elliott-writes - Tumblr blog

[elliott-writes]

I found a digital version of the complete chapbook and uploaded it for posterity lol. Some of it is cringeworthy and some of it I'm impressed with myself :)

[elliott-writes]

anxiety is a constantly un- and reraveling ball of yarn in my lungs, extends through my windpipe above and into my guts below, reshaping and knotting itself, growing ever tighter, constricting my senses and arresting my breath

fear is a lighting bolt, temples to toes, obscuring sight, sound, sensation to fingertips, solar plexus punch, no wind, no weight

depression is an anchor seizing every blood cell, the sluggish weight rendering respiration laconic, toxic, can’t move, can’t motivate, can’t see beyond the next five seconds but deep into the next five years

[elliott-writes]

i wrote this draft of a song from the perspective of a redwood tree

for oiadoette saccharine-saudade.

come down and sit under me we have a lot to share and see two thousand years and you’re a blip but we can rest for a little bit

you’re feeling pretty lost i guess ashes brewing in your chest put your hand in mine i’ll take you there don’t worry if it’s right or fair

leave your body join with mine no questions about space or time come to me i’ll wrap you up in infinite abounding trust

stay right here beyond this place senses lost without a trace just be with me your friendly loving local redwood tree

leave your nest upon your wings fly away from human things say goodbye to greed and strife drink my wisdom, hear my sighs

in the shade i gladly give i teach you, you teach me to live we’ll just exist serene and still and love will our bodies fill

and when you leave i will be sad but not too much, you’ve made me glad to know that as much that is wrong you’ll pass my wisdom gladly on

stay right here beyond this place senses lost without a trace just be with me your friendly loving local redwood tree

[elliott-writes]

i found this old poem i wrote:

within a one-meter radius is the promise of god it’s only from arms reach we witness the folly, the fraud of theology positing a sky-based creator, no it’s in closeness, in intimacy i find my savior

for you must be this close to feel the heat of my breath to prove i’m alive with your palm to my chest this close to see the specks of gold in my eyes and to hear the pain in my whispering sighs

the promise of humanity can only be seen in the tiniest, quietest moments; we lean on each other, we grow and we break and we mend in each other’s one-meter radii, lovers and friends.

elliott jones

[elliott-writes]

Hunger Games Alternate Ending: The Real Mockingjay: Primrose Everdeen

Note: This is a sample assignment I designed for my Ethnic Studies class for our Liberation unit. Though I did read the books years ago, this assignment is based on the narrative presented in the Hunger Games films, which we’ve been watching and studying in class.

------------------------------------------------

Before the 75th Annual Hunger Games, the rebels devise a plan to turn the Capitol against the games from the inside by utilizing Prim Everdeen, Katniss’ sister, and Effie Trinkett, their Capitol team mentor. As Johanna Mason says later, during the Games, “The whole country loves your sister. If they tortured her or did anything to her - forget the districts - there would be riots in the damn Capitol.” .

Effie and Prim use this knowledge to start sharing information and emotionally manipulating the people of the Capitol to turn them against the government. Effie uses Prim’s popularity and her Captiol connections to start organizing secret speaking tours with Prim and select Capitol citizens in underground locations, especially those upset about the murder of Cinna, a Capitol fashion star and friend of Katniss. Prim shares her experiences in District 12 and compares them to the opulence of the Capitol and shares about the cruelty of the Captiol toward the districts. .

They start organizing an underground resistance from within the Capitol and begin to sneak in leaders from rebelling districts, where Prim learns more about what is happening in each district, and they coordinate public protests in the districts, making sure that they are broadcast on TV. They also begin a campaign to boycott the Hunger Games, and convince thousands of people within the Capitol to refuse to watch the Games, in order to reduce the Games’ power. .

The enthusiasm for the Hunger Games is severely damaged by the tributes’ statements and collaboration in the pre-Games interviews, Katniss’ Mockingjay outfit, and the “baby bomb” that Peeta drops. This creates even more enthusiasm for the boycott and anti-government feelings. .

