost?” But farm metaphors can be confusing in your second language. But let’s chew that cud for a moment: “how does the cow get out of the barn?” Not as easily as you’d think, even with a door.

A standard fly is anything but standard. They are all a vertical slit cut into the crotch of underwear but their similarities end there. On boxers, they are straight-forward: the slit is overlapped slightly by downy fabric on each end of the opening and usually has a little button in the middle, for closure—Georgia O’Keeffe, eat your heart out! But boxer-briefs, trunks and briefs have a more nuanced take on what a fly should be. Some have the button-enclosure, like boxers but many have a labyrinthine jumble of openings and layers of fabric to navigate. Sometimes, to remind myself why I don’t use flies, I try to use a fly. I waste seconds of my life digging at my crotch, trying to traverse the messy folds that house my penis. It’s frustrating! I was never taught how to use one but even if I had been, no two fly-mazes are made the same. Some only require a reach into-the-front and around-the-bend. Others require a reach into-the-front down-to-the-bottom and a pull-down-and-back up. Sometimes, the snake has a lot of grass to slither through. I feel inclined to give any man who routinely does these dick gymnastics a gold medal.

There are other options to aid in piloting the jet stream. One, more sensible option is the Swedish Fly; it’s cut into underwear horizontally, instead of vertically. It was Swedish military-issue in all underwear produced during WW1. Just a reach-down and a pull-out—like all Scandinavian ingenuity: it’s simple and requires no instructions. But it’s never really caught on; it’s never been typical. It’s a novelty. Why? My theory is kind of graphic but you’ve made it this far, so it’s safe to say you aren’t squeamish. When a man gets excited and his penis becomes erect, it doesn’t have a lot of places to go; an easily accessible opening provides the opportunity for some breathing room. There’s nowhere to go but up! It’s an armchair hypothesis, to be sure; but nonetheless, a compelling one.

So make no mistake, I understand why the fly exists. But it’s a bit of a non-issue for me. It’s there or it isn’t:  I still manage to pee either way. No skin off of my dick. It creates as many problems as it solves. And as far as a time-saving device goes: it fails. I want to comfort those few men who place so much value and importance on an extra piece of fabric, with a small hole cut into it. This 20% of men, who still politely use the gate and don’t hurdle over the fence, aren’t always easy to console. I want to explain that it’s really, not the end of the world. But when a man reacts so defensively to something that is so trivial, my cogs start turning. There’s an instability that’s fostered by a lack of fly in men’s underwear. There’s an even bigger instability caused by what flies are replaced with: enhancing pouches.

“Men’s underwear has switched from a logic of use to a logic of size” laments a writer from New York magazine, in an conversation that Judith/Jack Halberstam anecdotally refers to in one of her/his lectures. It’s just one of many points that Halberstam employs to illustrate the shifting trends and mores in men’s wear, men’s culture and the very concept of “Men.” As someone who’s fascinated by gender, gender roles and gender fluidity, I’m inclined to agree. The enhancing pouch ushers in a brave new world for men’s underwear. What does a “logic of size” provide in men’s underwear? It tinkers and screws with the idea of purposefulness in underwear. The purpose of underwear is now more complicated. It’s not only a buffer placed between your groin and pants but also, something to be desirable in; now it’s something to show off.

Male anxiety is as tricky as any anxiety of privilege can be. Men’s desirability has never been so phallic and penis-centric. Men’s desirability has traditionally been a displacement of the penis onto other things like fully-throttled cars; throbbing wads of cash; big, hard careers. Men’s ability to objectify, to collect objects, and surround themselves with objects dictated and enhanced their attractiveness. All of this says, “hey look at my large, aching, impressive endowment; I’m a person you desire.” Clearly, there are exceptions—no one disputes that. But it’s been compellingly argued by uncountable sources that male allure was shaped by almost everything but the penis and its size. A certain majority of men don’t mind talking about their assumedly large members, with boastful bravado. Other men remain more modest. However, make no mistake, penis size has been one facet of many in the calculus of male desirability. It’s just never been so explicit and pronounced as it is today with the enhancing pouch.

