Bhanu Kapil

Aggression and Community: [exit notes] [snake puke] [discuss]

1.  Discuss.

2.  No.

3.  The sentence is a dark alley.  You know what happens in dark alleys.

4.  Something’s not right.

5.  Discuss.

6. No.

7.  What kind of person gets to the corridor then stops?  On the verge of research, a question, an interview.  Takes notes on the architecture, the crenallate of red roofs stretching over the East End, the cross-hatched window of Kamaldeep Bhui’s door. Then goes home.

8.  The recent honor killing in Turkey.  Discuss.

9.  No.

10.  The university department.  The conflation of the shadow blogs with the comment stream.  Uncles.  Cousins. The sex attackers in childhood, adulthood, and beyond. The killers on the verge of killing.  All my life I have looked into the eyes of serial killers and have developed a sixth sense when it comes to not being murdered.  You fucking cunt.  Your eyebrows are really ugly; did anyone ever tell you that?Discuss.

11. No.

12.  I love you.

13.  Discuss

14. No

15.  Questions of non-violence bring me to the moment when, face to face with a cobra, two cobras, I look them in the eyes.  I don’t know what this does other than reduce my nausea.  Eileen Myles, would you take over my gig?  I will re-send you the money when I get it, though I need it.  I think I need this money, sometimes.  No, it is better if Eileen Myles takes over from here, and maybe someone else. Elena Georgiou.  Someone fierce and gentle, and someone gentle and fierce.  Someone with a partner, because I think you need someone at home if you’re going to do this.  If you’re going to take this up.  I have a dog.  I have a cat.  I have a son.  I have amazing neighbors and friends. I have you.

15.  I have you.

16. “Shame may be fatal.”  Discuss

14.  No.

15.  Towards an aesthetics of non-violence.  Towards Elizabeth Lonzano’s work on ritual and community in Colombia.  Towards an essay composed in the notebook, where it drifts, a composite of scraps.  MEAT BLANKET.  Discuss.

16.  Towards a different kind of sex altogether.

17.  The question of sex is linked to the question of territory.  Discuss.

18.  Yes.

19.  In a war-time, predatory effects are amplified.  Discuss.

20. Yes.

21.  Mira Bai’s bhajans recalibrate the garden at the end of winter.  In class, we read ZONG!  I direct my students to Fred’s posts on reparation and trance.  When Sina writes about the river and Woolf and her mum and the north, a vertical thread unfurls.  Sometimes I listen to Sotere’s audio: at home, I read Craig’s book, delighted by the rain and the jungle and the aunties, in my first scan.  Thom’s thinking about the sentence affects me, deeply, in the space before writing begins.

22.  ”Mom, can we have a snack?  Abby wants a cocoa.  Can we go to The Coffee Tree?”

23. “Not yet.”

24.  ”How will you put the shit back into the mother’s body?” — Cynthia Sailers, on aggression, community and the group mind.

25.  Discuss!!!

26.  ”Mom!  We’re hungry!!!”

27.  ”I’m almost done.”

02.10.10 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (18)