other true things

Include:
feeling sad when it's sunny outside
feeling glad even when wet with rain

social media

I'm not sure if I want to be famous,
well-"liked",
re-posted, passed round like pot joint for multiple puffs,
sucked off by the stoned lips of university hipsters
eager to share fluids,
yet too well-zipped and cerebral to have the social skills to make an advance
without the inebriant as an excuse
not to remember the stinging reminder of personal failure
on any following morning.

I'm not cynical.
I just want to be famous, so I will
"follow" and imitate famous drunk white nihilists,
all style and anaemia, heterosexually over-compensating,
I may wear the smell of cigarettes
and will omnipotently will away any fear of cancer.

I am the postmodern conundrum,
I want all of the attention, but none of the fat,
I am low-calorie fast food, but famous,
to be eaten by the masses, for want of any other choices

The will to fame is a will to flame,
I will bite off more than I can chew
and chew the heads off of those both bitten and shy,
forewarning not to mess with me
on the internet.

I am not so famous, though, nor so populist
I opt to be misunderstood, and
will be easily made redundant for it.

Friday. Afternoon.

Reflections on Dialogue

A few ideas underlying the writing of this post:
1. That we are all very very busy
2. That we all think we are very very busy
3. That I cannot claim to represent the views or practices of "we/us all"
4. That written essays online addressing the views of others is inviting a form of conversation
5. That this form of conversation necessarily differs from conversation in person
6. The former form of conversation in point 4 (written essays online) can be interpreted and misinterpreted in a series of ways that both overlap with and are distinct from the those of the latter form of conversation in point 5 (in person)

This means:
I can write and write and write for the purposes of being read and read and read (and interpreted and shared and asked questions of and held to account for, etc.)
and this can be quite sharpening of my spheres of ethical concern and intellectual ability, in incorporating the feedback of a diverse range of possible audiences...

The term "People of Colour" (POC) in an Australian context

This essay is a work in progress. I intend to provide links to cite sources for some of my historical and political claims. I will repost as I get to these.

I have written this essay on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation, in the urban centre of Melbourne, Australia. I acknowledge that my presence is the result of the targeting of the owners of this land for genocide, and I acknowledge the responsibilities I have as a migrant settler to change this. I acknowledge all Aboriginal elders, past, present and future, particularly to any Aboriginal person who may be reading this essay. May any merit generated from this essay be in the service of racial justice for all people of colour locally and globally, and may I be held accountable for any mistakes I have made along the way.

---

POC in Aus

I find the identification with “person of colour” simultaneously empowering and fraught with political tension, not only in relation to a white majority in Australia (who may or may not find the term confronting in its reminder of white racial culpability for colonial and genocidal crimes), but also in relationship to a dominant U.S.American sensibility.  I mean this not only in terms of the design and implementation of racist and capitalist superstructures (which the USA is well-known for internationally), but also in international resistance movements.

More simply:

As a gay man of Malaysian Chinese heritage living as an Australian citizen in Melbourne, Australia, I am a “person of colour” not only because of white supremacy, but also because of American supremacy in delineating the contours of my anti-racist struggle in Australia.

To all my American friends, family and allies: This is not an admonition or a “blaming”. As I’ve mentioned early on in this essay, I find the term “person of colour” empowering in many ways. It intends to demarcate a category within which a diverse range of racialised people can respond to white supremacy. What I think it may suffer from, as a category, is in its primary construction of race as being related to colour which is true in many dominant conversations on race in an American context for multiple generations of African-descent communities, many of whom can trace ancestry to slavery and who are known by “blackness”. The term “people of colour” is more fraught as a designation when it comes to thinking about multiple forms of racialisation which are related to colour (and white supremacy), but are not necessarily bound by it. For example, I consider indigeneity in settler societies (such as Native Americans in the USA, First Nations folks in Canada, and Aboriginal Australians), or the oppression of Muslims (Islamophobia) and multiple forms of language-based oppression. All of these, while properly referred to as being about race and racism, are not necessarily strictly about colour, and the people who are most affected by these forms of racism and colonization may not necessarily choose to organize on the principle of colour.

