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Monday, July 29, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
NYC Performs Final Subway Airflow Test
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer | July 25, 2013 06:34pm ET
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200 airflow samplers, like the one above, have been
deployed all over New York City to track the flow of a harmless tracer
gas in the subway system.Credit: Tanya Lewis |
Today, researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island performed the third and final test in the experiment (July 25). The goal of the project is to develop a model for how a dangerous airborne contaminant, such as sarin gas or anthrax, would spread throughout the city in the event of a terrorist attack or accidental release. [What Were the Worst Subway Attacks in History?]
The scientists released tiny amounts of a colorless, nontoxic gas at several locations around the city. The airflow samplers, located at various points throughout the city, measured the gas to determine how fast and how far it spread.
Found in Translation
By HAMID DABASHIConsider Heidegger. Had it not been for his French translators and commentators, German philosophy of his time would have remained an obscure metaphysical thicket. And it was not until Derrida’s own take on Heidegger found an English readership in the United States and Britain that the whole Heidegger-Derridian undermining of metaphysics began to shake the foundations of the Greek philosophical heritage. One can in fact argue that much of contemporary Continental philosophy originates in German with significant French and Italian glosses before it is globalized in the dominant American English and assumes a whole new global readership and reality. This has nothing to do with the philosophical wherewithal of German, French or English. It is entirely a function of the imperial power and reach of one language as opposed to others.
I. The Mother Tongue
At various points in history, one language or another — Latin, Persian, Arabic — was the lingua franca of philosophical thinking. Now it is English. And for all we know it might again turn around and become Chinese.
In 11th century Iran, the influential philosopher Avicenna wrote most of his work in Arabic. One day his patron prince, who did not read Arabic, asked whether Avicenna would mind writing his works in Persian instead, so that he could understand them. Avicenna obliged and wrote an entire encyclopedia on philosophy for the prince and named it after him, “Danesh-nameh Ala’i.”
Avicenna was of course not the only who had opted to write his philosophical work in Arabic. So did al-Ghazali (circa 1058-1111) and Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi (circa 1155-1208) — who were both perfectly capable of writing in their mother tongue of Persian and had in fact occasionally done so, notably al-Ghazali in his “Kimiya-ye Sa’adat” (a book on moral philosophy) and As-Suhrawardi in his magnificent short allegorical treatises. But in Avicenna’s time, Arabic was so solidly established in its rich and triumphant philosophical vocabulary that no serious philosopher would opt to write his major works in any other language. Persian philosophical prose had to wait for a couple of generations after Avicenna. With the magnificent work of Afdal al-din Kashani (died circa 1214) and that of Avicenna’s follower Khwajah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Tusi (1201-1274) — particularly “Asas al-Iqtibas” — Persian philosophical prose achieved its zenith.
Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis An
illuminated 15th-century manuscript showing the philosopher-physician
Ibn Sina, also called Avicenna, visiting a pharmacy. Avicenna (981-1037)
lived most of his life in what is now Iran, where he wrote his
million-word medical encyclopedia, al-Qanun, or the Canon.It is Amir Hossein Aryanpour’s magnificent Persian translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia” (1908), which he rendered as “Seyr-e Falsafeh dar Iran (“The Course of Philosophy in Iran,” 1968), that stands now in my mind as the paramount example of excellence in Persian philosophical prose and a testimony to how philosophical translation is a key component of our contemporary intellectual history. If there were a world for philosophy, or if philosophy were to be worldly, these two men, philosopher and translator, having graced two adjacent philosophical worlds, would be among its most honored citizens.
II. Two Teachers
It is impossible to exaggerate the enduring debt of gratitude that my generation of Iranians have to Aryanpour (1925-2001), one of the most influential social theorists, literary critics, philosophers and translators of his time and for us a wide and inviting window to the rich and emancipatory world of critical thinking in my homeland. He is today remembered for generations of students he taught at Tehran University and beyond and for a rich array of his path-breaking books he wrote or translated and that enabled and paved the way for us to wider philosophical imagination.
