i found a very nice place to sit in sarah p. duke gardens while the rain threatened then came down. a stone bench with a back/wall the perfect height to lay your head back upon and look up into the branches of some droopy branch, dangly leaves tree (pretty sure it wasn't a willow, but i still haven't learned my plants and trees. i need a botany friend.) two little yellow birds sat bravely atop thin stemmed lavendar in increasingly heavy rainfall. one repeatedly performed a precarious half somersault maneuver to eat something off the underside of its purple flower perch. i talked to martin about his crazy run across an eight lane highway (or something like that--eight highways? loopways? freeways?) to get back to the river and back home. i read more of the book i just started (finished east of eden yesterday), roland barthes' ' empire of signs.' i've never read any barthes before, and cynthia was writing to me about an essay of his she was reading, so i thought i would see what he was about. not sure yet. interpreting the signs of japanese culture, through contrast and juxtaposition with a western or french culture, keeping in mind that this interpretation is a creative act of meaning making, not something objective or true. 'the text does not "gloss" the images, which do not "illustrate" the text. for me, each has been no more than the onset of a kind of visual uncertainty, analogous perhaps to that loss of meaning (it.) Zen calls a satori (it.). text and image, interlacing, seek to ensure the circulation and exchange of these signifiers: body, face, writing; and in them to read the retreat of signs.' retreat of signs, retreat of signs, retreat of signs, retreat of signs, retreat of signs, retreat of signs... do you think the more you repeat that phrase, the more profound it gets, or does it pretty much stay how it was before the repetition, or do you skip over the repetition and just note it mentally without experiencing it? if it was a profound statement does it stay that way, if mundane, does it stay that way also?
the photo on the front page of the durham herald sun this morning was of these people in monrovia, liberia pressed together, all with rejoicing light-up-your-face smiles, which is what made me look longer at the picture. the caption said they were welcoming the u.s. military group who were checking out the situation in the country. apparently the people thought the u.s. was on the verge of sending peacekeeping troups to stop the civil war (they're still debating sending them--wouldn't that be great if u.s. power could actually bring their war to an end--some girls on the side of the road chanting 'no more looting and stealing'--is it possible for u.s. troops to establish law with peacekeeping guns? well, maybe, if most of the people want that more than anything else). a little bit after the photo was taken, government troops of charles taylor came out and fired shots into the air above the crowd and ordered them to leave.
i wonder what image of america they're trying to reform, re-create, reimagine, by having bush visit and give speeches at the sites of boggling human atrocities. i think he was the first u.s. president to visit auschwitz (or was it the first since ford?), and i guess he just about, but not quite, apologized for america's role in slavery in his speech on one of the ellis islands of slavery yesterday and now i can't remember the name of the place. the article called the slave trade the largest forced migration of people in history which i thought was kind of a provoking way to phrase it. okay, not sure how i got on this subject--i guess just something i've been thinking about in the back of my head--what a paradoxical country we live in...
posted by Liza 9.7.03