Tonya Foster

Continued…

…if we change the words, do we change the thing/s?

PERSON: email to a friend: Century of the Self: charting development of the kind of radical individualism in which freedom of the individual is more tied to individual (unconscious) desire than to individual action. The freedom of the individual (democracy) can be strangely disconnected from individual bodies through nifty slogans or brands? We can certainly pretend. (IN THE NOW: And I sometimes like shopping. Fluidity sings the various and varying ones. And wearing my tweed Stuart Weitzman ankle-boots does put a sexy spring in my stride until the white boy walking behind me yells “Nigger Hair” into his phone and at the side-back of my head, and the spring becomes a (imagined) kick.)

10.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Tonya Foster

ADFEMPO Repo 1

Okay, back after much silence and some sickness. After the wonderful Adfempo Conference. After the settling in of a new roommate. After joy and wanting. (okay, not sure what that’s about but there it is.) So there are a few blogs rooming around in my head, and in word on my computer. That, and audio and video I hope to upload.

10.06.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Tonya Foster

Ramadan Rosh Hashana New Moon 1

A word’s an act, and no one can recover it.
Sometimes the thing we name
suddenly becomes…what? A being, almost
human, that the very calling kills”
from Heather McHugh’s “The Magician” in To The Quick

-copied in one of my notebook, among my notes on the social geography and history of New Orleans.

This morning was cold. Cooler than it’s been in a while. Weather is not metaphor. But I make those connections anyway with trails and emotions that have cooled. Scent and heat (and their absence). The marked police car is back on the corner. (What are those expectations about? Yes, to the dangling preposition, my morning affirmation.) Am enjoying this measure of detachment that the cool calls up. And besides, I’m a winter birth. “We think by feeling. What is there to know?” Of course, we also feel by thinking. And to know requires that we somehow touch. Here, I picture Anne Bancroft spelling words (signing) in Patty Duke’s finally understanding palms. First water, then ground, then pump, tree, step.

09.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (10)

Tonya Foster

New Moon

New Moon

So where do I begin? Particularly when rage makes direction difficult. Particularly when grief dislocates, is about extended dislocations. I was invited to participate as a Harriet blogger some time ago, and found it remarkably difficult to decide on the “voice” to cultivate. Even the title of this entry is already days old (the moon’s now crescent) (UPDATE: now half) and from an earlier attempt to begin/enter conversation. So given all that, where do I begin? Particularly when so much time has passed that when is as accurate an indication of north as satellites and magnetized needles. Today is August 24, 2009. (A newscaster voice that imagines an August 25^th?) (UPDATE: Today is August 28, 2009) This is one of the last three days of classes for students in Bard’s Language and Thinking Workshop where for the last almost three weeks I’ve been teaching a class of thirteen. (Yesterday, the students matriculated.)

In my initial attempts to begin this blog thing, I focused on a calling up a rather pleasant pseudo-confessional persona:

08.30.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (24)