Having been exposed to both scholastic and modern educational systems, and widely and deeply educated in Iran (Tehran University), Lebanon (American University in Beirut), England (Cambridge) and the United States (Princeton), Aryanpour was a cosmopolitan thinker and a pioneering figure who promoted a dialectical (jadali) disposition between the material world and the world of ideas. Today, more than 40 years after I arrived in Tehran from my hometown of Ahvaz in late summer 1970 to attend college, I still feel under my skin the excitement and joy of finding out how much there was to learn from a man whose name was synonymous with critical thinking, theorizing social movements and above all with the discipline of sociology.
Aryanpour was the product of many factors: Reza Shah’s heavy-handed, state-sponsored “modernization”; the brief post-World War II intellectual flowering; travels and higher education in Iran, the Arab world, Europe and the United States; the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s; and finally the C.I.A.-sponsored coup of 1953, after which university campuses in his homeland became the primary site of his intellectual leadership of a whole new generation. He was a pain in the neck of both the Pahlavi monarchy and of the Islamic Republic that succeeded it, making him at times dogmatic in his own positions, but always path-breaking in a mode of dialectical thinking that became the staple of his students, both those who were fortunate enough to have known and worked with him directly and of millions of others (like me) who benefited from his work from a distance.
Aryanpour was sacked from his teaching position at the theology faculty in 1976, retired in 1980, and just before his death on July 30, 2001, one of his last public acts was to sign a letter denouncing censorship in the Islamic republic.
Born and raised in Punjab, British India (Pakistan today), to a devout Muslim family, educated by both Muslim teachers and at the Scotch Mission College in Sialkot, Iqbal grew up multilingual and polycultural. After an unhappy marriage and subsequent divorce, Iqbal studied philosophy, English, Arabic and Persian literatures at the Government College in Lahore, where he was deeply influenced by Sir Thomas Arnold, who became a conduit for his exposure to European thought, an exposure that ultimately resulted in his traveling to Europe for further studies.
While in England, Allameh Iqbal received a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1907, around when his first Persian poems began to surface. As he became increasingly attracted to politics, he also managed to write his doctoral dissertation on “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia,” with Friedrich Hommel. Reading “Seyr-e Falsafeh dar Iran,” Aryanpour’s Persian translation of Iqbal’s seminal work, became a rite of passage for my generation of college students attracted to discovering our philosophical heritage.
We grew up and matured into a much wider circle of learning about Islamic philosophy and the place of Iranians in that tradition. There were greener pastures, more learned philosophers who beckoned to our minds and souls. We learned of the majestic writings of Seyyed Jalal Ashtiani, chief among many other philosophical sages of our time, who began to guide our ways into the thicket of Persian and Arabic philosophical thinking. But the decidedly different disposition of Allameh Iqbal in Aryanpour’s translation was summoned precisely in the fact that it had not reached us through conventional scholastic routes and was deeply informed by the worldly disposition of our own defiant time. In this text we were reading a superlative Persian prose from a Pakistani philosopher who had come to fruition in both colonial subcontinent and the postcolonial cosmopolis. There was a palpable worldliness in that philosophical prose that became definitive to my generation.
III. Beyond East and West
When today I read a vacuous phrase like “the Western mind” — or “the Iranian mind,” “the Arab Mind” or “the Muslim Mind,” for that matter — I cringe. I wonder what “the Western mind” can mean when reading the Persian version of a Pakistani philosopher’s English prose composed in Germany on an aspect of Islamic philosophy that was particular to Iran? Look at the itinerary of a philosopher like Allameh Iqbal; think about a vastly learned and deeply caring intellect like Amir Hossein Aryanpour. Where is “the Western mind” in those variegated geographies of learning, and where “the Eastern mind”? What could they possibly mean?
The case of “Seyr-e Falsafeh dar Iran” was prototypical of my generation’s philosophical education — we read left, right and center, then north and south from the Indian subcontinent to Western Europe and North America, Latin America and postcolonial Africa with a voracious worldliness that had no patience for the East or West of any colonial geography. We were philosophically “in the world,” and our world was made philosophical by an imaginative geography that knew neither East nor West.