After Katniss wrecks the games with her lightning arrow, Snow captures Prim. He sends her to a torture chamber and intends to hijack her mind like they did with Peeta, to then force her to make a public speech condemning the revolution. In collaboration with the resistance in District 13 and Beetee’s technology, however, they are able to sneak in a camera and film Prim’s torture. .

Before Snow is able to hijack her mind, Prim gives a speech encouraging the revolution and declares that she, not Katniss, was the Mockingjay the whole time. Because of this, Snow murders her, not knowing that the rebels’ cameras are filming the whole thing. Her self-sacrifice creates riots in the Capitol. .

Katniss and the District 13 rebels use this moment to unit the districts and the Capitol’s citizens against Snow, and he is overthrown, liberating Panem from the Capitol’s control. .

Tactics of Liberation Used:

Information Sharing, Emotional Manipulation, Public Protest, Boycott, Self-Sacrifice, Violence.

Steps in the Cycle of Liberation:

Waking Up: Prim is woken up after witnessing the 74th Hunger Games

Education: Prim gathers information about the Capitol’s evil behavior from her own research and from interacting with leaders from other districts.

Organizing: Prim gathers support from people in the Capitol through information sharing and emotional manipulation and organizes a boycott of the Games.

Fight/Struggle: Prim’s self-sacrifice is the catalyst for rebellion within the Capitol, and in collaboration with Katniss and the District 13 rebels they overthrow the government.

Levels of Liberation:

Internalized: Citizens of Panem un-learn their beliefs about right and wrong and about the validity of the government’s control over Panem.

Institutional: Prim and the rebels convince the citizens of the Capitol to riot, overthrowing the government and achieving liberation.

[elliott-writes]

i had some ideas about improvements to the local coffee shop.

coffee shop idea

idea: coffee shop that not only has hella outlets but also like, a little thing with various kinds of chargers - macbook, basic ac plug, mini usb, iPhone… for people who forget their chargers sometimes

i can imagine too, like, there’s an understanding that you need to spend like $5 or so an hour (so you can’t just camp there forever) so there’s like a little timer that goes off every hour so you know and can go buy something else if you want…

maybe there’s art supplies you can buy directly there, like charcoal pencils and/or bristol board or something…

board games and/or built-in chess boards on some of the tables and you can borrow the chess pieces for free with any purchase…

i had another idea that may/may not work with this tech coffee shop concept but pay-what-you-can and/or work in the back to wash dishes or sweep the floors or something to earn tokens to buy food/drinks/etc… and like the pay what you can means that everything above what your thing actually costs goes into a fund so that people who don’t have money can’t have some… like systematic paying it forward…

some kind of app where you can send your music playlist or songs to add to the coffee shop’s playlist…

desktop computers that you can use for like $1 an hour… or free for the first hour then pay after… they’re on safe mode or whatever so you can try to prevent viruses and it’s on kid mode or something too so you can let your kids go on it, and also so there aren’t ppl looking at porn on it like at the library… or it’s just like a chromebook so you can’t download stuff at all…

and like all the staff are youth who’ve been through juvie… or are at risk of joining gangs… 

or like there’s a collaboration with a  local college to provide free tutoring, and the college students get credit and the middle and high school students get tutored…

why are there so many uses for coffee shops and public space and collaboration but all we get is like “ooh exposed wood” “ooh artisanal latte art” “ooh wi-fi-free wednesdays” like

[elliott-writes]

"live" rough draft by alyosha jones (me lol)

i almost died tonight cars spinning in the night gave me an awful fright i wondered have i lived my life all its worth i am a teacher, man hold students by the hand try to glimpse the promised land but sometimes we’d all rather get high i often tell myself leave ego on the shelf your purpose is to help bring about the world you’re longing to see but how how do you measure your worth in an upside-down fucked up world oh how how do i love when i don’t know what love is i just wanna live i’ve loved a socialist he was an optimist and really liked to kiss said he could feel my soul through my tongue i loved a cyberpunk their kitchen always stunk so good and yeah they flunked but who’s stuck with the student loans i loved a straight girl she has a deep love for the world and all its people and i compare everyone else i love to her but how how do you measure your worth in an upside-down fucked up world oh how how do i love when i don’t know what love is i just wanna live

