Archives for the 'Lifted' Category

“Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.”
– Arundhati Roy, Nov 30 2011.

“It reminds me that I am glad to have washed my hands of my sister Ifat’s death and can think of her now as a house I once rented but which is presently inhabited by I do not know. I miss her body, of course, and how tall she was, with the skull of a leopard and the manner of a hawk. But that’s aesthetic, and aside from it, Ifat is just a repository of anecdotes for me, something I carry around without noticing, like lymph.”

– Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (1987)

He was the Number 14, a bus ride
down Hastings one way, strung
with blinking lights and sparks
of trolleys unhooked, headed
to Arbutus, the salt lick of ocean,
tongues swollen to lap up the whole thing.

He was chain-links around the marina,
winches loosed by wind, rigging
played against spar and mast like chimes
frothed into a frenzy. He was the main stay
snapped and boom slammed into the dock,
light splintered on black water.

– Rosnau, Laisha, from “He was the Number 14,” Lousy Explorers, ©2009, Nightwood Editions.

I read this literally on the bus today. It was the 14. It had the expected effect: my jaw dropped open a little, I stared, and I blushed a little.

i love you so much, and it bothers me that i’m not certain of my ability to write for you something that doesn’t sound trite, that won’t help. through all this mess, it’s so easy, isn’t it yaar. its so easy to see that This is what makes us human, this unfathomable capacity to love, and to feel–to feel so intensely, even when it hurts us so much. [...] who was it (ugh, please don’t say rumi, although shittt, most likely right. credit where credit is due i suppose.) who said that the heart is like a vase. intact it can only hold so much, a consistent amount every time, right? but once hurt, broken, its shards lay exposed. the vase can now hold the sky, the possibilities of the heart become infinite.

– my friends are the best writers.

“Judges and the legislature rely on historical precedent to maintain absolute [jury] secrecy, yet forbid any validation of the assumptions underlying these justifications. This represents a fundamental difference between the social sciences and the law, reliance on precedent and the status quo vs. empirical data.”

– Chopra, S. R., & Ogloff, J. R. P. (2000). “Evaluating jury secrecy: Implications for academic research and juror stress.” Criminal Law Quarterly, 44, 190-222.

“[H]e was unable to conceive desires that went against the Moon’s nature, the Moon’s course and destiny, and if the Moon now tended to go away from him, then he would take delight in this separation just as, till now, he had delighted in the Moon’s nearness.”

– from “The Distance of the Moon” in Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver.

There is, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. These are the most familiar rains, the violent silver ropes that flood the playing fields and force office workers to wade to bus stops in shoes that fill like buckets. Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible — choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses — and beautiful: aglow with winding lines of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls. Every day appears to begin with a blaze and end with this deluge, so that present and future run together into an infinite, steaming river.

– first paragraph of “The Ignominious Departure of Chellamservant Daughter-of-Muniandy” in Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan.

The people who disobey. The people who resist in the obscurity of everyday life. The people who, when forgotten too long, remind the world of their existence and break into history without prior notice. [...] From afar they seem like unbearable compromises, and such compromises exist because they must survive; but they are almost always mixed with indiscipline, rebellion; molecular resistances that condense and explode into the view of all when the time comes. [...] There is no oppression without resistance. There is only time stretching more or less slowly before unexpected—or out of sight—the collective heroism of a people arises.

– Sadri Khiari, “The Force of Disobedience”

So besides affirming (i) the capacity of people to overcome indignities imposed on them, this reminds us that (ii) people necessarily live in resistance and that therefore (ii)(a) it becomes us, as organisers and well-wishers, for the sakes both of love and effective praxis, to take their lead and not (ii)(b) vice versa.

This is an old conversation I’ve had with myself, one I used to argue in vague abstracts a few years ago, guided by principle more than anything else — principle and a general sense of stubbornness at how I saw community activism being practised around me. Then I forgot about it, and now I am remembering it. The concern is no longer so academic, caught up as it is not just with leftist organising, but with new appreciations for the things that love and friendship can do, how these connections located in our guts and hearts structure the work we do in vital ways. The absence of that kind of trust and humility is its own presence, a very specific, a very sharp and deep hurt.

I looked out of the window often and wished I could blow out the sun like a candle or turn the world upside down so that the waters of our ocean could drown it. I begged God to send us the darkest of nights.
– “Fattening for Gabon”

He could see her, her tall frame bent by the loss of a son, coming out into the courtyard as if her sorrow had filled the rooms and now overflowed.
– “Luxurious Hearses”

They killed and killed, as if in this singular madness they would avenge all the massacres of their people who lived in the north, in the past and in the future. The audio was so clear that the refugees could hear the slurp of machetes slashing into flesh and the final cries of the victims.
– “Luxurious Hearses”

from Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan.