Works of philosophy — and their readers — gain in translation not just because their authors begin to breathe in a new language but because the text signals a world alien to its initial composition. Above all they gain because these authors and their texts have to face a new audience. Plato and Aristotle have had a life in Arabic and Persian entirely alien to the colonial codification of “Western philosophy” — and the only effective way to make the foreign echoes of that idea familiar is to make the familiar tropes of “Western philosophy” foreign.
You are not a Greek
"There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you!"
—Herman Hesse, “Rainy Weather"
From Wandering: Notes and Sketches (via liquidnight)
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Defined beauty
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| Hans Holbein the Younger: Portrait of Georg Gisze, 1532 |
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| Vine | Brice Marden |
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| Loretta Lux The waiting girl, 2006 |
Friday, July 26, 2013
Scared shitless list
The Phobia List
A
Ablutophobia — washing, bathing, or cleaning
Acarophobia — itching or the insects that cause itching
Acerophobia — sourness or things that are sour
Achluophobia — darkness or the dark
Acousticophobia — noise or sound
Acrophobia — heights or high levels
Aeroacrophobia — open high places
Aeronausiphobia — vomiting secondary to airsickness
Aerophobia — draft, swallowing air, or airborne noxious substances
Agateophobia — insanity or becoming insane
Agliophobia — pain
Agoraphobia — open spaces, leaving a safe place, or crowded public places
Agraphobia — sexual abuse
Agrizoophobia — wild animals
Agyrophobia — streets or crossing the street
Aichmophobia — needles, pins, or pointed objectsAilurophobia — cats
Albuminurophobia — kidney disease
Alektorophobia — chickens
Alliumphobia — garlic
Allodoxaphobia — opinions or beliefs
Amathophobia — dust
Amaxophobia — riding in cars
Ambulophobia — walking
Amnesiphobia — amnesia
Amychophobia — scratches or being scratched
Anablephobia — looking up
Androphobia — men
Anemophobia — wind or air drafts
Anginophobia — angina, choking, or narrowness
Anglophobia — England, English Culture, or English People
Angrophobia — anger or becoming angry
Ankylophobia — immobility of a joint
Anthophobia — flowers
Anthropophobia — people or society
Antlophobia — floods
Anuptaphobia — staying single
Apeirophobia — infinity
Aphenphosmphobia — being touched
Apiphobia — bees
Apotemnophobia — people with amputations
Arachibutyrophobia — peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
Arachnephobia — spiders
Arithmophobia — numbers
Arsonphobia — fire or flames
Asthenophobia — fainting or weakness
Astraphobia — thunder and lightning
Astrophobia — stars and celestial space
Asymmetriphobia — asymmetrical things
Ataxiophobia — ataxia (muscular incoordination)
Ataxophobia — disorder or untidiness
Atelophobia — imperfection
Atephobia — ruin or ruins
Athazagoraphobia — being forgotton, being ignored, or forgetting
Atomosophobia — atomic explosions
Atychiphobia — failure
Aulophobia — flutes
Aurophobia — gold
Auroraphobia — Northern lights
Autodysomophobia — one that has a vile odor
Automatonophobia — ventriloquist’s dummies, animatronic creatures or wax statues
B
Bacillophobia — microbes
Bacteriophobia — bacteria
Ballistophobia — missiles or bullets
Barophobia — gravity
Basiphobia — inability to stand or falling
Bathmophobia — stairs or steep slopes
Bathophobia — depth
Batophobia — heights or being close to high buildings
Batrachophobia — amphibians, frogs, newts, or salamanders
Bibliophobia — books
Blennophobia — slime
Body Dysmorphic Disorder — having ugly or unattractive features
Bogyphobia — bogies or the bogeyman
Bolshephobia — Bolsheviks
Botanophobia — plants
Bromidrophobia — bodily odor or bodily smell
Bufonophobia — toads
C
Cacophobia — ugliness or things that are ugly
Cainophobia — newness or novelty
Caligynephobia — beautiful women