To clarify, not all pouches on men’s underwear today are “enhancing” in such obvious ways. Some are designed for comfort, some are designed for support, some are for sports-performance. By-and-large, if there’s a pouch, there’s not a fly. So it’s a muddled dichotomy but a dichotomy nonetheless. But a pouch is a pouch and regardless of function, they do set out and package the male genitals in very overt ways. Some just say “pouch front underwear” on their boxes. Others have more ostentatious names like “Trophy Shelf,” “Trophy Boy,” “Almost Naked,” “WonderJock,” “Show-It Technology,” “Saxx,” “Shock Jock” and the list goes on. The “Almost Naked” is the highest selling pair of underwear in our company, the bamboo soft fabric is one selling point but the hang-free pouch is another. “It’s supposed to feel like you’re not wearing anything” I tell customers, as if they couldn’t figure that out on their own.

That idea that it feels like it’s not there is appealing to men. They want to feel free and unbridled; to let it all hang out. They also might not want to think about what underwear they’re wearing throughout the day. Comfort is still king in men’s wear. But the “Almost Naked” also foregrounds the penis; it’s front-and-center in the apparatus. I think it looks unflattering; all the schlongs that I’ve seen in this pouch have looked somewhat like a cross between a fruit basket and a bird’s beak, regardless of how big the banana is. But I also can’t argue with the success of a pair of underpants that outsells anything else in the store three-to-one. I tell people that “it’s something to look at once it’s in there.” So, I’m not lying.

Other pouches just bring it all to the front but don’t make such a spectacle of it. I prefer these the most. I feel sexy in them, I feel desirable. I also feel comfortable. They enhance without being obscene or vulgar about it. I have my own reservations about making such a phallocentric declaration. I’m as susceptible as any other man to the anxiety of desirability. Making the penis a pronounced object of desire, subordinate to the logic of size, fosters a lot of insecurity. And insecurity shatters the confidence that has formulated male sexuality for a long time. Women are used to push-up bras, make-up, manicured body hair, things used to enhance the sex-appeal of their bodies for men. If all are subject to the gaze and the gaze is male, how do men feel when their penis is so naked and exposed to it? The penis becomes an object desired by other men. Not only the phallus, an abstraction buttressed by wealth and objects, but the penis itself. Men form their aspiration to be better, more desirable men through the size of one another’s penis in this new world of underwear. And it’s kind of queer, even if they’re wearing the underwear for women. And that’s why I think that The NY Magazine Reporters observation—that there’s a change from a “logic of use to a logic of size”—is so compelling. It’s a fundamental shift in masculinity and a shifting of the male gaze. Underwear is devoid of the comforting, supple folds of the fly and replaced with pouches that broadcast their penis size. With this, come new ideas of what is sexy and how to make a man wanted by others.

Some men—like the occasional customer I talk to—are angry, defensive, seething and scared. Some, like the reporter Halberstam talks to, are simply confused. Men now navigate a world which seems outwardly codified and purposeful; a world that was once somewhat easier to navigate and exist within as a male-bodied man. But it’s getting more complicated; maybe a lot less complicated. Maybe it’s just foreign, unusual, and slightly queerer. The reporter’s sentiment isn’t fear or annoyance or retaliation. Like him, most men today approach it quizzically and perplexedly. But some don’t, some get upset and defensive. Some cling onto every last scrap of fabric that their disintegrating security blanket of masculinity has—including the fly.

Malice: A Memoir Essay – WR 457: Personal Essay Writing

I transferred to a brand-new elementary school at the beginning of third grade. What I remember before Deer Creek Elementary is fragmented at best, memories only flash before me—moments on the soccer field, a boy with a cute haircut, almost getting hit by a fire truck while flying down a hill on my big wheel. And Bobby, but I’m not ready to address him just yet.  In my baggy sweatpants and fluffy sweatshirts, that I wore because they were soft and comfortable, I awkwardly but effectively made new friends. At the beginning of the year, I asked out my first girlfriend; Katelin, or Callie, or Cassie, a forgotten name but still beautiful. We would pile musty woodchips into elaborate fortresses under the jungle gym. We were king and queen; titles we bestowed upon ourselves to legitimize what was, for all intents and purposes, just an excuse to spend time with one another. We’d make declarations of everlasting love and devotion to one-another, broadcasting our royal edicts to the gathered minions of Deer Creek Elementary while they chased each other around the playground. Together we’d leave recess with splinters stinging our palms, reveling in the mildewed, cedar-fleck castles we’d created, mortared with our sweat and determination. Pining for marriage and a kingdom; we’d toil to build our walls as high as possible with a hope that today would be the day that they stood for eternity. We’d always return to find our stronghold leveled and elatedly begin reconstruction. The janitorial staff laid siege to my bark-chip empire every afternoon but we persevered, intent upon our world-building.

