My immediate thought – well, it’s right here, in many on and offline communities of color, in Labor, in some feminism, in some liberalism. In other words, pretty much where it’s always been – but I guess it has even less of an audible voice than it had in times past if people are having to ask.

There are reasons for this that I’d like to explore (with access to those far more knowledgeable than I, when I am able) – from racism (consciously or unconsciously thinking that primarily the white left counts here – which is sort of true, in the way that banks like to (or used to) only lend money to those who don’t need it) to accomodationist (or just plain embarrassed by the margins, by the “identity groups”) Liberalism/Progressivism, to incessant right-wing rhetoric and more.

I also think one answer to the question of where the activist, political Left is may lie in the reason the question is asked in the first place: this Left, peopled often with those to whom issues are not so much a matter of policy or political strategy but of life or death, are sought out for the express purpose of being a type of foil to the mainstream left. Of having these same imperative issues brought forward so that they can be explicitly and loudly dismissed by the mainstream Left – which serves to make them (the mainstream) look moderate and “sane” – and serves the “far Left” not at all, that I can see. Or little, anyway.

So, I don’t know. Many I know, while not completely disdaining the political process, are not exactly enamored with their place on the dance card that’s been set out for them. Maybe some have decided not to dance to this tune at all.

Organizing within communities quietly and fiercely, using freely available (to some) tools such as the internet to communicate issues and needs – and successes and strategies – across national, political, religious, racial and ethnic lines instead of (or, at times, in addition to) agitating in the streets or the US Congress, may yet bring a better return for the far left in the US, and other places, than all the political theater of being the designated “fringe” can do.

None of this is to say, by the way, that I don’t agree that President Obama should be pushed from the left, or that I wouldn’t love to see a vibrant, activist and active politically relevant (and represented) class opening up huge spaces for Obama (and other politicians), not only pushing him leftward but providing an opening for him to move there – but with seats at the table, not as just more political theater, to be marginalized with little return.

not my cat

Looking around my house this afternoon I noticed that my fridge is freshly cleaned but my kitchen is a mess; all the laundry is washed and dried, but not put away; my mom is all washed and in bed, but her bathroom is only partly cleaned; cat is fed, but she needs water; my… well, no reason to go on and on. You get the idea. I think I may have a problem with finishing things. Or, rather, finishing things which can never really be considered finished. Cycles don’t just end, after all. They come to a stopping place (sometimes) and then start over again.

Me, I think I’ve decided to eliminate the stopping place and just have one cycle roll over into the next, as it’s going to do it anyway. The annoying thing about that, though, is that I never really feel done. With anything (that comes to mind at the moment). Even with a completely clean and laundered house, watered cat, fresh mom and rested self, I tend to get that little niggling feeling that there, surely, is something else yet to do, even if I have no desire or intention of doing it, whatever it is.

Perhaps I should take up meditation. I’ve never been very good at that, though.

I’m not certain any of this has anything to do with my blogroll, but there it is – for some reason, adding people to my blogroll brought on this train of thought. Possibly because that too is a thing that is never really complete. Oh, I guess for some people it is, who add whoever they are going to and that’s that, but for many the basic list is only the beginning.

On that subject I have to make a confession: not only am I, often, a Bad Blogger but I am even more so a Bad Blogroller. Mine is always beginning and never really moving past that. Some people, I know, have huge lists, really long rolls of sites so what I do, when I want to find a new site or an old favorite I’ve lost the address for, is head on over to someone who actually maintains a blogroll and click from there. I always mean to have a really long list, but, well… there you go.

Maybe it has something to do with not accumulating stuff. I don’t, you know, in my offline life. I use my computers until they are, in essence, dented, rusted out and the bumpers are falling off. I’m fine with my clothes, year after year, as long as they are not stained and don’t have too many holes (holey clothing always seeming pass in and out of fashion). I have a few sentimental pieces of antique furniture and some artwork I am fond of, but other than that… Part of it is no doubt due to the fact that I hate shopping, and have money to burn only in rare instances. That can’t be all of it, though. When I was making much more money working in sales or in other jobs and had plenty to burn, I was not much different.

Hmmm. The bulk of my work is stored online. There is little here, inanimate, that has a permanency in my life, that I would grieve over if parted from. Even my cat is a temporary cat, and has been for 17 years now – living with me only until I find her a good home.

You know – it occurs to me that I live, have always lived, ready to leave. And why not? We left a lot, when I was growing up. Still, I should think I’d be over that by now, at my age.

This bears thinking on. Funny what new vistas blogrolls will lead you to, no?

night sky and rock bridge

I’ve been looking at quotations. Phrases and thoughts disconnected from their original settings and placed in isolation – or rather, a sea of isolation as they space with thousands and thousands of other fragments of related, but not connecting, phrases. How do they decide what goes in, I wonder.

Most sources quoted are, of course, from people in the West – from the ancient Greeks to modern US business owners or athletes. Primarily men. A few from Asia, with far less variety of sources – from casual perusal you’d think that only five or six Asians – Sun Tzu, Confucius and a few others – have said anything worth saving and savoring over the years.But those few said a lot, so you have your pick there.  Even fewer Blacks or Latin@s are quotable, it would appear, especially about anything not dealing with slavery or civil rights issues.

I’m familiar with a lot of them. I used to have a Bartlett’s  when I was younger, and I’d sit and read page by page, absorbing some, instantly forgetting others. In this way I learned the names of many thinkers (or people with a knack for words) but little, if anything, about the original text, or about the writers/speakers themselves. Of course, the quotations often stand on their own, the little snippets enough to encourage or motivate or inspire, but I sometimes think about how easy it is to change the meaning of a sentence just by removing portions of it and I wonder if what I think I know or learned bears any resemblance to what the author meant. And then I wonder if that even matters.

Probably not. I guess I decided that early as I rarely look past the few words given and seek out the sources. I am, I find, most often content to let the fragment before my eyes contain its wisdom or knowledge or pleasure, each a minuscule world in itself.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

–Yeats

photo from here – via Our Luminous World

Not that there aren’t obvious class distinctions in various Black communities – I’ve written before about the distinctions within my own family – and I doubt mine is unique.

I really have no idea what “class” I’m in. I guess working class, as I am poor as a churchmouse (mainly due to being a really terrible capitalist and a very big dreamer) and didn’t finish college?

Anyway, just a random questioning ramble of a post, brought on by various discussions around the intertubes. Should I decide to flesh it out, I’ll search out the various posts I’ve seen over the past few months and do the whole link/analysis thing. For now, this just functions as an index card.