Cancerophobia — cancer
Cardiophobia — the heart
Carnophobia — meat
Catagelophobia — being ridiculed or ridicule
Catapedaphobia — jumping from high and low places
Cathisophobia — sitting
Catoptrophobia — mirrors
Cheimaphobia — cold
Chemophobia — chemicals or working with chemicals
Cherophobia — gaiety
Chionophobia — snow
Chirophobia — hands
Cholerophobia — anger or Cholera
Chorophobia — dancing
Chrematophobia — money
Chromatophobia — colors
Chronomentrophobia — clocks
Chronophobia — time
Claustrophobia — confined or small spaces
Cleisiophobia — being locked in an enclosed place
Cleithrophobia — being enclosed
Cleptophobia — stealing
Climacophobia — stairs, climbing stairs, or falling down stairs
Clinophobia — going to bed
Cnidophobia — stings or being stung
Coimetrophobia — cemeteries
Coitophobia — coitus, sex, or sexual intercourse
Cometophobia — comets
Coprastasophobia — constipation
Coprophobia — feces and fecal matter
Coulrophobia — clowns
Counterphobia — The preference by a phobic for fearful situations
Cremnophobia — precipicesCryophobia — extreme cold, ice, or frost
Crystallophobia — crystals or glass
Cyberphobia — computers or working on a computer
Cyclophobia — bicycles
Cymophobia — waves or wave-like motion
Cynophobia — dogs, canines, or rabies
Cyprianophobia — prostitutes, venereal disease, or STDs
D
Daemonophobia — demons or daemons
Decidophobia — making decisions
Defecaloesiophobia — painful bowels movements
Deipnophobia — dining or dinner conversation
Demophobia — crowds
Dendrophobia — trees
Dentophobia — dentists and dental procedures
Dermatopathophobia — skin disease or skin lesions
Dextrophobia — objects at the right side of the body
Diabetophobia — diabetes
Didaskaleinophobia — going to school
Dikephobia — justice
Dinophobia — dizziness or whirlpools
Diplophobia — double vision
Dipsophobia — drinking
Dishabiliophobia — undressing in front of someone
Doraphobia — fur or skins of animals
Doxophobia — expressing opinions or of receiving praise
Driving Phobia — driving a motorized vehicle
Dromophobia — crossing streets
Dutchphobia — the Netherlands, the Dutch, Dutch Culture
Dysmorphophobia — deformity
Dystychiphobia — accidents
E
Earthquakophobia — earthquakes
Ecclesiophobia — churches
Eisoptrophobia — mirrors or of seeing oneself in a mirrorElectrophobia — electricity
Eleutherophobia — freedom
Emaciatophobia — Fear of Being Too Thin
Emetophobia — vomiting or throwing up
Enetophobia — pins
Enissophobia — having committed an unpardonable sin or criticism
Entomophobia — insects or bugs
Eosophobia — dawn or daylight
Ephebiphobia — teenagers
Epistaxiophobia — nosebleeds
Epistemophobia — knowledge
Equinophobia — horses
Eremophobia — being oneself or lonliness
Ereuthophobia — red lights, blushing, or the color red
Ergasiophobia — work, functioning, or Surgeon’s operating
Ergophobia — work
Erotophobia — sexual love or sexual questions
Euphobia — hearing good news
F
Fear of Success — success, achievement or moving forward in life
Francophobia — France, French people, or French culture
Frigophobia — cold or cold things
Fear of Bridges
Fear of Driving
G
Gamophobia — marriage, commitment or relationships
Geliophobia — laughter
Geniophobia — chins
Genuphobia — knees
Gephydrophobia — crossing bridges
Gerascophobia — growing old or old people
Germanophobia — Germany, German People, or German culture
Geumaphobia — taste
Globophobia — balloons
Glossophobia — speaking in public or trying to speak
Graphophobia — writing or handwriting
Gymnophobia — nudity
Gynephobia — women
H
Hadephobia — hellHagiophobia — saints or holy things
Harpaxophobia — being robbed
Hedonophobia — feeling pleasure
Heliophobia — the sun
Hellenologophobia — Greek terms or complex scientific terminology
Helminthophobia — being infested with worms
Hemaphobia — blood
Hereiophobia — challenges to official doctrine or of radical deviation
Herpetophobia — reptiles or creepy, crawly things
Heterophobia — the opposite sex
Hierophobia — priests or sacred things
