Standing Rock, A Digital Oral History-in-Progress: Voices of Standing Rock

Many of you who know me, know that I spent some time with the water protectors at Standing Rock earlier this month. I've really struggled since returning home to contextualize the struggle and my own place within it, finally coming to this conclusion: I am a writer, and my primary function should to document. To that end, I'm developing what I'm tentatively calling a digital oral history. I'm not sure exactly how this will end up, but my general intention right now is to collect as many different voices as I can, and organize the voices contextually as I go. I'll be updating regularly, and will indicate recently added material. You can find the tab in the menu above, or click here. 

My first addition is Voices of Standing Rock, a project of the Iktče Wičháša Oyáte, or Common Man Collective, of Standing Rock. Their interviews are elucidating and personal, including both indigenous voices and the extended family of non-indigenous friends. They are a crowdfunded enterprise, so if you are looking for a good cause to donate to, you can do that here via YouCaring.

CAPS LOCK RANT: At people who voted for Donald Trump and now say, "It's only an election"

I HAVE A SNEAKING SUSPICION YOU WOULD ALSO SAY, "STOP CRYING. IT'S ONLY CANCER."

DON'T EVEN SAY THINGS ARE GOING TO GO ON AS USUAL. SO FAR, THE MAN YOU ELECTED HAS DESIGNATED A RAVING CLIMATE CHANGE CONTRARIAN TO HEAD THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY'S TRANSITION TEAM, MADE A WHITE SUPREMACIST HIS CHIEF STRATEGIST, AND MADE A FRINGE SENATOR WHO EVEN REAGAN SAW AS TOO RACIST TO BE HIS ATTORNEY GENERAL. IN A NUTSHELL, HE'S APPOINTING PEOPLE TO DESTROY THE INSTITUTIONS THEY HEAD. AND WE'RE JUST A WEEK OUT OF THE ELECTION.

AND STOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT ABOUT GOD BEING IN CONTROL AND SEEING MORE THAN WE DO. 1) THERE MOST LIKELY IS NO GOD. SORRY. 2) DONALD TRUMP WOULD AGREE WITH ME ON POINT #1, IF HE WERE TO ACTUALLY GIVE IT ANY THOUGHT BEYOND HOW IT WOULD GET YOU TO VOTE FOR HIM. 3) IF THERE WAS A GOD AND THAT GOD IMPOSED DONALD TRUMP ON OUR COUNTRY, THEN GOD HATES THE U.S.A.

THIS WAS NOT "JUST AN ELECTION," THOUGH IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE ONLY ELECTION IN WHICH YOU ACTUALLY VOTED. AND DON'T SAY YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA THE LAST ELECTION, OR TRUMP'S ELECTION IS NO WORSE THAN OBAMA'S. YOU JUST VOTED FOR THE LEAST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE OF OUR LIFETIME, IF NOT AMERICAN HISTORY. IF YOU THINK THAT'S A GOOD THING, I INVITE YOU TO HAVE THE PERSON IN SEAT 6C (OR WHATEVER SEAT, YOU CAN CHOOSE) NAVIGATE THE PLANE ON YOUR NEXT FLIGHT. IF YOU SEE OUR COUNTRY'S GOVERNMENT AS THAT PLANE AND YOU WANT IT TO CRASH, THEN YOU ARE THE PERSON IN SEAT 6C NAVIGATING THE PLANE.

I got nothing. But I promise I'll have something tomorrow.

So, a week has passed. It seems like much, much longer. I went to Standing Rock, and my country has a new president. I just finished writing a piece about my trip, and now I have to think on this new, ugly reality.

Ah, well. More Sneaky Feels starting tomorrow, and I promise you'll be reading about me and Standing Rock soon.

Let the real conversation begin.

Thanks to my colleague and teaching partner Nayma Qayum, I'll be discussing this recent piece from The Atlantic with my classes today as we begin our section on persuasive writing, with a focus shifted toward argumentation-as-understanding. Tomorrow I will vote, and the day after that I will be heading out to Standing Rock with Bill Housworth, an ardent Trump supporter who is also one of my oldest friends. We'll undoubtedly argue constantly and joyfully, as only people who understand each other as people can argue, when we're not too busy finding common ground in the mutual work we're doing and our shared heritage. It's going to be a very good week.

Sneaky Feels #16

The last Sneaky Feel of this week's residency is an intentional anti-climax. Enjoy our shared quotidian middle, friends.

Sneaky Feels #15

True story: I mostly dictated this one into my iPhone while driving down 9A one Thursday night (evidence below). Read it here!

Sneaky Feels #14

Day 3, and I'm gonna hit you hard with this one. We all get the feels, but what are you going to do?

Sneaky Feels #13

It's Day 2 of the Awst Press residency and here comes Sneaky Feel #13, in which Sylvia Plath and discomfort coexist in awkward liminal space (I know, big surprise).

Rave on, Sneaky Feelers!

Sneaky Feels #12

Today marks the first day of the Sneaky Feels' weeklong residency at Awst Press's website! They'll be posting one a day all week.

Here's Monday's, #12, in which we go on the road, or On the Road, as the case may be.

Two more Sneaky Feels this week, then the Spooky Sneaky Feels Spectacular next week!

Ok, so I'll put up two more SF's tomorrow and Friday, then next week is Awst Press's turn to host them! Tatiana Ryckman has chosen five new ones that fit together quite nicely, I think. Hope you do too.

Announcing the Sneaky Feels, on Awst Press!

I'm ultra-excited to announce that some lucky Sneaky Feels will have a special place with the wonderful Awst Press during the last week of October! Five special, all-new Feelies have been assembled by editor Tatiana Ryckman for a limited (read: into online perpetuity) run that week, one a day Monday through Friday. It's a Halloween Spectacular (that really has nothing to do with the holiday)!

