I just watched the Bill Moyer interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and I am a little stunned. To be honest, I was credulous from the beginning about the itty-bitty sound clips they've been playing over and over of Obama's pastor. They were trying to cast him as a complete loony, and I didn't entirely buy it from the beginning. But he didn't seem like a genius from those clips.

Put into context, the Reverend's orations are beautiful, insightful, at times amusing, and inspirational. And in the interview, he sounded more like a philosopher and historian than a preacher. I'm not even religious (My personal feelings are set against the idea sort of physical or literal God - I guess it just doesn't make sense to me), but I still felt that I learned a great deal about the world from that single hour of him talking. It makes me wish that a) he wasn't retiring, and b) that I could have gone to one of his sermons. I hope that I can find them online or published somewhere.

I think that he is right that our schools leave out the african american stories. What did Martin Luther King say other than "I had a dream?" He talked about a lot of things besides, I hope that black people and white people can someday live in equality. He talked about Vietnam, he talked about colonialism, he talked about class warfare. He spoke the truth and was made a pariah. I knew none of this. I took AP US History, we never talked about MLK in depth at all, though we spent forever on the Declaration. Forget Malcolm X, hardly a footnote. To be honest, not sure if we just ran out of time in the class, but really, forget everything after 1950. We skimmed those fifty years.

But now I know, and I want to know more. I want to read Reverend Wright, I want to read King and I want to read Malcolm X. I might even try the bible.

Hey Jordan,

Your heart Latte mug,
overflowing with ciggie butts,
is still on the porch.

Though I threw it out

Hands on ceiling, feet off the floor

I have to write a few of these for the beat poetry class (it's awesome!)

Last night Rick and I were discussing how time works, and I was comparing it to a force of nature, like gravity. I'm just stuck on the fact that time only goes one way. It's supposed to be a dimension, like space right? But you can move about in space, unless there is something pulling you, like gravity. So why isn't it the same with time? Is there some kind of time gravity going on here? Because, mass can effect time and so can speed, both slow it down. I don't pretend to understand any of this, I never went farther than algebra. But it bugged the hell out of me when Sumi insisted (from her authority as a committed reader of science fiction), with no room for argument, that time is not a force, it's a dimension, and it doesn't work like that. Frankly, I think that people get really hung up on their terms and definitions, and it stops them from approaching things from a new direction. I'm sure with something as complicated as physics, it's hard enough to explain something without the irregularities of human communication, but still, no need for the lay person to cling so!

I like writing in journals because it makes me feel more solid. Rick and I were talking about the differences between our personalities last night. He feels like he needs to have a strong foundation, to know much more exactly what kind of person he is in order to function quickly and decisively. For me, I feel that trying to define myself in that way tends to leave a great deal out, and makes a caricature of human complexity. I don't mind if I'm a little bit floaty and unstable; I have faith in the force of my combined self to tell me how I feel, and faith in my logic and reason to help me understand why.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is my life. It's not just some phase I'm going through. So that's why I'm writing instead of finishing that article that I have to read for Woolf, or the couple that I'm supposed to read for Witches or doing the essays for the (well overdue) application to study abroad in Mexico this summer. Because as intensely, immediately important as those things are for my future, this is more important in the process of being me.