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia — long words
Hobophobia — bums or beggars
Hodophobia — road travel
Homichlophobia — fog
Homilophobia — sermons
Homophobia — sameness, monotony, homosexuality, or becoming homosexualHoplophobia — firearms
Hormephobia — shock
Hyalophobia — glass
Hydrargyophobia — mercurial medicines
Hydrophobia — water or drowning
Hydrophobophobia — rabies
Hygrophobia — liquids, dampness, or moisture
Hylephobia — materialism or epilepsy
Hypegiaphobia — responsibility
Hypnophobia — sleep or being hypnotize
I
Iatrophobia — doctors or going to the doctor
Ichthyophobia — fish
Ideophobia — ideas
Illyngophobia — vertigo or feeling dizzy when looking down
Insomnia — Inability to Sleep
Iophobia — poison
Isopterophobia — termites, insects that eat wood
J
Japanophobia — Japanese
Judeophobia — Jewish People
K
Kakorrhaphiophobia — failure or defeat
Kenophobia — voids or empty spaces
Kinesophobia — movement or motion
Koinoniphobia — rooms
Kolpophobia — genitals, particularly female
Kopophobia — fatigue
Kosmikophobia — cosmic phenomenon
Kyphophobia — stooping
L
Lachanophobia — vegetables
Lalophobia — speaking
Lepraphobia — leprosy
Leukophobia — the color white
Levophobia — things to the left side of the body
Ligyrophobia — loud noises
Lilapsophobia — tornado or hurricanes
Limnophobia — lakes
Linonophobia — string
Liticaphobia — lawsuits
Lockiophobia — childbirth
Logizomechanophobia — computers
Logophobia — words
Luiphobia — lues or syphillis
Lutraphobia — otters
M
Macrophobia — long waits
Mageirocophobia — cooking
Malaxophobia — love play
Maniaphobia — insanity
Mastigophobia — punishment
Mechanophobia — machines
Medomalacuphobia — losing an erection
Medorthophobia — an erect penis
Megalophobia — large things
Melanophobia — the color black
Melophobia — music
Meningitophobia — brain disease
Menophobia — menstration
Merinthophobia — being bound or tied up
Metallophobia — metal
Metathesiophobia — changes
Meteorophobia — meteors
Metrophobia — poetry
Microbiophobia — microbes
Microphobia — small things
Misophobia — being contaminated with dirt or germs
Mnemophobia — memories
Monopathophobia — definite disease
Motorphobia — automobiles
Mottephobia — moths
Murophobia — mice
Mycophobia — mushrooms
Myrmecophobia — ants
Mythophobia — myths, stories, or false statements
N
Necrophobia — death or dead things
Neopharmaphobia — new drugs
Nephophobia — clouds
Noctiphobia — the night
Nomatophobia — names
Nosocomephobia — hospitals
Nosophobia — becoming ill
Nostophobia — returning home
Novercaphobia — your step-motherNucleomituphobia — nuclear weapons
Nudophobia — nudity or nakedness
Nyctohylophobia — dark wooded areas or forests at night
O
Obesophobia — gaining weight
Ochlophobia — crowds or mobs
Ochophobia — vehicles
Octophobia — the figure 8
Odontophobia — teeth or dental surgery
Oenophobia — wines
Oikophobia — houses, home surroundings, or being in a house
Olfactophobia — smells
Ombrophobia — rain or of being rained on
Ommatophobia — eyes
Oneirogmophobia — wet dreams
Oneirophobia — dreams
Onomatophobia — hearing a certain word or of names
Ophidiophobia — snakes
Ophthalmophobia — being stared at
Opiophobia — Fear of medical doctors experience of prescribing needed pain medications for patients
Optophobia — opening one’s eyes
Ornithophobia — birds
Orthophobia — property
Ostraconophobia — shellfish
Ouranophobia — heaven
P
Pagophobia — ice or frost
Panophobia — everything
Panthophobia — suffering or disease
Papaphobia — the Pope
Papyrophobia — paper
Paralipophobia — neglecting duty or neglecting responsibility
Paraphobia — sexual perversion
Parasitophobia — parasites
Paraskavedekatriaphobia — Friday the 13th
Parthenophobia — virgins or young girls
Pathophobia — disease
Patroiophobia — heredity
Peccatophobia — sinning
Pediculophobia — lice
Pediophobia — dolls
Pedophobia — children
Peladophobia — bald people
Pellagrophobia — pellagra
Peniaphobia — poverty
Pentheraphobia — mother-in-law
Phagophobia — swallowing or eating
Phalacrophobia — becoming bald