But even royal marriages end and my bastion’s demise came in the fourth grade. Kaetlin, Cassie, Callie, moved away—to another realm far, far away. With my new classmates, I too, had new subjects and a new domain. I had the opportunity to build new citadels and create new empires. But I was a social climber stuck in a caste-system. In this social reincarnation, I was no longer royalty, just another peon. Something in another life—maybe arrogance—had put me on the lowest rung. I lacked my queen at recess but I built anyway. But no one wanted to play my games anymore. Instead of building things under the twisted metal superstructures with me, everyone wanted to play above me. My benevolent smiles and regal gestures were met with ridicule and distaste. My proclamations and fumbles for attention were met by turned shoulders or confused stares. I was always alone on the swing set; the chairs next to me were still shivering and freshly abandoned. I’d try and join-in and play tag, only to be the kid that no one even bothered to chase—I could run endlessly and too fast.  I was no fun to be around. I was distasteful; something upon me marked my pariah status.

I examined myself, begging the universe to tell me what had changed. I slowly began to see that my kingly robes were more akin to a peasant’s burlap drab, covered in wood, dirt and the moldy splinters of my earthen forts. My homeliness begot distaste; my sweat pants and shirts no longer comforted me, they only offered an opportunity for ridicule. I abandoned my old garb en masse. The only sweatshirts I’d now wear had to have GAP tattooed across them, something recognizable and accepted. I begged my parents to buy me the itchy denim jeans and scratchy chinos that I had scorned for near a decade. And the bark chips were left sitting, dispersed and unmolested on the playground where they always were.

The three acres I lived on, the untamed childhood I’d blossomed within no longer appealed to me. All that was out there was birch trees and rich clay, fields of vibrant wildflowers, vegetable gardens and crawdad traps, garter snakes and lady bugs, apple trees and an unfinished tree house. I came to realize the pungent, unpleasant smells that permeated the outdoors. Our neighbor’s horses were knee-deep in their own feces, their dung ripened in the wet, warm summers and clung to the inside of your nostrils. There were always clouds of flies and yellow jackets swarming your summer picnic on the back lawn. These newly discovered malodors and fetid, overripe flavors sat in my mouth. The tall grass began to slash at my knees and my feet would blister with overuse. The soft, ant-rotted logs that I used to split open and watch explode with little blacks bodies no longer seemed fascinating; those logs now burst like putrid, gangrenous wounds—a pestilence that I ran home to hide from. And so, safely inside, I would retreat into the basement and build my kingdoms out of plastic Lego blocks. I’d construct colossal spaceships and wage war in the twilight of refracted sunshine through the wet, dark windows. Dirt and wood wouldn’t heal my pain and feelings of rejection. I had nicer clothes now and had to keep clean and tidy, like royalty should. So I’d spend all my afternoons down there—hidden away—building solitary, sterile-plastic realms.

But let’s not say that “everything” started here.

One day, earlier on, before I had delusions of grandeur, on the car ride home from Montessori school, my mom queried, how my day was. Like mothers do. I crooned the expected “fine” and we chat about her day while I remain mostly mute. Once home, I descend into my bedroom lair. I leap over my Lego spaceships frozen in an epic melee; I fly past my Star Wars figurines perched menacingly upon my bookshelf and I dive into the mountain of stuffed animals piled onto my trundle bed. Tearing off my clothes, my tiny, naked body is covered in the downy embrace of Rabbits, Orcas and Bears as I burrow deep into security. The soft fleece is relieving; it doesn’t yet carry the discomfort and ostracizing of the fourth grade. But no, everything was not “fine” today, mom. Can’t you just know that?

What I haven’t told her is that an ominous shadow has been cast over me in pre-school; his name is Bobby. He torments me in my early, formative years. I’m supposed to be discovering my inner, individual potential and instead, I spend my time on the playground cowering in fear. Enough is enough. And I finally milk the courage out of myself to complain to my mom about him.