[elliott-writes]

updated draft of "success" by elliott jones. now it's not a verse for verse for melody copy of john prine lol.

i am a stay at home parent drawing comics with a baby at my breast and i don’t know the ending so i’m brought to tears with the scope of the protagonist’s test

.

you come home and eat my sorrow remind me today is just like tomorrow we read books, have sex just like the rest i’m a success

.

while the baby naps i tend the garden i got a pretty solid tan homegrown tomato juice drips down my chin i find the pleasure where i can

.

you come home and eat my sorrow remind me today is just like tomorrow we read books, have sex just like the rest i’m a success

.

i can’t complain, i can’t complain i’ve got what i always dreamed enough time to get that when something is gotten it can’t be as good as it seemed

.

but you come home and eat my sorrow remind me today is just like tomorrow we read books, have sex just like the rest i’m a success

[elliott-writes]

draft lol

i'm really scared because for the first, really, the first time in twenty-six years i've encountered someone so respected, so on my level and maybe beyond

and maybe you wanna do this thing this love thing or whatever and what the fuck

and

i'm at a loss and i don't have words and usually words are what i have.

[elliott-writes]

oh yeah i recorded this lil' draft yesterday. 

you were my first love at the tender age of twelve we'd meet up every sunday i was well under your spell i knew that you were perfect and loved me through and through i'll never get over but never regret leaving you

because you loved the ones i do but you had a jealous heart i saw you in rainbow refracted dew but you tore me apart a loving righteous violence i could not accept i had to go but as i left i wonder if you wept

and so what's the difference between the shepherd and his flock can the leadership be blamed when the followers rot

those who say they love you hate me and all my kin and why would you create me to despise my own skin

because you loved the ones i do  but you had a jealous heart  i saw you in rainbow refracted dew  but you tore me apart a loving righteous violence i could not accept  i had to go but as i left  i wonder if you wept

It's about breaking up with the first man I ever loved: Jesus!

[elliott-writes]

i like the way you say my name whether a sultry nighttime coo or "little bear" both incite in me a lil' flame it's the mouth that's talkin', not the moniker i like the way you call me out on my shit when i'm a dick and i admire without a doubt the strength with which you put up with it i will take all your self-consciousness and scatter it like ashes because this isn't like, this isn't like then all the fear and lack of trust oh, it crashes into like and this is love, this is love i like the way you hold a spoon washin' dishes rinse it end to end and how you have to know that soon i'll sneak up right behind you, bury my head i like the way that you're so small a hug from me envelops your whole being and that tiny frame, that hinted drawl hides a heart so big it engulfs me i will take all your self-consciousness and scatter it like ashes because this isn't like, this isn't like then all the fear and lack of trust oh, it crashes into like and this is love, this is love

[elliott-writes]

five year plan

i think about all of the things that we will never do and know that it won't be the same without you

.

hot air balloons and travels east a five year plan reduced to three i still love you  but that ain't enough is it? sometimes the right decision feels like shit

.

i have no illusions of finding someone better for me if this is liberation give me back that lock and key you were perfect for me

.

so now we sleep alone again crying two rooms apart my friends tell me that fucking heals a broken heart

.

i haven't been rejected, though this freedom just won't let me go i still love you but that ain't enough is it sometimes the right decision feels like shit

.

i have no illusions of finding someone better for me if this is liberation give me back that lock and key you were perfect for me

.

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this is really old but i realized i never posted it. this is actually a song but i'm not talented enough to sing/write music for it. i have a melody, but...

alyosha jones (c) 2014

[elliott-writes]

you

You, with your chiseled grin and perfect beard - You, with your self-assured yet quiet locution You with your unattainability, your ambiguous relationship status With your "join me for dinner?" smiley face text and did your shoulder brush mine on purpose or? and like why are you so fucking qute oh god and do u wanna hang out because like and are we friends or i mean like can i just kiss yr perfect mouth

[elliott-writes]

What do you think Buber and Noddings mean when they talk about “inclusion”? What does this suggest about how the teacher should encounter the child?