Pharmacophobia — taking medicine or drugs
Phengophobia — daylight or sunshine
Philemaphobia — kissing
Philophobia — falling in love or being in love
Philosophobia — philosophy
Phobophobia — phobias
Phonophobia — noises, voices, one’s own voice, or telephones
Photoaugliaphobia — glaring lights
Photophobia — light
Phronemophobia — thinking
Phthisiophobia — tuberculosis
Placophobia — tombstones
Plutophobia — wealth
Pneumatiphobia — spirits
Pnigerophobia — choking of being smothered
Pogonophobia — beards
Poliosophobia — contracting poliomyelitis
Politicophobia — politicians
Polyphobia — many thingsPonophobia — overworking or of pain
Porphyrophobia — the color purple
Potamophobia — rivers or running water
Potophobia — alcohol
Proctophobia — rectums
Prosophobia — progress
Psellismophobia — stuttering
Psychophobia — the mind
Psychrophobia — the cold
Pteromerhanophobia — flying
Pteronophobia — being tickled by feathers
Pupaphobia — puppets
Pyrexiophobia — fever
R
Radiophobia — radiation or x-raysRanidaphobia — frogsRectophobia — rectums or rectal diseases
Rhabdophobia — being severely punished, beaten by a rod, or severely criticized
Rhypophobia — defecation
Rhytiphobia — getting wrinkles
Rupophobia — dirt
Russophobia — Russians
S
Samhainophobia — Halloween
Satanophobia — Satan or The Devil
Scabiophobia — scabies
Scelerophobia — bad men or burglars
Sciaphobia — shadows
Scoleciphobia — worms
Scolionophobia — school
Scopophobia — being seen or stared at
Scoptophobia — blindness in visual field
Scriptophobia — writing in public
Selachophobia — sharks
Selaphobia — light flashes
Selenophobia — the moon
Seplophobia — decaying matter
Siderodromophobia — trains, railroads, or train travel
Siderophobia — stars
Sinistrophobia — things to the left or left-handed
Sinophobia — China, Chinese, or Chinese culture
Sitiophobia — food or eating
Soceraphobia — parents-in-law
Social Phobia — social situations
Sociophobia — society or people in general
Somniphobia — sleep
Sophophobia — learning
Soteriophobia — dependence on others
Spacephobia — outer space
Spectrophobia — specters or ghosts
Spheksophobia — wasps
Stasibasiphobia — standing or walking
Statue Phobia — statues or effigies
Staurophobia — crosses or the crucifix
Stenophobia — narrow things or places
Symbolophobia — symbolism
Symmetrophobia — symmetry
Syngenesophobia — relatives
T
Tachophobia — speed
Taeniophobia — tapeworms
Taphephobia — being buried alive or cemeteries
Tapinophobia — being contagious
Taurophobia — bulls
Technophobia — technology or computers
Teleophobia — definite plans or Religious ceremony
Telephonophobia — telephones
Teratophobia — bearing a deformed child, monsters, or deformed people
Testophobia — taking tests
Tetanophobia — lockjaw or tetanus
Textophobia — certain fabrics
Thalassophobia — the sea or the ocean
Thanatophobia — death, dying, being buried, cremation, or entombment
Theatrophobia — theaters
Theologicophobia — theology
Theophobia — gods or religion
Thermophobia — heat
Tocophobia — pregnancy or childbirth
Tomophobia — surgery or surgical operations
Topophobia — fear of certain places or situations
Toxicophobia — poison or being accidentally poisoned
Traumatophobia — injury or battle
Tremophobia — trembling
Trichinophobia — trichinosis
Trichopathophobia — hair
Triskaidekaphobia — the number 13
Tropophobia — moving or making changes
Trypanophobia — injections
Tyrannophobia — tyrants
V
Vaccinophobia — vaccination
Verminophobia — germs
Vestiphobia — clothing
Virginitiphobia — rape
Vitricophobia — step-father’s
W
Walloonphobia — the Walloons
Wiccaphobia — witches and witchcraft
X
Xanthophobia — the color yellow or the word yellow
Xenoglossophobia — foreign languages
Xenophobia — strangers or foreigners
Xerophobia — dryness
Xylophobia — wood, wooden objects, or forests
Xyrophobia — razors
Z
Zelophobia — jealousy
Zemmiphobia — the great mole rat
Zeusophobia — God or gods
Zoophobia — animals
The Rape Joke
A Poem By Patricia Lockwood
Rape Joke
The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.