Here is what I am NOT saying…:

I am not speaking on behalf of all racialised people. I am simply mentioning some of the people that I may unwittingly exclude from any term at all, and choose to focus on the term “people of colour” because of my own critical investment in its potential for ongoing work in Australia to challenge racism and white supremacy.

In my Australian context, I notice that the term “people of colour” seems to center on the struggles of racialised migrant settlers, largely, in my sphere of awareness, of South Asian and African descent. I rarely see other East/Southeast Asian people who connect strongly with this term in Australia, nor indeed, of Aboriginal Australians either, except for those of us who have lived in the USA (such as myself) or who connect strongly with an American-dominated blogosphere. It also does seem to be visibly age-segregated, with younger people more likely to identify with the term, compared to older people.

One thing I like about the term “person of colour” is its adaptability, about its invitation to multiple meanings which are contextually dependent, and which themselves are evolving and changing. One thing I find fraught about it is that, in a call to coalition within an Australian context, we are dealing with an unfortunate history of racism which is both similar to and actually quite distinct from a North American context. In Australia, the terms “black” and “blackfella” (racialised terms which reference colour) are largely synonymous with discussions of indigeneity and the colonisation of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people, whereas these two terms (“black” and “indigenous”) would be differentiated in the USA.

Other differentiations include that, in the USA, a lot of work on irregular or “undocumented” migration centers on Latino/a people who, in some constructions of the US census, are actually constructed as “white”, whereas in Australia, the “peril” of migration still largely centers on Asia, and of irregular/undocumented asylum seekers from Middle East/Central Asia and Africa who are largely Hazara, Somali, Iranian, Ethiopian, Sri Lankan, or the stateless Rohingya people. Migrants are racialised with a particular form of “unbelonging” in the crossing of oceanic borders, rather than land borders, and also with a much more recent sphere of influence. This is given that Australia’s White Australia Policy (various forms of legislation which barred non-European / non-Anglo people from migrating into the country or being naturalized as citizens) was only dismantled in the 1970s. This is in contrast to the USA’s removal of explicit reference to race-based quotas in immigration in the 1950s (while maintaining particular national quotas).

There is at least a full 20-year difference, in this regard, when thinking about Australia’s relationship to racialised migrants of colour in modernity, compared to the USA. In many ways, this is regressing, with the Australian Federal government's explicit disavowal and racist damnation of asylum seekers, some of the world’s most vulnerable people, who happen to arrive on our shores by boat.

An additional factor is that large swaths of the USA were part of Mexico (also colonized by Spaniards) prior to being under the jurisdiction of the American Federation. In other words, there were already a critical mass of Latino people on U.S.American soil even during racist apartheid in the USA when only white men were seen to be citizens. This is in contrast to the relatively small numbers of non-White migrants in early colonial Australia, such as Chinese migrants during the Gold Rush of the 1800s, who, unlike Chinese communities in the USA, largely expatriated from the Australian continent back to Asia after the rush, and small (but significant) numbers of Pacific Islanders who were enslaved and then forcibly expatriated after Australian Federation in 1901.

When thinking about race, Aboriginality, and settler colonialism, I necessarily need to hold the term “people of colour”, in an Australian context, accountable to a range of responsibilities that are not immediately accounted for in existing American-dominant discourse on race and racism. I am wary of a term which, in its current use, centralises the experiences of migrants of colour while not adequately addressing the ongoing displacement and disenfranchisement of Aboriginal Australians.

At the same time, it is worth reminding myself, as a queer person of colour, how people of colour, regardless of our actual “colour” are not only victims of political turmoil, rape, genocide and enslavement, but many of us are also the progeny of love and fruitions of justice because of our ancestors’ struggles and will to survival.

I offer this essay in order to highlight some of the distinctions between organizing in anti-racist coalition in Australia as someone who is targeted for racial vilification or exclusion from many aspects of public cultural production as an Asian-heritage person, compared to the USA. When I call myself a “person of colour” in Australia, and am accepted as such by others here who organize similarly, we are demographically distinct from groups of people of colour who may organize in American settings, and the sorts of racial issues that arise in Australia will need to account for a whole set of issues for which available online American-dominant language on “people of colour” will do no justice for.