By “inclusion” Buber (via Noddings) means “experiencing the other side” or “dialogue” rather than “monologue.” According to Molly Jans dialogue “is described as an I - thou relationship... meaning that both persons in the conversation experience the other as a person like themselves. There is a respect for the person and a genuine interest in the others[sic] view. There are differing views but the same moral status… In dialogue, conversation is treated as an end to itself, in monologue... it is a means to an end… Dialogue is conscience-oriented. It is acting on principle and believing in the right thing. Monologue, however, is strategic. It is applied to achieve goals or calculate an outcome.” Noddings notes that "‘inclusiveness’ is of the essence of the dialogical relation, for the teacher sees the position of the other in his concrete actuality yet does not lose sight of his own."

"Inclusiveness" then involves the teacher understanding the student as a “subject,” as a complete human being with their own needs, desires, thoughts, opinions. The teacher engages in dialogue with the student, not monologue. “What is sought is a truly reciprocal conversation in which both sides are full partners.”

This seems contradictory, as “this inclusiveness must be largely one sided: the pupil cannot equally well see the teacher’s point of view without the teaching relationship being destroyed.” The teacher must somehow “be ‘wholly alive and able to communicate himself directly to his fellow beings,’ but… do this, in so far as possible, with no thought of affecting them.” What is the point of communication if not to make some kind of effect? Or is simply communication the goal itself? Is that “dialogue?” If the teacher has a goal, a learning target, if you will, does that not move into the realm of “monologue?” Or is this tendency mitigated by the teacher’s view of of the student as a subject? By the teacher’s “inclusion” stance?

Noddings discusses that a teacher does not impose their will but instead presents a particular view or area for consideration for the student to consider. The teacher must build confidence among students in the teacher’s role as teacher, so that the student feels “that the teacher accepts him before desiring to influence him,” because “This confidence does not imply agreement… and it is in conflict with the pupil that the teacher meets his supreme test.” The use of the term “before” seems important here - the student feels that the teacher does not intend to influence the student, at least not at first. But is “influence” not inherent in “teaching?” Once the teacher gains the student's confidence, does the teacher then attempt to influence them?

Nodding seems to begin to answer this question by reframing the purpose of education - not to impart knowledge or a point of view but instead to build “character,” defined this way: “Character cannot be understood… as an organization of self-control by means of the accumulation of maxims nor… as a system of interpenetrating habits. The great character… reacts in accordance with the uniqueness of every situation… he responds to the new face which each situation wears despite all similarity to others. The situation ‘...demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility…” This seems like the goal of dialogue, to build empathy and appreciation and a critical lens through which to view the world. But is this not then the goal of the "dialogue?" Is this not an effect or "influence?"

In our hyper connected milieu is content knowledge important to pass on, or is an inquiry stance whereby folks can discover, synthesize, and analyze information more meaningful and relevant? With a smartphone constantly only an arms length away, and with it access to almost unlimited knowledge, instead of imparting information is it more important to help young people build a desire to find out information at all? There’s far more information available than we will ever be able to remember or know; as such are skills for discerning what is important to know a better skill to impart to our youth? It appears that this kind of stance can only be developed in community, in a trusting learning environment wherein teachers practice “inclusion” and “dialogue” with students.

I think it's dangerous to imagine that teachers should not have learning goals or hoped-for outcomes, though if they are process-oriented, skill-based, rather than content-based, that seems ideal. But whether teachers should seek to influence or affect their students appears to be a contradiction in this theory.

[elliott-writes]

Hair / Compliments

My hair has always been my Blackness. My link. Absent skin any darker than your average post-tanning-salon white teenager, absent a discernibly Black nose or fuller-than-average lips, I am not-obviously-Black. Except for my hair.