During this time, my mother is an explosion of dyed-black hair and Janet Reno glasses. She wears big, floral dresses with exaggerated shoulder pads. She’s tough and sinewy but is undeniably the most motherly person I know. And always has been. She grew up poor, in the middle of five siblings, the median between older brothers and younger sisters on a farm in rural Sandy, Oregon. And while her brothers threw burs in her hair, tortured her relentlessly, she latched onto their company throughout her childhood. Her brothers were her best friends despite the times like the day they tricked her into the bottom of a pit where they left her for an entire summer’s afternoon. Sunburnt and scrappy, she learned to keep up and fight back.

So, while I found my mom’s suggestion—that the Montessori school deal with the Bobby problem or she’d “teach her son how to land a punch”—unsurprising and even motherly, the look of abject horror upon my teacher’s faces suggested that this woman was wild and tempestuous.  She may have been the HR manager for a major insurance firm now—trained in conflict management—but her past was inescapable. And she was a loose cannon when her son was threatened. She was the matriarch intent upon teaching her son how to fight fire with fire because that’s how she knew how to do it. Life, as she remembered it, was hard. She wasn’t about to let her son learn to be a victim.

But that isn’t quite all of it. My teachers were also concerned because Bobby, they said, had left Montessori school months ago. I had been complaining about a phantom menace who had been absent in my life for a while. To this day, I have no idea what he did to me or why I feared him so much. Something about him was malevolent and unrelenting. He followed me months after he no longer had a physical presence. He was a shadow on the wall without a figure to cast it. I could have made it all up. I could have made him up. He could have been a bully but he could just be another kid like me and maybe, I simply didn’t like him. This evasion made my mother deem it unnecessary to teach me how to swing a left-hook and we all moved on with our lives, onto better things. It’s a moment in time that we can look back on and laugh and tease over dinner. But without any doubt, he was the first memory of pain I have.

After Bobby, my mom had very few pearls of wisdom, outside of self-defense, on how to cope with and understand pain. Maybe most of my childhood pain was trivial. Once, I woke up in a cold-sweat, with a searing fever and begged to stay home from school. She looked at me with a flash of compassion and then gruffly told me to “take an Advil and get over it”. She let me know that I was being silly and that if I had a fever, I needed to take medicine before I decided to try and get out of school.

She had only one piece of advice about fitting in and even that was a defensive strategy: do not, for any reason, make fun of Sean. Sean was a boy who lived down the street, his father was a weird dude who rode his motorized scooter up-and-down the road we lived on, at all hours of the day. Sean’s dad was a software developer and his mom was a mental health professional. Together, the expectation would be that they formed a normal, nuclear suburban family—and outwardly, they did. Except that Sean was crazy, he had anger issues and an inability to understand and relate socially with others; I remember him as the rabid dog chained in the corner that everyone enjoyed throwing pebbles at until he snarled and lunged. My mom’s advice, to be just friendly enough to leave him well enough alone, stemmed from one guiding principle: If Sean brought a gun to school, which seemed possible to her, then I would be spared from his wrathful carnage. I’d stand by, removed from the taunting, name-calling and verbal abuse. I’d watch Sean be provoked and smile inwardly as he pounced onto the backs of his attackers and dug his teeth into the small of their necks. They weren’t as shrewd as I was.

By seventh grade, I’d found myself in every rung of the social hierarchy. It felt like schizophrenia when every word I said, everything I liked, every last gesture I made, was open for interpretation and judgment. I was Zeus perched upon Olympus in the morning and then Icarus plummeting from heaven by lunch, having flown too close to the comforting warmth of unconditional love. One day, to one person, Star Wars was cool and the fact that I devoured books, trivia and data surrounding this universe thrilled; while other days, it only bored or nauseated. I played soccer: soccer was cool, no wait, actually it’s gay. And gay is bad. What was a safe choice of music to listen to? My friends would routinely abandon me; I’d make a few only to have them decide that I was too much of a liability, too uncool, too attention starved. I crawled deep into the cavities of my mind, analyzing, correlating and inferring. I couldn’t decide who I was since any concrete foundation only invited demolition.

