Protest & March to Support Islamic Cultural Center

At the invitation of Miriam R., one of my former fiction students, I joined her and a friend of hers at the rally, at City Hall Park yesterday, on behalf of the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center, which originally had merited little commentary or negative reponses, until blogger Pamela Geller, disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, fanatical talkshow host Sean Hannity, and others demagogued the issue, mischaracterizing both the center (which is not a mosque, or masjid) and its location (not at Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center site, under which I passed at least 2-3 days every week this summer on my way to the 4, 5 or 6 trains and thus the New York Public Library's Research Branch at Bryant Park, but two blocks away on Park Place), thereby provoking a racist, anti-Muslim furor that has not yet fully waned. Believing strongly in the principles of religious freedom, free speech, and separation of church and state, I decided to commemorate 9/11 by attending the rally, which was only a block north of the memorial for the victims but several blocks away from the anti-Islamic Center protests, and am posting a few of the photos from it and from my post-rally gambol around the area with Miriam below.


The Park 51 site

A 9/11 truther, just outside Ground Zero

At the rally, before the march

A veteran, supporting the Islamic Cultural Center

People raising placards and signs as an anti-Islamic van drove by

A reporter waiting to deliver her remarks

Reporters from a Japanese news crew

Marching

A fashion-forward photographer

Young man being told by cops he must take a different route

The media

Some people after the march, gathering on the State Court House steps, at Foley Square

A friendly young Christianist we encountered after the march

A Christianist with hateful sign

The Mosque Mess

I'm going to try my best to delve into this whole "should they build a mosque at Ground Zero" debate that seems to be going on. I'm not so sure how well I'm going to do with this, as it doesn't seem to be that difficult of a concept to wrap my head around. When something is that easy for me to understand, I always feel like I must be missing something. Yet, folks are all up in arms about it, and understandably so. Let's see what all the hubbub is about, shall we?

According to the Boston Herald, "A controversial mosque and Islamic center to be built some 600 feet from Ground Zero cleared its last legal hurdle this week, winning approval from New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission." That's right. A group of folks headed by a one Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (pronounce any of those however you'd like) want to build a mosque a couple of blocks from where the World Trade Center used to stand and where almost three thousand people were killed as the result of "...the actions of a group of Islamic radicals.". As you can imagine, that idea isn't setting very well with folks.

People are upset. People want to prevent them from building a mosque there, saying that it's disrespectful, it's awful, etc. And they're right. It would appear to be all of those things and a whole hell of a lot more. But here's the thing: No matter how much we don't like it, there isn't anything we can do about it to prevent it from being built.

That whole First Amendment, you know, the one that makes this country freaking awesome? Yeah, that thing is exactly why nothing can be done and it's probably why nothing should be done. The First Amendment, for those who might be a little fuzzy on the text, reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." You can't just ignore that.

I wish that, instead of focusing on how much people dislike and abhor this idea, people would focus more on things like why in the world is it being built there of all freaking places? Yeah, yeah, I know that they have the land and that land in Manhattan is rather difficult to come by. I get that. That doesn't make it any more palatable. And it certainly doesn't make it any more justifiable.

Apparently, this project has a web site that the Boston Herald inexplicably does not link to. Oh, that's right. The media sucks. I forgot. But they do say "The Web site for the $100 million project says all the right things about its aims at bringing people of different faiths together and about honoring the memory of 9/11 victims." Hmm. Tell you what, mosque guys. How about you let us decide when we'd like to be brought together, OK? How about you help us honor the memory of the 09/11 victims by not building a mosque a couple of blocks away? How about that? I can't see how something this disrespectful is going to do anything other than strain relations between folks of different faiths. (And by "between folks of different faiths" I mean the mosque-goers and the non-mosque goers.)

I'm guessing because it doesn't have anything to do with any of that flowery crap that he was spouting. See, "He has repeatedly refused to disclose who is putting up the money for the project, although he told an Arab-language newspaper that such funding would come from the Middle East." Why wouldn't you disclose that, dude? Why the secrets? You expect people to be perfectly OK with this and not ask you questions? You expect people are going to be perfectly OK with this when you refuse to answer their questions about funding? This can't be good.