Add that I was raised in upper-middle class white culture, that my native tongue is Standardized, Academic American English, that I tend to dress more like a stereotypical white hipster than a stereotypical Black one. When my hair is covered or cut short, I might even "pass." 

The above is, at least, how I believe I am perceived by the average white person. Black folks, by contrast, tend to spot me as kin quite readily, asking "What are you mixed with?" rather than "What are you?"

To white people, my hair is not Black enough; it is curly but not more so than a particularly curly-haired Jewish person's might be. In white community I live with an ambiguity, an exoticism.

All of this is present when I am complimented on my hair by white people; as a result a compliment is always something else. A compliment from a white person exists somewhere between a benign othering and outright fetishization.

In Black community, however, my mixedness provokes a similar reaction, a similar othering. But the difference is both slight and prodigious, and is the focus of this essay.

*

When I was a child I spent my elementary school years with my mother, a white woman, in a suburb in the east Bay Area. Most of my schoolmates were white. It was the 90s; I watched the Cosby Show and My Brother and Me and Fresh Prince on TV, Bill Clinton was the "first Black president," I strain now to remember whether there were any non-white kids at school though I'm sure there must have been. I think the dream of post-raciality was so tangible in the 90s. I wonder what it would have been like to be an adult then? Anyway, it really felt like race never came up. I didn't think of myself as different, really; I like most kids had a bad haircut (I think of Asian-American friends with the ubiquitous "bowl" cut, white friends with frosted tips, etc). Once in a while, though, I would think about my peers' straight hair and envy them.

In high school, I lived with my father, a Black man, in a south Bay Area suburb similarly devoid of Black people. I don't remember meeting another Black person aside from the one or two at school, a football coach, and one of my dad's friends or members of his family we would see on certain occasions. There was another mixed girl at school and we talked about being mixed on literally one occasion. It was awkward.

I do remember once dying my hair black like the singer-songwriters in the "emo" bands I listened to; I remember once straightening my hair. Aside from watching Spike Lee's Malcolm X, or passing conversations with my father, race was still largely not on my radar.

All of this is to say that I never knew much about my hair or what to do with it. White mother and Black father whose hair experience was just clipping it short. At least until college.

That's when I actually started meeting some Black people (at my predominantly white university, naturally) and began being exposed to Black hair. I never knew what to do with mine, because it wasn't like the white folks' and it wasn't like the Black folks' either. My envy grew - I wanted to either have the straight hair of white and Asian peers or the dope curls or afros of the naturalistas in the BSU. I had neither.

*

In my adult life I've had three main hairstyles.

1. Because I rarely cut my hair, most of the time it has been between a few inches long and long enough to reach my chin - but always the same loose, curly ringlets that grow out of my head naturally if I condition heavily and let it mostly air dry.

I learned that trick, by the way, from a barber at the SuperCuts-type place I went to down the road from my university, and I never looked back. Suddenly, instead of being a fuzzy mess on the top of my head, it started looking good. And I started getting compliments.

It wasn't until many years later that I learned a lot more about Blackness and about hair, and so for a couple years I basked in the affirmations - white people's compliments felt genuine, and being appreciated aesthetically for something that had caused me so much stress and anxiety growing up was astounding.

I didn't learn until later what exoticism was, how institutional, culture-pervasive racism is manifest, what "passing" really was, or about white culture beauty standards and respectability politics and proximity to Blackness being a criterion for determining beauty and worth.

And Black folks' compliments felt like cultural affirmation, felt like belonging and being seen. I didn't know about internalized racism or "good hair" or that "natural hair" was a thing and had to be a thing given how heavily policed Black women's bodies and specifically hairstyles are. But eventually I learned.

And compliments became microaggressions.

*

2. I became tired of the compliments, unable to feel them as not infected with racism, no matter by whom they were delivered. As a means to subvert the complimenter's gaze, I twisted my loose curls into dreadlocks and said, "fuck it." I wouldn't play into these good hair games. For a year I rocked the locs. And then they started to backfire.