Opportunities to climb the social caste came and went, sometimes, they’d provide the mobility I craved and other times, they were dead-ends. From within this constant state of flux, someone emerged as the paragon of pain that I could inflict upon another person. Her name was Lindsey. Lanky and Amazonian, she towered above me with sad eyes and scraggly, blonde hair. She would whisper behind my back, letting her friends and others know that she liked my awkward demeanor and dyed-blonde blonde hair that I parted down the middle. She’d glance longingly or approach me after class for a quick, casual conversation. And I didn’t know what I thought of her until money entered the equation, a pittance: five dollars—but still green. Nicole, another girl is slowly flapping Abraham Lincoln’s mocking scowl in my face. She’s offered this sum for me to ask Lindsey to be my girlfriend. Money did strange things to my twelve-year-old self and so did a hunger for acceptance. Together, these two destructive desires—for money and for approval—coalesced into a torrent and I now wanted to ask Lindsey out. When I asked Lindsey the question, I never said that I was interested. I don’t remember what I said; something like “hey I heard you like me; do you want to be my girlfriend?” This could be complete bullshit; I could have picked out that scene in my head from a TV show. It seems like such a vapid thing to do and I can’t really imagine myself saying it—even at age twelve. And yet, I know that I asked her out—know that I said something—I know because so much pain surrounds that stupid, mindless, heartbreaking action. I wince when I think about it; it was such random, unbridled cruelty. But I also know that in the moment, it felt orgasmic.

I had a harem of girlfriends that I rotated through in middle school. I was only paid to date one of them. I use “girlfriends” as a loose descriptor since it was more like a close friendship. But we were in middle school and close friendships didn’t make sense between boys and girls unless we codified it into something permissible. And thus, girlfriend became a very real term—and with it, the expectations of the designation. Odd as it was, my string of girlfirends and I never kissed. Certain things still seemed taboo and I now say that it was because they were all my beards, masking my homosexual desire—even if such feelings were left undissected until after high school. The “love” that my girlfriends and I shared, if we can even call it that, was a gross misinterpretation of the word. But certain things that seem so silly in retrospect are very real and important as a burgeoning adolescent. Which is why, when Nicole exposed my subterfuge, Lindsey’s eyes welled with tears. I was outplayed by a cleverer social puppet-master, a pawn for Nicole to maneuver and strike out with. I was left to mop the blood off of the chessboard. The joy of the kill was snatched away from me, victory was firmly in Nicole’s hands. I was the one that Lindsey called for weeks, crying. She kept telling me I was terrible and thoughtless and that she wanted to harm herself because I was such a malcontent.

And it’s all true; I was stupid and blithely wicked. Complicit in a greater plan or not, I played my part with a smug sense of glee—I knew what I did would hurt. I just didn’t know it would hurt that bad. I’d forgotten the moral of my mother’s lessons on Sean:  actions have consequences; pain ripens and fosters anger, resentment and hatred. I had to pick my targets more discerningly; random acts of pain against the vulnerable were reckless. Tyrants torture the small folk and trod upon the weak; I don’t want to wear that crown. And so, I turn my efforts onto those I see wearing armor; even the smallest fissure provides the opportunity to dagger and twist. As they lay bleeding, I step into their place. But even my armor has cracks to be exploited by those more cunning and opportunistic. I will never be king again. But malice remains intoxicating.

“The Electron Does Anything it Likes” Free Write – WR 457: Personal Essay Writing

The electron does anything it likes!!! The self-righteous bastard!!! We are all subject to its whim and fancy. Why are we here today? Because the electron decided we should and made it so. It orders our meals for us and holds the doors open, like a bad date who thinks they’re chivalrous—but we know they’re just trying to get something for themselves out of it. The electron is unbridled ego. It does not send you a birthday card—it’s too preoccupied doing as it pleases. Who does the electron think they are, Higgs Boson? The fucking GOD Particle?

“The electron does anything it likes” Freeman Dyson

But the moments that the electron’s inertia seems to focus on us feel special. We get to be the center of the universe center for a moment. And those fleeting moments in the electron’s eternity are why we still invite the electron around. All that energy can’t help but rub off on us. It makes us excited that the electron’s excited. We want to bounce off of one another, unfettered, without fret or concern about the petty social niceties of doing so.

“Sisyphean Absurdity: A Reflection on Camus” – PHL 315: Existentialism

Sisyphean Absurdity

A face of river rock: strong and smooth;

Polished with the age of an insurmountable friction.

Fortified by the infinite struggle.

–

The boulder sags, fights back.

Push harder, dig deeper, triumph is ripe.

This time he will overcome, and through determination

He will defeat all; even bedrock, even the infinite.

