I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
Throughout the day, I’ve read breaking news about the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. The accounts have brought me to tears, and I’m deeply saddened. This doesn’t happen to me often. Normally, there’s a kind of barrier between me and the news. I think most of us develop this kind of desensitized way of going about our lives, thinking that so many stories, while heartbreaking, are also distant. They happen somewhere else to other people.
We learned of the final project on the first day of Lit and Culture of the 1960’s. Like all senior seminars, the culmination of the semester was a 12-point font, annotated behemoth and a class presentation - the kind of project that sounded like a deathbed so far in the future in September, like the click of a gun barrel against your head in November.
I saw a Yahoo! headline earlier this evening that asked, “Do men like assertive women?” Not interested enough to click the headline, I moved on. A few minutes ago, I meandered onto the Yahoo! main page again, and the headline is different! It now reads, “Do men like aggressive women?”
Home is where the heart is and the dog and the embarrassing naked baby pictures, not to mention that familiar bellow of “WHO’S ON THE PHONE?!” as soon as the phone rings, minutes before it is possible to know who exactly has called. (This was actually true before caller id, now most of the time I actually can identify who has called, even if just by reading off a mysterious phone number).
Paulo Freire
is a really cool dude, yo!
Get schooled to be free.
*
Did you know Plato
thought we were born with knowledge,
all there is to know?
Forty-four minutes
past the starting hour - argh!
Two long hours left.
*
I whittle away
hours looking at sweaters
classmates are wearing.
I’ve long believed that as much as it can be painful to be a woman, I wouldn’t want to be a man. Men are allowed less freedom of expression than women. It’s more difficult for them to live sexuality and gender as fluid constructs. And men’s clothes are really boring.
O, how mine weary eyes doth water by 10 p.m. this night!
I had to return to work after my boss sent my co-teacher and I harsh emails about how all the systems in place in our classroom (as mandated by the obsessively micro-managed administration, mind you) must now be overthrown and replaced. Work has been trying in recent weeks, as there’s always someone breathing down my neck, telling me I’m not doing things the way the school dictates they be done. Everything is very rigid and structured and the whole school really ought to undo a button, because I’m not the only person in this environment feeling stifled.
She raises her hand;
the class sighs collectively.
The weakest link speaks.
*
Stupid will not stop.
It violently floods the room.
I’ve no dam to give.
l
This commercial intrigues me for a few reasons. First, I rely on public transportation, so the concept is interesting. Second, I like pondering the use of sex, race, and class in the ad. Why does a white guy fight a black guy? Why does a black girl have to “shake [her] junk”?
