“You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!” 

I’m not a *huge* fan of John Green. I liked Looking For Alaska, but not An Abundance of Katherines. I have not read Will Grayson, Will Grayson or Paper Towns. I’m not a nerdfighter, although I’ve admired them from afar. I’m usually really skeptical when a book get’s as much publicity as this one, but my sister had to read it for school so I decided to read the first chapter and got hooked. I took this picture in my car because this is where I read A LOT. (I can seriously sit in there for hours) 

With that said, The Fault in Our Stars:

+ was moving without being cheap

+ was existentially romantic 

+ was heavy without feeling overwhelming

+ and handled illness with the hand of someone who’s been on that side but made  accessible to those without experience in that strange and terrible realm. 

I teared up at the tearing up parts, I laughed out loud and I am seeing things a little bit differently than I was before. Can you ask for more from a book? 

Morning reading. 

I really hated the film Virgin Suicides, but the book is great so far. Wittgenstein’s Mistress is far stranger than I would have imagined, but awesome nonetheless.

Reading in my car is one of my favorite summer year round activities.

Yes but they aren’t real socialists/Christians/Muslims…Why We Cannot Define Things From Within - by Jase Short

If you talk to a revolutionary socialist like myself and say something like, “Well Stalin such and such…” then most of the time I would respond, “Well, Stalinism is actually not socialism, socialism is…”

A similar phenomena occurs in religious circles. Undoubtedly when I am discussing Christianity with someone, their own sectarian standpoints narrow the range of possibilities. “Well, you may cite Catholics/Orthodox/Protestants, but they aren’t really Christians after all…” or the argument by behavior, “Well, you may say this woman is a homosexual/transexual/bisexual and a Christian priest, but actually she cannot be both and so she isn’t really a Christian…”

And often the best liberal response in Islamic circles concerning reactionary manifestations of their faith is, “Well they aren’t true Muslims, true Muslims would not do x, y or z.” Of course I see the pragmatic value of doing this in their case as they are unfairly singled out among the world’s religious faiths for the behavior of their more reactionary currents whilst praise is heaped on the hardened reactionaries of Christianity (the Pope for instance, or the 700 Club), Judaism (a large portion of the genocidal Israeli settlers bent on wiping Palestinians off the map), Buddhism (the Dalai Lama who supports a kind of quasi-theocratic government instead of the current colonial order in Tibet) and Hinduism (the BJP government a few years back, so popular in international circles for their approach to “the free market,” were the well-spring of the Hindutva fanatics, bent on a genocidal re-ordering of Indian society).

Still, we are left with a problem of definition in these cases. The issue is intelligibility amongst a large public. Can we succumb to such specific definitions and get anywhere in communication with one another?

Think of it this way: if we let such specific definitions have free reign, then when can we ever assume that large numbers of people are talking about the same thing?

If to be a socialist is to be a certain kind of Trotskyist associated with a certain organizational history, then virtually no one can talk about socialists. If to be a Christian is to be such a specific kind of Christian, then the logic produces such absurdities as stunningly large institutions as the Catholic Church and the various Orthodox institutions no longer qualifying and thus becoming unworthy of discussion and analysis. And if only the best, most liberal, tolerant and progressive members of the Islamic faith are truly Muslims, then the religion likely can no longer claim to be growing as fast as it is, or be as large as population studies show, because whatever your religious orientation if you are a farmworker in southern Egypt or an otherwise impoverished person in the “Third World” then it is unlikely that you’ve been exposed to a lot of liberal theology.

In the end, these definitions are sectarian evasions of politics.

For emphasis let me say it again: very particular self-definitions of the kind discussed here are sectarian evasions of politics; they represent an attempt to cop-out of engaging in ideological struggle within our traditions. These are fundamental struggles over the identity of traditions and form an essential component to belonging to any tradition. All identities are contested and produced through social activity, to deny this is to deny that you are part of a living tradition.

The point is then is that rather than taking a this approach to others and assuming that they will sort themselves out (or this or that deity will sort them out on Judgement Day), the proper response in these cases is to make a case for why their version of your tradition is problematic, why it ought to be combated and why your version of the tradition ought to become hegemonic.