We will have to produce and evolve our own languages, and I must cultivate a strategic patience, for the relative lack of political will or critical mass to coalition among diverse racialised communities compared to what I witnessed while I was in the USA. Anglo-specific white supremacy is much stronger in Australia compared to the USA, with some folks of European background, such as Italians and Greeks, who can trace still-present and ongoing generational memory some of the horrors of racism upon arrival.

I want to be mindful in considering the potentially exclusionary nature of a term like “people of colour” to many racialised Australian communities who may be resistant to a simple borrowing or adaptation of American-based anti-racist coalitionary work.

Personally, I continue to love the term “person of colour” and I acknowledge the struggles particularly of black, brown and other Asian folks in the USA who, to my knowledge, are the originators of this term of coalition. I simply wish to highlight the fraughtness of simple “mirroring” American-derived language in operating within an Australian colonial context. There is so much more woerk to be done, and the contexts that we are shaped by and that we shape will need to account for home-grown language that suits (or properly revolutionises) the ecology of our existing environs.

--

Many thanks to J.N., M.S. and R.B. for support and friendship, sharing in anti-racist work with me and for inspiring these ongoing inquiries, and also to N.G., a new friend.

deference

Why defer?

From outgroup to outlier

I inch my way into the centre,

from working for approval to 

being granted authority
to approve or disapprove,

until I have an inkling,

see, that no unity nor
collective coherence can last long

without its traitors:

perhaps one of these traitors
is Me.

More class explorations

I think that there is a difference between being working class and being poor/low-income, or being working class and being non-tertiary educated.

As far as I am concerned, and I'll admit I'm trying to figure this out as I write this out, all middle class people (who work for a living) are working class, though not all working class people are middle class...


The distinction between these two classes would be related to two major factors:

1. The extent to which one is consciously identified with (one's own working) class struggle... 

Middle class (identity) would tend to be highly invested in the managing of amicable relations between labour and capitalist owning classes (or about aspiring to the comforts that such managerialism rewards/affords), while working class identity seems more squarely to be about identification with the possible dignity of working itself, and of being a worker.

Working class struggle, therefore, is not necessarily about the desire to cease to have to work, but about the desire to recuperate work from capitalist goals and ends.

2. The extent to which one aspires to higher/upper class status 

In this sense, one can be both working class and middle class. I can be identified with the possible dignity of work (working class), and can choose to recuperate this dignity through various machinations (conscious working class struggle), while simultaneously medicating away the humiliations of work within a capitalist society by identification with (and acquisition of) the middling trappings of wealth, comfort and cultural capital (middle class). The latter, far from being "not working class", is actually a quintessential expression of the sometimes "inevitable" cultural results of working class labour under global capitalism... 

...

For example, for those of us raised by working class parents in more middle class conditions, who move into the attainment of quintessentially professional middle class tertiary education, or into middle class professions (e.g. medicine/law/public health/etc.), we are culturally wedded to as well as culturally disconnected from the working class roots which may have propelled this movement, even as this professional attainment has been about access to more privileged and powerful work.

i.e.

"My working class parents worked so hard [under capitalist oppression] so that I would not have to suffer like they did; so I/they/we became middle class [more comfortable under global capitalism]"

To me, the indignity of work has less to do with the fact That We Work, and more to do with the lack of control over the ends to which all our work is dedicated, as well as the under-compensation and under-recognition of this labour for the purposes of sustaining our day to day material existence. Too many workers are disempowered from negotiating the terms and conditions of their/our labour.

In this sense, then, many so-called middle class professions are of the same cloth as more quintessentially working class professions, except that the forms of workers' angst that arise will differ, as may the struggles and strategies for enfranchisement.