I began to notice a lot of white peers with "dreadlocks." They were popular, were "cool," gave off an air of antiestablismentarianism. I looked down on these cultural appropriators with subtle condescension, but wondered, aside from blood, what separated me from them. Why had I chosen locs, again?

Compliments, or even mentions, of my hair were muted, which was kind of what I was looking for. But that might be because my hair looked dirty, like the street kids with banjos asking for "traveling money." I was, am, Black, but was my hair Black hair? Was I sporting locs? Or "dreadlocks?"

As I compared my locs to Black peers' locs, I realized more and more that mine looked a lot like these white folks'. And when I looked in the mirror, I further realized that because of my white features, I was, to an average passerby, potentially just another white boy with dreadlocks. Another Bob Marley listening, trust fund crust punk, privileged cracker with no real fight and a complex of some kind.

I think there's a lot more complexity there and there was more to explore. Regardless, I cut them off.

*

3. After cutting my locs, my hair was back to its natural, curly state, but I never got comfortable. About a year in, when it got as long as it had been when I first got locs, I decided to try something else.

At this time I was playing around a lot with my gender identity, and felt comfortable enough to take a few pages out of the Black woman's hairstyle playbook. I did some research on YouTube and, recognizing that my desire to wear my hair long gave me commonality with the "natural hair" movement, chose a seemingly easy first "protective style:" yarn twists.

And so about a month ago I bought some yarn and combs and went for it.

While I've gotten looks and words from white folks regarding my yarn twists, most don't mention them or express curiosity. I realize that there's very little frame of reference in white experience through which to evaluate my hair. But the response from Black folks and other folks of color has been monumental.

My hair looks magnificent, apparently; I get approving stairs at the rock climbing gym, the supermarket, on the street. Comments galore about how they are well done (they aren't), about how it's a good look, etc. to straight up appreciations for my whole appearance. 

I can't effectively discern how much of the response is related to gender (Black men just don't do two-strand twists, unless they're at the tail end of corn rows, and even then braids are much more common), but from afar they look like fat locs (which are much more common) or skinny locs twisted up (though this still isn't a popular masculine look). And I can't divorce the potential dissonance between my light skin features and this very Black hairstyle.

*

So far, I'm not nearly as bothered by compliments about my hair. And that's because this hair was my own doing. I got the yarn, I cut it, I spent 10+ hours combing and separating and braiding and twisting and tying and burning the edges of this hairstyle I'm rocking.

I'm not being complimented based on the "blessing" of my mixedness, on the fact that my loose curls are evidence of my being one step closer to whiteness, free at least from the scourge of the nap or the kink; my twists are not "good hair," they are hair of my own doing.

In fact, you don't know how nappy my hair is under the twists! All you can see is what I've done. I am being complimented on my creation, not on the politically and racially fraught fact of my ancestry.

There's a lot to tease out here. But for now I feel like I'm being seen. And that feels good.

As folks with marginalized identities living in the white supremacist cisheteronormative capitalist patriarchy, it's extremely difficult for us take a compliment at face value. To be able to - at least, about my hair, at least, for the moment, at least, before I start to get deep into some self-analysis - is freeing. And isn't freedom what we're all going for?

[elliott-writes]

for a second - draft

in the heat of the beef one of my students called me a faggot and

for a second i forgot the pervasiveness of cisheteronormativity, that "faggot" has become an all-purpose, one size fits all slur

for a second i thought he knew that despite my costume - khakis, shirt and tie - he could tell and if he could then why fucking bother trying so fucking hard

for a second i almost felt free

[elliott-writes]

my first chapbook! it's for sale. let me know if you want one and i will literally hand make it and send it to you in the snail mail! for a donation of $1 or more. :)

you've probably read most of the poems but they have been UPDATED (including one typo of course) and REVISED and here they are in print in yr grubby little fingers. better than pixelated prolly.

and it's kind of cool to have a self-made book, you know? like, putting it together was so fun. i wanna make zines again.

anyway holla if you wanna support a struggling poet/artist/teacher in grad school :)