There are big Save Darfur rallies happening in San Fran and DC this weekend.

The other day, Sudanese Parliament member (also a human rights lawyer who’s a member of the opposition party against the government) Salih Mahmoud Osman came to work to give us an update about Darfur. I videotaped his presentation with Dr. Fashir, another Sudanese advocate, and will get a 2-minute clip from their presentation online over the weekend.

All this crazy stuff is happening. Correlatively, my mother’s coming to visit — tonight.

I don’t know what it means — your new set of knives,
the wide sky and the old sea soon to be below your window
which will remind you of how a city’s not supposed to be
but is: both full and empty, all at once.

Yet I remember the era of patterned socks and bugs
crawling around our kitchen. You must remember
the smell of the rooftop, wet streets and the sounds the train made,
warning of its approach the same way the future screams
before it attacks.

Now you’re a bloody mess and I’m worse.
Now you’re a kaiju monster, I’m on the bleachers with a camera.
I’m on Manni’s bicycle. Now you’re dancing to the same song and I’m
staring out my bedroom window to the dead fish in its
dying pond. Now it’s summer and we’re both unemployed.
You’re an almond croissant. I’m wine on the wall.
You’re a dead bum in the driveway.
I’m an ambulance.
I’m a quesadilla and you’re holding Jonah and we’re both
singing hip hop, hip hop, hip hop trying not to notice
how serious everything really is. You’re in a blue car.
I’m in a blue car. We’re finding the fort, finally, up a hill,
we’re finding a parking spot, we’re shouting a boy’s name
out the window with no idea that years later, he’ll hear.
I’m a mess. You’re a riot. We’re behind barred windows.
I’m a big yellow rose, you’re a red wall, we’re in
someone else’s living room in New York City and the whole place
smells like smoke and confusion but I call it freedom
and you giggle and we drive

all the way home the same way.

This is cool: U.S. campaign for Burma is starting an initiative to invite anyone with a camera to videotape a 10-minute or less birthday message to imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner and rightful leader of Burma, Aang San Suu Kyi. The initiative is called Beaming Burma and I think it’s a neat idea.

Visiting Southern Thailand last month was like a glorious punch in the gut for me: the staff of Grassroots HRE, who not only support undocumented Burmese workers in Thailand but are themselves undocumented workers in Thailand, were amazing. Their mutual support and commitment to a Free Burma was moving. Now I finally understand the real human struggle behind all those Free Burma bumper stickers. Every Burmese person I met was so kind, so humble, so helpful, and so very nationalistic — that is, to the Burma not imprisoned by a violent dictatorship.

That said, this is a cool video opportunity. Go to it!

DD’s in Chicago. Ry’s stuck in NYC. It’s raining outside and I’m still in my pajamas, watching French New Wave films by Godard from the 60s. Yesterday was Alphaville, today’s is Le Petit Soldat, which tops off the other eight or nine I’ve already seen. We’re on a kick to watch every Brando film, Godard film, Cassavetes, and Kurosawa film ever made. I like Godard’s movies because they go completely against the conventions of today:

Someone’s always reading aloud in Godard films. People speak in poetry, half the time, and they frown as they speak. Improvisational dialogue and oddly-timed voiceover narrative is intriguing and different. His portrayal of women makes me puke, though: their incalcitrance, their lubricious, fickle attitudes, plus their unfailing youth & beauty (Why, Godard, when there are so many normal-looking women who can also act?). But he uses wide shots and long takes, tracking motion instead of cut-cut-cut close-ups, which these days is refreshing. If he focused more on reality and less on the ideal of beauty and the ideal of politics and the ideal of masculinity, his films would be much better. Then again, I’m just a little girl with a little film crew and I have no idea if Rezeroing has even won audience award yet.

Tra la, tra la.

it’s friday & freezing

we had our heart-to-heart in the alley, finally,
the bruised sky making no excuses, its few stars
content to hang around alone and as
they burned against the night and you spoke i thought
well, it’s about time,

because it is and you should know that,
not that it’s ever easy. you should know that too.
in another place and time, what would i do?

Tapioca Productions’ lovely film REZEROING is now available for all of cyberspace to enjoy:

www.stream-video.net/Benjamin/RezeroingV1.wmv

Note from Ben: To view this, right click on the link to select “Save as” or “Save Target As” and save file to your hard drive. Don’t try to stream it online, it will not play well.

“Treasures found near Jesus’ ‘Sea of Miracles’”
“LA woman has rare case of Bubonic Plague”
“Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise welcome a baby girl”

Dude, why are they feeding us pop culture poop? What real news do they NOT want us to know? At the bottom of all these headlines was a small blurb about McClellan’s resignation.

Nevermind world news, like the fighting and impending drought in Somalia, the religious riots in Egypt, or the rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Geeze, what is going on?