RANDA JARRAR

For a year now, New Orleanians have had to deal with despair, destruction, diaspora, and the death of their city, their past, and those they love.

You must watch Spike Lee’s beautiful documentary When the Levees Broke (which aired today and will air again September 1st, 7th, 10th, 11th, 16th, and 28th) but it will fuck you up. Make sure you have a large box of tissues nearby. Or try to break it up over several days, but if you do watch it all at once, you won’t be able to go for a walk or do anything without feeling the weight of water and all the dead cloaking you. Which may be a good thing. I want someone to sit W in a chair and make him watch it. How that man sleeps at night is beyond me.

I just got back from an orientation for this. I will be teaching creative writing to elementary school kids in Detroit once a week. Super-excited to start!

Get it here before your next flight.

Male readers go here.

Thanks to Jim for the link, and to Tim for agreeing to make a female variation.

This article in the Guardian asks Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli writers if they have been able to write recently. The answers are surprising, inspiring, and depressing all at once.

That’s Angelo’s enthusiastic evaluation of Ann Arbor after 4 days here. What a relief! Also, I concur.

I’m screwed. This place is about half a mile away from my house. Now I know where my stipend is going.

Zizek writes into the LRB this week, in response to last week’s Lebanon issue:

Back to Brecht – and the Caucasian Chalk Circle, in which a biological mother and a stepmother are in dispute over a child and appeal to a judge. The judge takes a bit of chalk and draws a circle, then he places the baby in the middle and tells the two women that the first to pull the child out of the circle will get him. When the stepmother sees that the child is being hurt, she lets him go and, of course, the judge gives her custody, claiming that she has displayed true maternal love. One should imagine Jerusalem along these lines: whoever truly loves Jerusalem would let it go rather than see it torn apart.

(Speaking of the LRB, Verbal Privilege has me excited to visit the LRB bookstore when I am in Bloomsbury next month.)

A Philippines judge who said he consulted imaginary mystic dwarves has failed to convince the Supreme Court to allow him to keep his job.

From BBC.

Copies of Qissat–, the anthology which one of my short stories and a couple of my translations appear in– were stuck in Lebanon earlier last week. From the Independent:

At a time when bombs, shells and missiles are wrecking so many lives, it may seem frivolous or callous to worry that they also menace books. Look at history, however, and you’ll find that a contempt for human beings and a contempt for the culture that they fashion never stand too far apart. In Beirut, this week, some books that powerful but truly callous people in the West really ought to read have just about survived – so far. They are languishing in a warehouse in the pulverised south of the city used by Saqi Books. … Since Saqi prints in Lebanon, these are the books that now sit at the mercy of the raining bombs. We could hardly need them more urgently than we do now. They are Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women, edited by Roseanne Saad Khalaf; and Qissat: Short stories by Palestinian Women, edited by Jo Glanville.

I’ve just heard from Jo that the books have been liberated by a courageous, unnamed individual who drove them out to Damascus. Hurray! Now we will have books for the event in September.

I am writing from my living room floor. From my new house. It’s cute, it’s old, it’s around the corner from a coffee shop/market, and I love it. Ann Arbor is gorgeous in the summer! I can’t wait to take all my shit out of my car and be able to finally sit down and read something.

Total number of miles driven: just over 1,300.
Number of times I filled up: 4 (~I heart Toyota~)
Water bottles consumed: 4
Salads: 1
Sandwiches: 2
Cherry Kolaches from Czeck Stop: 4
Coffee cups: 1
Peanut bags: 1
Bags of chips: 2
Containers of M&Ms: 1
Motels: 2
Sunsets: 2
Band-aids: 1
Reststops: 6
On da Ipod playlist: The Rahbani Bros, Nouvelles Vagues, Modest Mouse, Flaming Lips, YLT, Fela Kuti, Wilco, Peaches, Pharell, N*E*R*D, Tori, Bjork, and that goddamn song “Usleless Desires” by Patty Griffin which had me choking on tears and pulling over.