The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.
The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.
Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”
No offense.
The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.
Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.
The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.
The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.
Not you!
The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.
He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.
The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.
How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.
The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.
The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.
OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.
Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.
The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.
The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.
It gets funnier.
The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.
The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!
The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.
The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.
The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.
The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.
The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.
Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.
You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.
The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.
The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.
It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.
The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.
The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.
The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.
The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.
The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.
The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.
Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.
Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.
The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.
The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.
The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.
Admit it.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
One of the greatest enemies of happiness, of enjoying life, is the intrusion of loneliness. When you’re most alone is in nausea; when you’re throwing up you are alone on the face of this earth. The moment of orgasm is very lonely too—a little island in the middle of nowhere. There are a lot of paradoxes involved.
When you’re working very hard you’re not lonely; you are the whole damn world. I have a strong feeling that the very worst writing of all comes out of what’s called inspiration. Good writing doesn’t come from inspiration. It may spark you, set you off, but if you write under the influence of inspiration, you will write very badly—probably sentimentally, which is even worse. Inspiration certainly better not be governing the thing; you had better have learned your craft through very hard work, reading and writing, and cold observation. People say, My God, I can’t believe that you really worked that hard for twenty years. How in God’s name did you do it? Well, obviously I did it because I enjoyed it. I don’t deserve any credit for working hard. I was doing what I wanted to do. Shakespeare said it best: “The labor we delight in physics pain.” There’s no better feeling in the world than to lay your head on the pillow at night looking forward to getting up in the morning and returning to that desk. That’s real happiness.
When you’re working very hard you’re not lonely; you are the whole damn world. I have a strong feeling that the very worst writing of all comes out of what’s called inspiration. Good writing doesn’t come from inspiration. It may spark you, set you off, but if you write under the influence of inspiration, you will write very badly—probably sentimentally, which is even worse. Inspiration certainly better not be governing the thing; you had better have learned your craft through very hard work, reading and writing, and cold observation. People say, My God, I can’t believe that you really worked that hard for twenty years. How in God’s name did you do it? Well, obviously I did it because I enjoyed it. I don’t deserve any credit for working hard. I was doing what I wanted to do. Shakespeare said it best: “The labor we delight in physics pain.” There’s no better feeling in the world than to lay your head on the pillow at night looking forward to getting up in the morning and returning to that desk. That’s real happiness.
"One day when I first came here, I got into a fit of musing in my room and stood resting my elbows on the bureau. Looking into the glass it struck me what an awfully ugly man I was. The fact grew on me and I made up my mind that I must be the ugliest man in the world. It so maddened me that I resolved, should I ever see an uglier, I would shoot him on sight. Not long after this, Andy came to town and the first time I saw him I said to myself, ‘There’s the man.’ I went home, took down my gun and prowled around the streets waiting for him. He soon came along. ‘Halt, Andy,’ said I, pointing the gun at him; ’say your prayers, for I am going to shoot you.’ ‘Why, what’s the matter? What have I done?’ he asked. ‘Well, I made an oath that if I ever saw an uglier man than I am I’d shoot him on the spot. You are uglier; sure; so make ready to die.’ I replied. ‘Do you really think that I am uglier than you?’ he asked. ‘Yes.’ I said. ‘Well sir,’ said Andy deliberately and looking me squarely in the face, ‘if I am any uglier, fire away.’"
— Abraham Lincoln
— Abraham Lincoln
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