The aforementioned factors combined (i.e. lack of self-directed control over the ends of our work, under-compensation and under-recognition of labour)... Along with a more classically Marxist-industrial society view of the lack of workers' collective ownership over the means of production, these to me, as someone who is expediently identified with both my middle class upbringing as well as with being a worker in a worker-majority world under capitalism, are some of where the major humiliations of working (class) people lie, broadly speaking.

hydration

like totes necessary

NeuroDivergent Blogs

NeuroQueer
queering our neurodivergence, neurodiversifying our queer


Radical Neurodivergence Speaking
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world

A Meditation

Om namo Buddhaya
Om namo Dharmaya
Om namo Sanghaya
Namo Namah
Om Ah Hung

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
May all conditions for freedom continue to ripen for all beings
In all realms, communities, countries
Across all colour lines and illusory boundaries
Within bodies and external to them
May we cease to cause others harm in our mistaken attempts to rid ourselves of our own pain
May we forgive those who have harmed us, regardless of how deep our wounds still run
No matter how much we still sting
May I be free from suffering
May you be free from suffering
May they be free from suffering
May we all be free from suffering

May I be inspired by the resolve of all the countless Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas
To show up to the world, and see all beings as part of my Sangha
May I deepen and consistently renew my confidence in the Dharma.

One breath at a time.

Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora (CSCSD) in Canberra

About:
"The Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora is the only centre in the southern hemisphere for research on people of Chinese descent in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. The Centre seeks to stimulate and encourage scholarship that reflects the diversity of and intercourse among areas, cultures and political economies in the region, and contributes critically to the field of knowledge.

At the top of our research agenda is a scholarship which looks beyond the stereotyped masks of "Chinese" and "Chineseness", and focuses instead on exploring the fluid and multifaceted nature of Chinese diaspora experience in Southeast Asia, its various interfaces with indigenous people and states, its multiple positions in economies, societies and politics, and its global positioning.

As a center based in Australia, we are inevitably interested in the studies of the Australian Chinese Community, particularly in the location of their history within the larger narrative of the Chinese southern diaspora. The conventional narrative on Chinese diaspora has been filtered, consciously or unconsciously, so as to conform to a common story that tells the tale of a unique "Chineseness" manifesting at different times and places. A regional and geographical approach is one way to liberate the study of overseas Chinese from its nationalist straight jacket and to challenge the invented tradition of a unified essence of Chinese.

We see the CSCSD as a natural and logical venue to venture into this scholarship. The Centre hopes to add its Australian voice to the growing critique of this dominant scholarship,and to contribute to this important new current in studies of Chinese people outside China."

http://chl.anu.edu.au/sites/csds/about.php

reconnecting with Buddhist social justice

I am not other than the system. This is not to suggest that I am synonymous with the system, only that I am not other than it. Thus, to change myself is not other than to change the system.
Even as changing myself is not synonymous with nor sufficient to changing the system, it is also not other than these.

The system is expressed through my being, my actions...
The system is not other than the limits of what is actionable, not other than these actions and the fruits of these actions.

As I moderate my own expressions, I can highlight or modify aspects of the system that are being so expressed. As I challenge my own limitations, so are the system's limitations also challenged.

If the system privileges greed, then by uprooting greed in my own being and behaviour, I uproot some of the greed that the system demands.

There is now a gap.

What are my alternatives? What are the system's alternatives?

If I change, whether I will it or not, if change is the only certainty,
then the system will change, inevitably.

My role is mostly to seed,
till,
water,
rest.

more breaks

...more breaks from Facebook. Too much American bullshit infecting my system
the autopoiesis of all that media garbage
relentless rehearsals of indignation and rage

I choose to show up to my relationships; not live in impotence
I will climb This mountain, not Every One of them
my American triumph is over... and what had I or America to show for it?

Lady Gaga lies exhausted
as adrenally drained modern Goddess of post-orgasmic funk
on a burnt out bed

after the dancing is over and we wake up brushing each other aside from one another's arms,
what sort of day will we wake to?
what sort of sky will we greet?

I remember when...