He must push, he knows nothing else. He tastes a promise of liberation.

The promise of his unshackling is not unlike what he imagines as freedom.

–

He knows himself. He knows the rock. He does not capitulate.

He’s Hegel’s bondsman:

The rock is the master. The slave must overcome.

–

From him, from the rock, from both: A unity.

Completion and tautology.

The boulder creeps up the slope.

All stone: The rock, the hill, consciousness. A state of resolution.

–

Everything falters. He falters, the rock overwhelms.

Yeats, Achebe, Didion:

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

The stone leaves him behind. Its descent is quick, cascading, sardonic.

The torrent is overwhelming. He slouches, he aches, he remains unsatisfied.

His descent is slow, hesitant, laden with remorse. His hubris—the unity—lies in shambles.

–

Alone, with no end insight. What choice is left?

–

Eternity is a luxury, death is not an escape. Death is a simple impossibility.

Despair is futile. Possibility relies upon—exists within—freedom.

Frost’s canonical forks in the road:

Freedom is overgrown with obstacles; it is the road less traveled.

–

Absurdity manifests in choices, none of which are said to be ideal.

They are only methods to employ towards an understanding.

Freedom is the only productive choice.

In this way, it is barely freedom; instead, a coping methodology.

Freedom is oft mistaken for liberation. Don’t be deceived.

–

There is no liberation: one is liberated when one dies but that freedom is false.

However, freedom is not complacent, it’s introspective; it’s dissatisfied and absurd.

Freedom acknowledges its own bounds but rejects its limitations.

Absurdity and freedom are bridled boundlessness; thoughtful thoughtlessness.

It’s something in the face of an infinite nothing; a meaning when faced with dearth.

The Apparent Double-Bind Offered by New Media in Art

"The Most Photographed Barn in America"

Within art, its function and purpose has become nebulous and vast, donning a plurality of meaning, utility and importance due to the effects of the ever-expanding category of new media. Any attempt to find a solid, meaningful position on art—in general—is frustrating and perplexing. What was once valued in art—beauty, aesthetic quality and craft—is banal and common with the availability and accessibility that reproductive and digital technologies offer. Art’s value continues to represent a powerful social force and lies within the ability to examine truth and paradigm, and to challenge conceptions of politics, identity and the superstructure of human experience we all inhabit. As technologies continue to expand and as the delineation between reality, hyperreality, and virtual reality continue to dissolve, art must continue to challenge dominate social machinations and confront the audience with its own acceptance of the confusing and confounding veil of contemporary existence in an attempt to find truth within the burgeoning unreal. Therein exists a double bind, as new media expands possibilities, it serves to limit them, as our knowledge and appreciation of art richens, it is cheapened by a blindness fostered by simultaneous breadth and narrowness of knowledge; the art world is a veritable paradox—consistently jockeying within itself to push boundaries and be limited by them.

For the sake of argument within this essay and as a clarification, any reference to society as a whole is specific to modern global mass media and the diaspora that includes—it is not meant to be a universalized generalization about all art and societies as a whole. Nonetheless, any argument of “society” is intended to be representative of the most current and dominant forms of art and media as the scholastic discourse understands it.

New media offers “the subject” an extension and expansion of the familiar but also a further muddling of the ability to relate with it. Classical conception of art has its basis in the recognition of the craft inherent within the extension of nature, “the subject” appreciates the connection to something familiar but admires its transformation into something artful (Aristotle, Dewey). However, the familiar and natural are two vastly different concepts within contemporary existence. Relatability now stems from a connection to something beyond the real, not entirely the “hyperreal” that Baudrillard espouses but still akin to it; as Freeland describes it, a reversal of the “natural” extension so that “the representation proceeds the reality and even comes to define it” (196). Society’s conception of the familiar is actually a relation to the unreal veiled as the real. Film and digital media—in specific—develop a world in which we are no longer confronted with the seams of representation. Upon viewing a photo or video of something, we attempt to claim, with a distinct hubris, to have seen that thing, when in fact, we have only seen a photo or video of it.

