"I broke the button on my shoe" and other thrilling stories.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Smoky
We had our conversation session yesterday and it was fun. But my throat hurts from all the smoke. Oh well.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Cigarette smoke is a hazard of spending time in cool places overseas. I wish it were otherwise, but there are few places where you can enjoy a drink or a jazz quartet without a lungful of haze, especially outside the States.
there're the lungs and the clothes, the "decency" and "consideration for the [fellow] humans possessing both of the abovementioned"—but (and this at the recognised, and nonetheless hefted, risk of dangerous relativism) there's also a certain and characteristically American view of smoking in public places which brings into extremely stark relief the conception and articulation of "foreign-ness" which is couched, quite troublingly (for me), in both universal/universalising and condescending terms.
given the specific premise under discussion, however, it's difficult to argue the point without resorting to devilish advocacy. the particular elements conflict in such a manner that untruth (of either statement-of-fact or rhetoric) looms large—and the pipingly truer truth (that contradicting beliefs exist, and can be held with a fervency that does not undermine logical consistency) slips beneath its wake.
I taught history in DC Public Schools for four years, and now I teach in Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, CA. And I try not to get burned in the process. Occasionally, I angst about life as a twenty-something, wish that I attended more rock shows, read, and make curried carrot soup .
4 comments:
Cigarette smoke is a hazard of spending time in cool places overseas. I wish it were otherwise, but there are few places where you can enjoy a drink or a jazz quartet without a lungful of haze, especially outside the States.
hi, hon. sorry about the smoke-filed rooms. uh--rrroooms. try to counteract its effects by walking in a park? lady with a rake and trowel.
g, yes. To all comments. I can feel what is left of my voice disintegrating.
Mom, I love you. You make me giggle.
there're the lungs and the clothes, the "decency" and "consideration for the [fellow] humans possessing both of the abovementioned"—but (and this at the recognised, and nonetheless hefted, risk of dangerous relativism) there's also a certain and characteristically American view of smoking in public places which brings into extremely stark relief the conception and articulation of "foreign-ness" which is couched, quite troublingly (for me), in both universal/universalising and condescending terms.
given the specific premise under discussion, however, it's difficult to argue the point without resorting to devilish advocacy. the particular elements conflict in such a manner that untruth (of either statement-of-fact or rhetoric) looms large—and the pipingly truer truth (that contradicting beliefs exist, and can be held with a fervency that does not undermine logical consistency) slips beneath its wake.
i mean, really: a foreigner with asthma...?
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