I remember when I used to go next door to meet with my friend
to play grand games, bring out our fantasies of being
warriors and wizards;
we would bicycle to the playground and
tumble around, somersault on sand
laugh ourselves silly

I remember when I would call my classmates
every evening, have threesome
chats with them on a landline
gossip about schoolmates
backstab our enemies
come out to one another in time
reveal this and then pray
we would still care about one another after the dialtone

I remember when I would have to
wait a day or two for him and him and him
to respond to my emails
I would excite myself with fantasy
of running away with him and him
to unknown and unknowable heights
of European, American, Canadian, Australian romance
while I sat, self-loathing in an air-conditioned Singaporean room

I remember when cellphones came out
and I would turn mine off at night before I went to sleep

I remember when a lively debate was still occurring
about the role of "poking" on facebook

I remember when celebrity was not
accessible

I remember when time once stood still
because I had to wait
before I could "know"

the child

The child who has universes form and
crumble apart
ever in awe and despair
moment by moment...
how sweet...
how terrible.

another. midnight.

yet. another. midnight.
every night another one;
pre-night
mid-night
late-night
post-night
almost-night
never quite night
always right
always righting wrongs
always fighting

yet. another. midnight.
when does sleep arrive?

Blogging... As

The space where someone goes out of their way to look me up; inconveniently:
having to remember some address of a person's thoughts besides "www.facebook.com",
this blogspot space as one which requires you to remember
this weird pseudonym, this strange other address,
without "neighbours", without some sense of its interlinkedness with other "posters" (as on Tumblr)

just an isolated island; easily accessible by code, but not by a mere stumble-upon
rarely as if just by accident,
a clearing emerging from late night in coniferous woods
some single beacon of light emanating from a small, virtual mound.

Reconnection with Here

Ok, I lapsed.

So time to revisit the daily blogging... Keep that stuff up. Remembering that I can just blog some small thing...

Once upon a lazy beast
Lay a princess with her pea
Upon an old mattress that he had sewn up from
A curious mixture of wool and pine needles
Marking their paradoxical union
Blessed by spells.

RISE

I have been volunteering with RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees for almost 2 years, since I moved to Melbourne.

Those of my FB friends who may have been following the ongoing issue that has been the cruel and inhumane punishment of people seeking asylum in Australia, may be familiar with RISE, as the first refugee-, asylum seeker-, and ex-detainee-governed advocacy organisation in Australia (that we know of).

Being a part of RISE's organisational history has been a very meaningful one for me. Through my work there, I have made amazing new friends and comrades, learned SO MUCH about the pathological energies of globalism, (just as I live in a country that has also largely profited from its successes), and I have also gone through some extremely emotionally challenging times, where some previously amicable or even creative relationships have gone sour.

This all feels part and parcel of a journey through work and passion,
the exploration of tenacity, righteousness and resolve,
the messy work of sorting through the stuff of injustice and hopeful possibility,
the humbling reminders of my own frailty and imperfection
(indeed, also of my comrades and fellow travellers...),
my moments of weakness
and my moments also of greatest resilience.

The greatest paradox that I have held and straddled as an ally of and volunteer at RISE has been that of my position as someone of non-refugee background "taking up space" in a refugee-run organisation.

In many ways, I am deeply uncomfortable with a visible dualism in mainstream coverage that views asylum seekers as racially and culturally irreconcilably "Other" and materially pitiable, while Australians (including supportive, compassionate allies) are portrayed as largely white and middle class.

Indeed, I am also deeply uncomfortable with a world in which people become synonymous with their conditions of entry, in which people become "refugees" to become represented primarily as objects of persecution or pity.

I am deeply uncomfortable with this because there are so many complexities to the actual lived experiences of people who seek asylum (besides "pitiability"), particularly as they pertain to a broader problem of arbitrarily drafted and often colonially defined geographic and political boundaries.