Obviously, this is just a kick in the head of the American people. They could build this thing anywhere they wanted to, but they're not. And I think that they're not because it's their way of letting us know that they're here and they're not going away. And as the United States, we have to allow that, as that is what our Constitution guides us to do. Now, I keep hearing the argument or the point or whatever they want to call it about Pearl Harbor. Basically, would we have let the Japanese build some sort of Shinto shrine or temple next to the USS Arizona? It kind of sounds valid, but I don't think that it really is when the context of how it's being argued is used.

See, the Japanese would not have built a temple next to the USS Arizona. You know why not? Because we kicked their ass, that is correct. We not only kicked their ass, we obliterated it. Twice. We haven't kicked anyone's ass in retaliation for 09/11. Oh, sure. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with it and deposed of their dictator who was eventually executed. We've been traipsing around the God-forsaken rocks of Afghanistan for a while without a lot of success. (But that's only because success hasn't been defined yet. As soon as it's defined, I'm sure that we'll have fallen incredibly short. But until then, we'll just stay vague about the degree of success which we may or may not have achieved.)

If someone's ass had been kicked over 09/11, you can bet that there wouldn't be any mosque building going on that close to Ground Zero. They're doing it simply because they can and, more importantly, because they want to. They want to appear the martyr in this situation. They want to have rationale for all of their twisted logic under Islamic law and Sharia law. And since we operate under our Constitution, we have to allow them to do so.

I don't know what would be better; to civilly protest this thing or to stay quiet about this thing. Legally, nothing can be done and nothing should be done. Legal action for something like this would point the country in a direction that I'm not so sure you really want it to go in. In fact, I'm positive you don't. But would a lack of attention be better in this case? I don't know. I just know that people need to take their emotions out of the issue. I realize that is damn near impossible for some. But we can't go around making decisions based on feelings. (Look at California's freaking financial situation. The state is swimming in expensive "feel good" programs. It doesn't work to legislate with feelings.) That just doesn't work.

Willie Nelson - Truther

Are you familiar with the Truther movement? Or just the Truthers? They're the folks who don't believe the accepted explanations for what happened to the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yeah, they're the folks who believe that it was some sort of inside job by the US government. The basis for their beliefs seems to be strongly rooted in wanting to believe in a conspiracy. That's really the only explanation for it, as there isn't any logical reason one would believe that there is evidence pointing toward it being an inside job.

Now, there are plenty of folks out there who have come out and questioned what "really happened". Granted, when they get told what did really happen, they don't want to believe that. That's what makes them a truther. (It's also what makes them a nutjob, but that's a different topic all together.) There are some rather famous people who have publicly questioned what happened that day. Martin Sheen...Charlie Sheen (must run in the family)...Jesse Ventura (maybe it runs in Minnesota, too)...Rosie O'Donnell...and now we can add to that list. Now we can add old stoner, country singer Willie Nelson to that list.

Willie Nelson was on ancient Larry King's show the other night. And the ancient Larry King asked him about his truther views on 9/11. That, in and of itself, was shocking, as Larry King seems to be really good at lobbing softballs at people these days. (Quite frankly, it's amazing that Larry King can lob anything. What is he? Like one hundred?) He started off the conversation with, "What prompted you to look into this from another angle?" And Willie answered with the most ironic of answers when he said, "Just logic."

No, see, if you were using the "logic" that you claimed that you were using, you would have come to the conclusion that all of the conspiracy theories are completely ridiculous. But that's the problem with truthers. They are really into their own definition of logic. And Willie exemplified that point by explaining, "I've seen buildings implode before. I just saw the Texas Stadium implode just a couple of days ago. And these two building imploded. And the one next to it. Nothing hit it. No plane hit the one next to it. It just decided to fall on its own. Naturally, I have questions about how did that happen." Do you Willie? Really? Why? Because it's the same? Uh-huh. Whatever.