Compacted within all of this is the appropriation of art representation, seeing and owning photographs or ersatz versions of famous art fosters a satisfaction and belief that we have enlightened ourselves through it. The ability to represent that which is already a representation—and the compounding layers of additional representation—is admittedly pleasurable and allows for a sort curation of famous art pieces to take place on a scale that was impossible before. But it carries latent anxieties along with it. Art tourism and representations of famous pieces harken to a sort of fetishism surrounding famous works espoused by Adorno. Artists that represent a tradition of artistic knowledge or celebrity are valued because they best represent a movement, moment in time, or paragon of excellence and because of this, are featured in museums that become their own brand of celebrity due to all of the great works they encapsulate. Museums and canons collect “accepted classics [that] themselves undergo a selection that has nothing to do with quality” (Adorno 540). Canonizing and the attempted universalization of classic works cheapen the depth of thought necessary for them to be lauded as remarkable.

Within this is an emptiness of meaning and a collection of thought so nebulous but rigid that the art becomes a parody of itself. This anxiety is aptly surmised within DeLillo’s parable of the “Most Photographed Barn in America” wherein people flock to a barn, important only because of its own celebrity as the most photographed barn in America. As DeLillo’s characters state, “no one sees the barn” any longer, “we only see what the others see”. The ability to examine the barn as it exists—first and foremost—as a barn, is nullified by the “collective perception” that people project onto it (DeLillo). The beauty and significance of the barn is overshadowed by its presumed significance and beauty. Once there, people feel like they must photograph it, just like people at museums must photograph famous art pieces; they no longer choose to experience the art as art but instead as a commodity to covet, a representation of celebrity to collect as their own.

The simulacra and the fetish piece have a unique symbiosis in this regard and both are fostered by the commodification of goods, media and information. The simulacra and the fetish piece are commodities due to their ability to “alienate [themselves] from producer to consumer” (Adorno). Art has always been a commodity but not to the degree and scale it is today. Certain pieces, works and artists are held in veneration and fetishized so that Art and Artists that are truly accessible and available to everyone are discounted as lesser. Instead of procuring art from local artists we find remarkable, we seek out prints of famous pieces with the artisit’s and work’s name stamped across the bottom to announce our taste and appreciation of fineness. We seek the simulacra of art; we seek art that tells us that it is art instead of determining its value ourselves.

However, consistent with the expressed nature of this double-bind, such hyperbolic exclamations of ignorance and doom are themselves oversimplifications, as these technologies represent a great potential for upending and potentially negating the effects of commodification. Benjamin points to the power that new media holds, asserting that “for the first time…mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence upon ritual” (529). The devaluation of context and experience of art itself frees the subject from the fetishism and its “imbedded[ness] in the fabric of tradition” (529). The aura exists to reinforce the artworks importance and aura clearly still exists with art tourism, celebrity artists and famous exhibitions. However, while this all still occurs, the power of this exposure to great works is that they become commonplace and their remarkableness wanes due to social saturation and a realization that they are just paintings in museums. Removing a famous piece from the museum—through reproduction—strips it of the museum, as an institution, and through this, strips it of a facet of its mystique. The ability to speak to a new context allows “the subject” to appreciate and judge a work in a new way—removing from elitism and democratizing the meaning of the piece by speaking to the subject alone, relatively free of a ritualized context.

To Benjamin, this destruction of aura however is not as simple as de-contextualization and relies upon a re-contextualization and further dissolution of norms surrounding art.  The representational reality fostered by photography is heightened by the ability to caption it, forcing a meaning and significance that a title of a painting could not (530-531). The photographer repurposes reality in a different way than the painter does, he adopts the immediately familiar, repurposes something we may have seen in everyday life and exhibits it with a caption that affects perception of the everyday and banal. With the dissolution of ritualism and aura surrounding art, we are forced to examine these representations of the everyday, quite literally, through a new lens. To Benjamin, this is an inherent good, “instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics” (529).

For Benjamin, film is the ripest medium for this political potential because of its ability to be a constant, unrelentingly politicized work or art. Aura exists on the stage but not in film, “aura is tied to [the character’s] presence, there can be no replica of it” (531). However, film forces the actor to best represent themselves (531). This argument, while muddled by the vastness of filmic art that has since permeated the modern paradigm, still points to the political potential of art and people playing themselves. If “any man can lay claim to being filmed” and if “at any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer,” then the greatly expanded category of artist allows the dissolution of bourgeois control over art’s production (533). Simply put, if art is democratized; the ability to make political statements—through art—is given to those who had limited means to make artistic, political statements before.