All these boundaries, of the Australian country, that have had pernicious, long lasting impacts on a broad range of people, including Aboriginal Australians, all migrants, particularly poor migrants and migrants of colour, and people in general who may have been classified as non-White historically, but who have all, nevertheless, been resilient in survival and the genesis of Australian culture(s).

a dense and bewildering cauldron of
perplexing paradoxes

I feel a connection to RISE and am sensing, also, the legitimacy of the part I can play as a person, neither "refugee" nor comfortably "citizen", to the formation of what it means to both empathise with and identify with the people whom I show up to support,
perhaps by supporting others I am also supporting myself,
and that there is an exploration of what it is in me
that is implicated in both the problem and the solution.

Preachers

Preachers

that strange phenomenon

of the speaker who, when finished,
marches quickly off the stage,
unable to rest with how they have been apprehended,
unable to face how it is that they have handled
a significant moment of authority,
fearful of a sea of skeptical gazes,
or perhaps, more likely,
of praise and applause...


...the strange phenomenon of the speaker
who willingly assumes a position of authority
while primarily still concerned with their own wretchedness

Dear Students of the Revolution

Dear Students of the Revolution,

the post-orgasmic haze of too much theory-jerk
waking up in the arms of comrades whose names we cannot remember
because we never bothered to ask
we do not remember one another's names
because we have forgotten even the tasks
we set out to accomplish with one another.

zombies now, slits slashed across one another's throats from
nails sharpened by keyboard strokes,
filed by anxious teeth, bitten and bitter,
our minds are still young, our
fingers still point at the moon, our
tears come so easily still, even as our
eyes remain affixed on outrage,
every smart essay democratising offence
like left-wing porn for atomised proletariat
staring at flatscreens,
lonely and wanting to connect.

there will be no revolution without lovers.

yet, we are already loved,
we are already the Beloved,
there is no more fighting left to do, just
build and build homes for one another, just
build and build homes for one another,
I know that am tired
from being so long, homeless.

I hope you feel the same way too.

Yours, sincerely,
Me

refuge

people are not just "refugees"
but also lovers,
fighters,
brothers and sisters,
mistake-makers,
forgivers and preachers,
movers and shakers,
artists and professionals,
destitute, dirt poor or
middle class, well-enough resourced to leave
to seek refuge for the heart
to once again blossom...

...so how can I take pity on anybody?
I can only work on my own capacity
for hospitality

that is enough.

Privilege and such

Have been reflecting that some manifestations of calling out privilege or checking my own privilege can function as a disabling force in building solidarity around broader struggles...

I am intentional here:

I am reflecting both on the exercise of calling out others' privilege, as well as an aggressive and habitual declaration of my own privilege, as a supposedly necessary and intelligent prerequisite for solidarity building.

To be sure, a community with a complete disregard of privilege-politics will not be healthy either, due to lack of awareness or willingness to engage the types of necessary renunciations that are part not only of political, but spiritual struggle.

Nevertheless, formal declarations of one's moral credentials or humility by birthright, or a "privilege politics" of identity-battling can sometimes serve as nothing more than priming for egoic warfare, masquerading as moral injunctions for others to follow suit, or else risk failing at coalition, or risk failing at achieving ethical goals.

There is a form of egoic pleasure that the "winners" of this moral battle can get (ha! I'd know this well, I confess!)... Unchecked, my attachment to the pornographic titilation of moral battle will make me unwittingly complicit in disruptions to ongoing coalition... This can leave bloodied vacuums in otherwise well-meaning Left spaces that are unfortunately too often filled in the mainstream by Right-wing, uberconservative alternatives in the service of capital.

These forms of identity politics, both those that don't take into account privilege at all, and those that become addicted and aroused by endless rehearsals of moral battle, can become toxic and soul destroying.

I've beaten this dead horse:

I want friendship and comradeship,
trial and error,
Healing...
...to grant and be granted forgiveness,
More than victim-perpetrator dualisms,
I want a community of allies.

I am no more a victim nor a perpetrator of oppressive systems as I am simply an imperfect ally and an imperfect friend, just like the best and the rest of us who wish, simply, to do justice to our fellow humans.

Let us not pretend disempowerment where we have found our voice to speak this. Let us not pretend false humility where we have taken the space and trusted we would be listened to.

Let us stop pretending...


Please:
Let me stop pretending.