Watching Tina Fey today was a scary reminder that there is a little election thing going on, and that I should probably cast a vote.  Though planning on being back east during the crucial day, I registered AK absentee (this form, the deadline postmark is Oct. 4, or you can email it in .pdf) I stumbled on google’s nifty election tool, which has registration and other great info wired to your location:

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Sorry to break into what is turning into a pretty alright travelogue, but I’ve just got to share.
Do you know who Robert Bly is? Have you ever heard him speak? Few times in my life have I heard lines so moving and hilariously dark that I couldn’t remember (barely) at all. Honestly, usually I can pick out at least one of those vague metaphors meant to stir your spirit, to uplift or lie low the burdens of your heart, on your chest; the weight set comfortably across your shoulders and body. Nary once.

Tonight, Bly spoke for about an hour and a half, reading excerpts from a few of his books, and reading them well at that. Bly has an amazing gravity, supported by stoic eye contact, which was turned in my direction more than once. This happened often at what I felt like were critical moments, though this is equally his job as it is my perception (and perhaps a flattered ego). This, this is what people communicate with other for, that weighty, fleeting moment of sheer direction and focus, that glimpse into a world perhaps not so different from out own.

To accentuate these well stirred fires, I have been thinking a lot about writing, about what it means, the motivations and mechanisms behind the aguilar linkage of words and (often incoherent) ideas. These motivations seem to historically stretch from the romance of being immortalized to simple love of the words themselves as singular, well, words, for lack of an inspired articulation. However, it is the sharing of these words that gives meaning (of course, the order counts for something too). Anyways, here I am, late on a thursday night, again at school past 10pm, with a little bit of the sauce in my stomach from some great shared beers earlier, having listened to a ‘rock star’ of the poetry world, and cranking away on physics homework due at midnight (the very serious bane of appx. 30 students lives at the moment, though I feel like most have already finished….). What can one do but parry a bit?

Jam, fresh from the pot
dripping in sticky bits,
a sweet burning sensation
on open wounds, rifts of flesh
torn by the days work.

Numbers, cruising through
cuticles of the brain.
Push them back, lest
they grow too long.

Water spills over the edge
of an overflown sink, wondering
why no one moves to turn the over-size
paddles of a hospital faucet

and so form breaks down,
shattering into bits that splinter into our skin
sinking deep before blood wells like ideas,
running straight down and off the tips of hanging fingers.

Maybe I’m no good, but who says I ever was?
And maybe you’re not good, but honestly, that ain’t bad
until you’ve been asked sincerely to leave
But no one ever does, not around here.

And when the jokes are over,
and no one has stood;
none have left but one
but he has left for good.

Ian, RIP bud.

It isn’t much, but it’s a stab

-Peter

ps, I just found a picture framing a portion of the Burlington area phone book in my physics text. Creepy, it had a portion of a Lee Zachary’s and New England Wing ad, respectively. Page 952, Wolfson & Pasachoff’s Physics (with modern Physics), for the morbidly curious.

China may have a new property law – what might that mean? According to the Times and other commentators, this is part of an epic struggle between the rightists and leftists in the upper echelons of the CCP. In 2004, the Chinese constitution was changed to state that private property is “not to be encroached upon”, but this is hard to reconcile with other clauses which state that “all land belongs to the state”. (Xinhua via eNorth)

This law doesn’t address that directly, but apparently attempts to side step the issue by offering expanded compensation for land expropriation. This is really the key issue, because rural people have been left behind in China’s development, and the Party is now placing increasing emphasis on showing that it cares (primarily through Wen Jiabao’s statements). “Mass incidents” (riots) have become commonplace in the last few years, with the government itself openly acknowledging that

nearly 200,000 hectares of rural land are taken from farmers every year for industrial purposes, and more than 65 percent of “massive incidents”, or petitions and protests that involve a large group of people, in rural areas are attributed to land expropriation. (Xinhua, March 9, 2007)

The new law proposes to expand and standardize compensation farmers will receive for the loss of their land, but apparently remains mute about who really owns the land. In the part of Inner Mongolia where I do my field work, herding families all have “50-year” leases on their land. These leases give usage rights, and the right to some construction on the land, but are far from ownership. Furthermore, the system of apportioning land between families means that at any moment the local government can re-assign a chunk of land to someone else. This provides a serious disincentive to be a good steward; after all, you don’t even know how long you’ll have it! Here is where I find I have some conservative leanings: private property is likely a good thing for the environment.

p.s.
The Economist put it’s own spin on these event – their tone, as ever, crowing about the imminent demise of Communism and belittling all attempts by the CPC to improve the country as desperate last gasps. A minor note: you may want to think twice about believing what they write, since they mis-translate the literal meaning of the Chinese Communist Party 中国共产党: 产 (chan) here means “production”, not “property”, so the literal translation is the “Producing-Together Party”, not the “Public-Property Party”.