Such an approach ensures a few vital things. For one, it ensures that we can have intelligible conversations with those outside of our traditions who are not privy to our internal debates.

Another point is that it satisfies a simple sociological concept. Essentially, we cannot take the standpoint of the person with such and such perspective as the starting point for defining the tradition. We must, rather, accept the self-definition of various groups, just as we do with identification of race and ethnicity since they have no biological referents.

Since we cannot submit to the internal logic of each and every tradition and ideological current and must necessarily observe such things from the outside, we have to have some criteria for naming things. That criteria is thus the self-definition of those in question combined with the way in which they are regarded by the outside world (we need the viewpoint of the outside world because, one can imagine quite imbalanced individuals whose self-definition is so particular that it has no other example in the world, thus that person’s identification is an outlier and says nothing about their actual social identity). In short, a person is x if they say they are x and (most) people readily identify them as x.

A final point that this satisfies is the need to accept ideological struggle within ideological traditions. It is simply the case that all religions, philosophies, political ideologies and so forth have as a major component to their practice ideological struggle within their ranks. There is however a tendency to want to deny this, to say, “Oh well we never have crises of identity. The true followers of x are this group, and we are solid…those others on the outside however…they are a different matter entirely, they don’t really belong to us in the first place.”

This is just a denial of something that is intrinsic to all such traditions. Ideological struggle, the struggle over identity and the meaning of a tradition, all of these are essential characteristics of all such formations. No definition is set simply because definitions are forged through social practice that takes place across space and time. In short they are the products of historical products, and history is ongoing.

In conclusion we ought not to evade ideological struggle within our ranks, whether it be of religion, philosophy or political ideology. I will have to swallow the bitter pill and accept that Stalinists are in fact part of the traditions of Marxism, Protestant evangelicals will have to accept that Catholics, Orthodox and liberal, queer-identified Christians are in fact Christians. Ordinary liberal and conservative Muslims will have to accept that reactionary proto-fascists exist within their ranks and must be struggled against. Libertarians will have to accept that they can call it “corporatism” all day long, but the system we exist under is called capitalism and follows the logic of capital, something agreed upon by dissidents and court intellectuals alike.

And once we stop evading such struggle, we can begin the real challenge to ourselves and our traditions by developing our intellectuals skills in logic, rhetoric and so forth in order to make them better. This effort will help us combat the anti-intellectualism that pervades popular ideology under our system, which is a goal worth fighting for.

Currently listening to Ira Glass (This American Life) reading the first story. So good! http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2012/03/suddenly-a-knock-on-the-door-ira-glass-reads-a-story-by-etgar-keret.html

If you’ve never read Etgar Keret you are seriously missing out. His stories are incredible. I got an opportunity to hear him speak at my university last year and I was blown away. His voice is so poignant, he can display incredible amounts of emotion when he reads, it’s just … so, so poetic and musical. He has lots of stories available on his website (http://www.etgarkeret.com/). Go read now!

I was initially attracted to Why We Broke Up because of the cover art. I’m usually wary of this because a lot of times books with great cover art turn out to be kind of crappy. But this stood out so much I decided to give it a try, plus the taglines were intriguing to me in an “oh my god I love novels about teenage love because I hate love in real life,” kind of way. Overall, the book was really … moving. It was a ‘good book’ but more than that: it was written in a realistic way that isn’t typical for most young adult ‘romance-y’ novels (to me), not to mention the illustrations inside the book are gorgeous. Both the characters and the storyline were dynamic and poignant and definitely pulled me in in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. Min and Ed go beyond the typically art-girl-dates-jock-boy-and-it-doesn’t-work-out story. It conjured up images and feelings from relationships I’ve had in my ‘adult’ life, which was not something I’d expect from a YA novel. It hit the mark in an unexpected way and made me both angry and sad at its conclusion, I could really ‘feel’ Min more and more towards the end. I ended up throwing it at the wall when I was done with it because I was so mad. And that’s how I knew it was a good book.

“Show up. Who cares? Show up, show up, where are you? Fuck you, everyone was right about you, prove them wrong, where are you? And then from nowhere you were in my life again, tapping me on the shoulder with your hair combed and damp, smiling, maybe nervous. Maybe breathless like me.” – Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)

Taken with Instagram

Knitting pretty (Taken with Instagram)