While no longer representing the forefront of effective political, social commentary, film was valued by Benjamin for its ability to illuminate things accepted as ordinary, to project a message that was inexorable and resound. These strengths exist in newer forms of media and art expression that broadcast them globally through the internet. Film allowed for things like slips of tongue to become noticed and meaningful to plot, innocuous gestures began to bear new meanings due to contextualization and “revealed depth in conversation which had seemed to be taking its course on the surface” (535). Street art, art that panders to a confrontation the hyperreal, and art that addresses of social or political issues is everywhere in today’s society. Street art takes advertising, something prodigious and overwhelming at times and vulgarizes these images of consumerism and celebrity. We celebrate this new form of expression because it alerts us to how pedestrian these symbols of consumerism have become. They de-commodify the commodity and tarnish the aura of the copyright.

Yet again, the paradox of the art world plays into this, as street art becomes co-opted by the machinations of commodification. Shepard Fairey created his own clothing line and has commodified his street art into something marketable. Artists, even subversive artists want to make a comfortable place for themselves in life and these actions and desires are not necessarily bad. However, nothing is gained by an abdication to the maneuvering wiles of society; dominance of any discourse should never be conceded. Art should exist to interrupt these accepted narratives and spur insight into comfortable paradigms by making them uncomfortable. For every Shepard Fairey, someone new must begin challenging the accepted framework of society and the artworld.

Art and new forms of media exist within a double-bind, unable to ever fully upend the status-quo, it simply allows for awareness and comprehension of the absurd banalities accepted within society. As an overly simplistic and hackneyed metaphor, the artist should exist as a check-and-balance against the hegemon, so that a discourse is maintained and control is never tyrannically held by a single group, system of thought, or lens through which to perceive reality.

Works Cited:

Adorno, Theodor “On the Fetish-Character of Music and the Regression of Listening” Art and its Significance. 3^rd Edition. David Ross, Stephen. New York: State University of New York, 1994. 539-547. Print.

Aritstole “Poetics”, “Nichomachean Ethics” Art and its Significance. 3^rd Edition. David Ross, Stephen. New York: State University of New York, 1994. 66-76. Print.

Benjamin, Walter “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility” Art and its Significance. 3^rd Edition. David Ross, Stephen. New York: State University of New York, 1994. 526-538. Print.

Freeland, Cynthia  But is it Art?. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.

Delillo, Don “THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA: Excerpt from White Noise by Don DeLillo” Downwind Productions. WEB. 17 March 2012. http://www.downwindproductions.com/barn.html

Dewey, John “Art as Experience” Art and its Significance. 3^rd Edition. David Ross, Stephen. New York: State University of New York, 1994. 204-220. Print.

Obsession: Gustav Klimt

Klimt exudes a rich, opulent beauty. Elegant and refined, Klimt’s women display exquisitely bold femininity that is overt, powerful and magnetic. Decadent and indulgent–I can’t help but be engrossed into each piece.

Gustav Klimt – “The Kiss II”

Gustav Klimt – “Serpents II”

Gustav Klimt – “Music II”

Gustav Klimt – “Mada”

Gustav Klimt – “Serpents I”

Gustav Klimt – “Judith I”

Gustav Klimt – “Hygeia”

Gustav Klimt – “Expectation”

Gustav Klimt – “Danae”

Gustav Klimt – “Athena”

Gustav Klimt – “Adele”

Gustav Klimt – “The Kiss”

Visual Metaphor for a Mid-January Afternoon Spent at Bridgeport Village Mall

Like Dali’s “Soft Watch”, a mid-January afternoon spent at Bridgeport Village Mall challenges the notion of time and its relative passing. Slowly melting and dissolving into disparate parts, diffusing into the  landscape of eternity, an afternoon here often feels removed from the conventions of reality. Chronology, duration, instants and infinities–all–cease to bear any sense of meaning or purpose.

MAC Cosmetics Partners with Cindy Sherman!!!

 

I have a deeply profound love affair with Cindy Sherman and it’s only partially because we share the same last name. MAC Cosmetics, who has partnered with people like Elton John and RuPaul to showcase their make-up, is never satisfied with conventions. I was so ecstatic when I walked by the store front and saw these grotesque, disconcerting images in the window. I mean, what a ballsy way to sell make-up…make it look as unappealing, once-applied, as possible.