Did the building have to be hit with a plane for it to collapse? You don't think that it was possible for it to have been hit by debris from the two falling towers in order for it to collapse? That thought never crossed your mind, Willie? Apparently it did not. Then the ancient Larry King tries to reason with Willie Nelson (there's a sentence I never thought I'd type) by saying, "I'm told that the reason that it imploded was the so much heat from above and so much fuel on the jets that that caused it to go down rather than go over." OK. I'm not a fan of how he phrased that, but fair enough. Willie? Your response? "Never before has a building collapsed because it was hit by an airplane. A steel building. Never. Before." Oh, for cryin' out loud. Really?

This is where Larry King comes back with a pretty good response for someone who is 120 years old. He asked, "Uh, has any building been hit by a 747, though?" Willie? "I'm sure they have." Are you now? That's the best you can do? You're sure that they have? See, in order to avoid looking like a cuckoo bird, that would really have been the best place to provide the folks with some facts. But you don't have any facts. No, you have marijuana. That doesn't help sharpen your logic and reasoning skills, I'm guessing.

Larry King: "You think that there was something going on inside the building." Crazy Willie: "Well, I just question the whole thing. I question the story. I question the implosions. It just looks...too simple. You know?" Actually, no. No, I don't know. Simple doesn't necessarily mean "simple". Physics, while complex, are very simple when you understand the basic concepts. Heat melts steel! Get over it!

This is where I get a little annoyed at Larry King. He placates Willie by saying, "Well, others have questioned it too...although there was an investigation." How is that helping?! Don't tell these nutjobs that it's OK that they're thinking and promoting a bunch of stuff that is complete crap. What good does that do? None! All it does is give Willie Nelson the opportunity to say, "There was an investigation and I think that there should be more." Do you? How high are you right now, Willie? Very, I'm guessing.

So, Willie Nelson thinks that there should be more of an investigation as to how those buildings that were hit with airliners managed to implode because he saw Texas Stadium go down a few days ago? Sure, that makes sense. Who are you people? I don't get you at all. Listen, if you folks really believe that crap, what are you still doing here? Seriously. Because I think that if I believed that the government of my country had done something that sinister, I don't think that I could continue to live there. So, what are you people still doing here? Why haven't you moved to France or Germany? (Sorry, France and Germany. It's nothing personal. I was just thinking of someplace far away. I'm not trying to push all of these nutjobs on you.) What are you still doing here? Go! If the United States is so damn evil, get the hell out.

The video of Larry King and the stoned nutjob Willie Nelson is below. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it, but all it did was frustrate the hell out of me.

From the Notebooks

Since I'm not feeling a real post right now, I thought I'd try something different. In the past I've posted drawings, others' and my own poems, quotations, etc. More of those are coming. I've had Susan Sontag's notebooks in mind of late, both because I've wanted to read the volume of them that her son edited since it was first announced and because of Reggie H.'s note in an email about them (he's finished them), and then today as I was rifling through some of the boxes I sent back I came across some old notebooks, so I figured, why not post some of what's in them. I can't claim to have anything approaching the excitement of anything like Sontag's scribblings, but nevertheless, here goes: The first is a list I saw displayed at the Detroit Museum of African-American History. I and many others wrote these and a slew of other names down during the summer of 2001, when we were at the Cave Canem workshops at the Cranbrook Academy, outside Detroit. My original aim was to make a poem out of them, but that never happened (others did so, if I recall) but looking back the list is almost poetic by itself. Can you guess what they are? The answer's just below the list.

L'Amitie - Encomium - Mears - La Nanette - Dwight - Hutchinson - June - Lottery - Endeavor - Jack - Protection - Nova Amora - Judith - Higgins - Armstrong - African - Fame - Charming Betsey - Sappho - Quay - Ajax - Constance - Black Joke - Despatch - Mystic - Brownlow - Science - Angola - Thomas and John - Renown - Woodward - Beckey - Kilpatrick - La Bonne - Honnete - Revel - Revels - Marshall - Sally - Watts - Sukie - Winter - Defyance - 4th of July

Slave ships!