Big Sneaky Feels announcement tomorrow!

I can't wait to tell you about it! In the meantime, here comes another one!

A little locker room talk.

I know, this "locker talk" stuff has been worked to death, but...

When I was in high school, I was on the football team. I didn't play much, but I was on the team. I remember plenty of "locker room talk," whether it was in the locker room or at the lunch table or wherever. One guy, in an intimate moment, confessed that he'd lost his virginity the previous weekend by raping an unconscious girl at a party. (He of course didn't use the word "rape.") I remember being deeply disturbed, but saying nothing; he was a big guy, and no one else seemed to think he did anything wrong. But I still think about that guy. In fact, when I hear Donald Trump and his "locker talk" I think of him and hope he feels a deep remorse that Trump seems incapable of.

But there was another guy on the football team who was at that lunch table, or locker, or wherever it was this rapist made his disclosure. That other guy, who is still my friend, would be embarrassed if I named him, so I won't. But I remember him waiting silently until the talk died down and he had their attention. "She's very young to have gone through that," he said, and got up and left. That moment of empathy for a person we'd collectively deemed just a body that got raped - I didn't say anything, so I was complicit - has stuck with me for twenty-five years as an act of courage and civil disobedience against a male culture intent on justifying and perpetuating its own violence.

Everything I told you is just talk, just like Donald Trump says his "locker room" conversation is just talk. But speech is action, just as silence is inaction. Not speaking out against a man running for our highest office who brags about sexually assaulting women is complicity in propagating rape culture, and it's not something for which we should easily forgive ourselves.

Playing hospital with my four-year-old just got real.

4YO: You've got bad blood pressure.

ME: Oh no. What do I do about it?

4YO: I don't know, some medicine? Maybe?

ME: For my broken arm?

The sad thing is, substitute a broken arm with pneumonia and blood pressure with high cholesterol, and that's pretty much my last visit with my previous primary care physician.

Damn, Daniel.

I had signups for revision meetings today in my freshman classes. I haven't really figured out a democratic way of ordering them, so I just put the signup sheet on my desk and told them to have at it. One of my students jumped out of his desk, hurdled another desk, and grabbed the paper to sign up.

ME: (In what I thought was a perfect meme voice) Damn, Daniel! (His name is Daniel.)

ANOTHER STUDENT: You already got some cred, Professor. But...Don't say that again.

Right? See ya, baby.

A student of mine who’s on the college baseball team just stopped me on the quad.

PLAYER: Hey, we’re meeting in the library today, right?
ME: No, the librarian’s coming to our class.
PLAYER: Oh yeah, that was in that email you sent, right?
ME: Yes.
PLAYER: I have you in like two classes today, right?
ME: No, just one.
PLAYER: Ah, yeah. <Does that snap/point thing in my general direction while walking backwards away> See ya, baby.
ME: <silence>

Here come the Sneaky Feels!

No, I haven't started an art-pop band, though that would be a great name for one. I've just had a lot of the feels sneaking up on me lately. I've also been feeling a bit, um, non-productive with my writing, busy as I've been with teaching and fussing over an essay collection that I'm so, so tired of looking at.

So, in the Two Birds With One Stone school of thought, I've been writing my sneaky feels as they come to me - on the train, late at night, alone or with my family, sitting at my office desk, whatevs. I'm just trying to get back to the joy and horror and fuckitallness of producing words that mean something to me without knowing exactly what they mean.

I've been doing it for about a week, trying to catch at least one sneaky feel a day. Some have been shit, but some have felt ok enough to share. If anything, it's been nice writing without the pressure if thinking it has to become something. I decided sometime last weekend that maybe I'd start sharing some them here (but only the good ones). I picked out three, gave them a little revision to at least make them vaguely readable, and I'll put them up today, tomorrow, and Friday. I'll try to put a few up each week. I am finding that they share some formal attributes, but I make no promises to stay within them for future feels. Because of course, that's not how the feels work.

Feel free to share your own feels in the comment section. I'd change it to the feels section, if Squarespace would only let me.

My piece on teaching from The Best American Essays is up!

I wrote this critical piece as part of the Best American Essays Spotlight series at Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. The series also includes a fascinating interview with luminous BAE editor Robert Atwan, Jenny Spinner's "Best American Essays Series as (Partial) Essay History," and Lynn Z. Bloom's "The Great American Potluck Party." Great company to keep, methinks.

The Eternal Return of the Grievous Angel, now out in New Madrid!

With the start of school, the end of summer, et cetera ad nauseam, I somehow forgot to promote the publication of my longform essay in New Madrid Journal of Contemporary Literature! Thanks to Jacque Day for asking for it, and to Riley Hanick for editing it.

"I desperately wanted not to remember him as the beaten man fading into the walls of his rented flat, the hophead electrician some people of the town would undoubtedly use as an example of what can happen to anyone daring to step outside the bounds of conventional morality. No, I wanted desperately to remember the Blakean man-beast, pure energy bound by no reason, and the Nietzschean will to power, bound by no law, who could through the force of his own nature evade or destroy anything in his path, the world if necessary, and throw it all at my feet. I wanted him to be the myth I’d built around him."

...

"I saw across the table from me a man whose brother had just died, who couldn’t even allow himself to grieve—a man doomed to relive his mistakes until his own death, whose funeral the child to whom he’d given over his youth and his purpose would almost certainly not attend. I saw in him the immutable truth that we are all grievous angels, returning eternally to the scene of our first demise."

Scottish Places link and interface are up!

Ok, I promise this is the last I'll write about Scotland (for awhile, at least). I just put up a nice little interface, linked at the top next to The List and the Story. If by chance you haven't yet read that silliness yet, now you have it in a nice little package!