Larry and Catherine have separated and are now battling for custody of their two children, Taylor and Brandon. Catherine is now living with Sam, Larry’s former friend and current coworker. Larry now lives with Sandra.
These are some selections from how Justice Quinn, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, decided their case.

Bruni v. Bruni, 2010 ONSC 6568

[1] Paging Dr. Freud. Paging Dr. Freud.

[18] Larry gave evidence that, less than one month later, Catherine, “Tried to run me over with her van.” [Footnote 6: This is always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart.]

[19] On November 21, 2006, Catherine demanded $400 from Larry or her brother was “going to get the Hells Angels after me.” [Footnote 7: The courtroom energy level in a custody/access dispute spikes quickly when there is evidence that one of the parents has a Hells Angels branch in her family tree. Certainly, my posture improved. Catherine’s niece is engaged to a member of the Hells Angels. I take judicial notice of the fact that the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a criminal organization (and of the fact that the niece has made a poor choice).]

[23] On October 18, 2007, a nautical theme was added. According to Larry: “Donna Taylor, Catherine’s sister-in-law, yelled out her window that I was going to be floating in the canal dead.”

[24] As can be seen, Catherine and her relatives are one-dimensional problem solvers.

[70] On fourteen occasions, within eighteen months, the parties drew the police into their petty disagreements – a sad commentary on their inability to get along and a shocking abuse of the Niagara Regional Police Service. Although this statistic probably sums up all that one needs to know about the parties, I will elaborate for the doubters.

[71] Larry, who regularly drives by the residence of Sam and Catherine, “often shoots the finger”[21] at Sam and, on about three occasions, has yelled: “Jackass, loser.” [Footnote 22: When the operator of a motor vehicle yells “jackass” at a pedestrian, the jackassedness of the former has been proved, but, at that point, it is only an allegation as against the latter.]

[73] On August 14, 2007, Larry sent three text messages[23] to Catherine within a space of four minutes, saying: “The game is just starting. Prepare yourself for a long winding road”; “Busted! Always look in your rear view mirror”; and, “Blood isn’t always thicker than water.” Two days later he texted: “Loser! Home-wrecker!” [Footnote 24: These do not strike me as the statements of someone who is concerned about precipitating a Hells Angels house call.]

[78] I find that Sandra does not exert a positive gravitational pull in this dysfunctional family constellation.

[82] Sandra testified that Catherine “gave me the finger while driving on Bunting Road.” [Footnote 28: I am uncertain whether this would be considered a hand-held communication device, now illegal while operating a motor vehicle, under recent amendments to the Highway Traffic Act.]

[85] Sam’s attitude toward Larry undoubtedly has been influenced by Catherine, as Sam has been dining at her table of hatred for more than three years; however, this explains, but does not excuse, his deplorable conduct.

[90] On another occasion in July of 2009, Larry said to Taylor: “You put shit in this hand and shit in this hand, smack it together, what do you get? Taylor.” [Footnote 30: I gather that this is Larry’s version of the Big Bang Theory.]

[91] It is to be remembered that, following separation, Larry was confronted with an angry, hurt, confused and rebellious daughter who had been receiving advanced animosity-tutoring from Catherine. [...] Given Larry’s near-empty parenting toolbox, it is not surprising that he handled the matter awkwardly.

[137] A brief recap is in order: Catherine rejected the advice and recommendations of Niagara Family and Children’s Services, Ms. Katz and Mr. Leduc; she ignored my several protestations during the pre-hiatus part of the trial during which I was critical of how the parties spoke of each other in the presence of the children; she disregarded my order that she and Larry were not to denigrate each other in the presence of the children during the hiatus; and, she participated in three court-recommended counselling sessions. After all of that she, nevertheless, sent the text message. Now, in the witness box, she purports to be bathed in the light of repentance and reason. I think not.

[158] I come now to the issue of spousal support, historically the roulette of family law (blindfolds, darts and Ouija boards being optional).

Footnotes:

[2] At one point in the trial, I asked Catherine: “If you could push a button and make Larry disappear from the face of the earth, would you push it?” Her I-just-won-a-lottery smile implied the answer that I expected.

[3] I am prepared to certify a class action for the return of all wedding gifts.

[9] Donna is a devotee of the literary device known as, “repetition for emphasis.” I do not know whether Donna is the niece who is engaged to the Hells Angels member. If she is, they may be more compatible than I initially surmised.

[26] The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “dickhead” as “a stupid person.” That would not have been my first guess.

[33] I do not know why courts find it necessary to alter the meaning of words. One would think that if the legislators had intended “shocking” they would have used “shocking.”