The next is a random list of observations I penned shortly after after 9/11, probably the first weekend after, when I took the PATH into the city (I was commuting weekly from Penn Station and the Port Authority, but I usually went straight from either venue to the Jersey-bound PATH to get home) just to walk around and see the aftermath of the horrific events. Like a number of people I posted my memories of that day and the next, and sent it around via email (one of the best I read was by Samuel R. Delany), but I wanted to take notes for a work of fiction. I did write one, but nothing of this rather obvious and paltry list made it into the final piece:

Makeshift memorial @ Wash. Sq.
votives - postcards - poems - charred sheets from the towers - drawings - flowers - photos
Smell of burnt wood
Missing posters
People on the streets - only a fraction
Almost no car traffic
Sky behind the arch + NYU is empty -
Lots of people wearing masks
Heaviness in your chest -
Memorial @ firehouse on W 10th and Greenwich
At W10th @ Bleecker Miami police - 3
Brilliant late autumn day
People walking in 6th Ave.
Down Hudson @ Christopher an ocher screen
Flags from some balconies and fire esc.
"Whitney Houston probably died..."
White plume merges into the clouds

Next is a list of books I apparently was considering for my Spring 2002 advanced fiction class (the students expressed a desire to be challenged, and so they were). I only used a few of these, and added others, such as Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and Mario Puig's An Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages. Oh, and The Atrocity Exhibition, q.v.

Jack the Modernist - Robert Glück
Wittgenstein's Mistress - David Markson
Bedouin Hornbook - Nathaniel Mackey
Oreo - Fran Ross
Travesty - John Hawkes
Ill Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando - Reinaldo Arenas
Planetarium - Nathalie Sarraute
Les Guerrillières - Monique Wittig
... (something!) - Michelle Cliff
Age of Wire & String - Ben Marcus
The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
The Woman in the Dunes - Kobe Abe
Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Count Julian - Juan Goytisolo
Palm-Wine Drinkard - Amos Tutuola
Living - Henry Green
Deep North - Fanny Howe
The Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson
My Summer in Baden-Baden - Leonid Tsypkin
... (something) - Justin Chin
Wigger - Lawrence Ytzhak Brathwaite
Cattle Killing - John Edgar Wideman
The Comforters - Muriel Spark
Textermination - Christine Brooke-Rose
Carnival - Wilson Harris
... (something) - Milan Kundera
--down to around 12 - Exercises - discussions

(I've still never taught some of these books, while others I've taught several or many times, even though a few, like Carnival, rank among the most difficult works of literature out. That one probably shouldn't be introduced to anyone below the graduate level--in a writing class, that is. They are all high among my personal favorites.

Also, I also once told Reggie H. that I wished I could find one of my books in every bookstore I entered, "like Wittig's Les Guerrillières." He kindly replied that he didn't think that book could be found everywhere, and I'm sure he was and is right, though I did always seem to come across it, which probably says more about the bookstores I was hanging out in that the book itself.)

And finally, a vocabulary list, of the sort I often keep when I read poetry and fiction, and especially works in another language. These are words from an array of authors, though among the words I'd interspersed quotes from a poems by Wallace Stevens (as well as Hazel Carby and George Moore!); from his poems alone you could fill many notebooks. How many of these words did you already know? (I think I've seen "ukase" countless times but always forget its meaning.)

fub (vi) - to put off, delay, cheat
girandole (n) - a showy composition; ornate candlestick
gibbet (n) - a lump, mass
schwärmerei (n) - wild devotion; sentimental enthusiasm
furbelow (n) - a flounce, ruffle; showy trimming
caparison (n) - an adornment, trapping
gloze (vt) - to make appear right or acceptable
pettifog (vi) - to engage in legal trickery, to quibble over insignificances
riband (n) - a ribbon
antinomian (n, adj) - one who rejects conventional morality
turophile (n) - a connoisseur of cheese
drabble (vt) - to draggle / (vi) - to grow wet and muddy
loricate (vt) - to coat with armor protectively
ukase (n) - edict
glacis (n) - a gentle, sloping bank
sarangousty (n) - waterproof stucco
pelisse (n) - a sleeveless cape lined with fur
scelestic (adj) - wicked; villainous
miniate (vt) - to decorate (manuscripts) with letters painted red, to decorate with red lead or vermillion
palpebral (adj) - pertaining to the eyelids
swyve (vi) - to copulate

That's it!