Fighting For Authenticity

We must always be fighting for our authentic selves. It comes at the cost of the commodity, and the regular production and exchange of the commodity actively convinces us that we are no more than mere commodity. Yet, we can only fully explores ourselves as unique selves if we fight and struggle to create space to do so. Everyday, forces actively work against us, whether they are forces of the need to socially reproduce ourselves in and through work or the forces of social pressure which beckon us to conform. But if we struggle, work and toil to create that special space, and to preserve its wonder and sanctuary of play, self-creation and self-exploration, then we have created something wonderful and beautiful. We do not need to accept what others want of us, what policing words or judgmental glares involve. We are us, wholly and beautifully us. And if we give that up, we give up something essential, critical, integral to our being. We must everyday be following that path, tugging at the pull of what we could and will become, if we follow it, give in to it while not giving in the weakness of giving up. The path is so often lonely and difficult, but if we have faith and trust, we have what we need to survive and thrive. It is the path of who could become, what we want to be.

Being Too Much

The traumas of one relationship often bleed into others

I carry a fear with me about being too much: texting too much, asking too much, inviting too much, and it interferes with a kind of genuine, authentic expression of interest and being

I do like this or that person, and I know I need to restrain myself somewhat, but if I am interested, is it not OK to express that interest?

There is dating advice that suggests I should hold, that I should take care, but this question also comes up in other than the dating world: when is it OK to act? When must we hold and wait and exhibit patience?

These insights often only come with and through time, and they are hard won

But for not, I refuse to worry: I do not want to live in it. I want to enjoy the world and its fullness and my own hesitation does and will inhibit this if I let it dictate my actions.

Instead, why not let my actions dictate?

New Hit Single

Love Lost

A million chances
    maybe more
Counted, uncountable
     on fingers and toes
On bullet points and
     journaled lines
Unexpected texts
     Surprised encounters
Afternoons together,
     Nights apart
Mornings waking, embraced
     Sharp, harsh word upon
word
The endlessstormingof
     Tit-and-tat
Fighting
     Fighting
          Fighting
Fighting
      Fighting
          Fighting
Fighting
      Fighting
          Fighting
Figh
      Ting
Ting
       Figh
T
    i
n
        g
It felt like

     Eternity

Eternity in eachmoment
     Every
discrete
moment
this and all
moments

A millioneternities
in
     one
Now
     Gone,gone
               Gone,gone
Gonewhere?
Turned tonothing?
Turned todust? woodchips?
Dirtontheroad
Hiding? disappearing? disappeared? eliminated? submerged? suffocated? drowned? defecated? shot? shit? pissed? fucked? vanished? deleted?
Hid behind leavesontrees, under rugs, under coffee mugs? rocking beds?
Leaving impressions, residues, images seared on minds and objects and hearts

An archive (archives) of the soul, of souls
Lost forever in the movement of whatmustbedone
Dreaded capital, rearing its unceasing self in anticipation of
The new, devouring what comes and leaving behind
The lost
Love, Lost
Don’t tell me about paradise.

Why must we feel? When did we agree
    To the hurt and the hell and the pain?

To beiNg rocked
by an ocean
ofloveandloss

I chart a course through uncertain seas
     foaming watering seeping inandthrough
cracksinthehull that weneverwantedtosee

I gather every ounce
of myself
I face the
Oncoming

A wave threatens,
    A shadow
casts
a pall
Allisforeboding
But I defy

Seeing Things

Brrrrreak
    Up
And com
e
Back
Up
    Bre
Ak and
Comeback
A whee
L turning
Cre
    Aking
Break
Up and 
Come back
“Well, he’s been
Dead before”
“It’s just a matter of time”
Brrrrreak upandcome back
You
You
Brrrrreakupandcomeback
You
You
You
     You
Brrrreakupandcomeback
Brrrr
Eakup
Come
Back
You
Me
You
This time?
Never,
Never
Maybe
Never
“But this time, I think it might really be true”
Maybe?

Control

Control

Holding more tightly,

       thinking we can

Grip more rightly

Make the thing do

    the thing we want it

To do

Opening up

Letting go

Letting up

Letting be

These do not come to me

       Naturally

But we all have

The capacity to become

And change and develop

And I can learn 

      To let be, let go

The tighter the vice, 

     The more it pushes

The other to go

But we can

     To some extent

Control ourselves

This is really all we can do

And I should do

If there is one thing I have learned

It is this

     But I we all forget

And learning is something I

Need do again and again

One day I hope to be

    Where I want to be

But where will I want to be then?

All I can be now

Is the strongest person I can

And the rest I can little

Control

________________________________________________________________________________

I cannot control much, even as I have tried to do so, and when all I should really be trying to control is myself, even if I have spent so much time ensuring that I have this or that when it comes to others

I am at a moment of great personal change, and I am facing the challenges. I feel some anxiety and some uncertainty, but it is part and parcel of not knowing what is to come

It's Just A Matter Of Time

Things do have a tendency of turning up, whether they are lost, misplaced, mishandled or mistaken. Things find their ways to places unknown, places heretofore undiscovered. But so often they find their way back again. It is a kind of an eternal return.

I do fixate, I do

I will hear a line, and it will ring true and stab through my very self like a dagger. Watching a brief clip from a dirty harry film the other day, Harry Callahan disobeys his superior in visiting a crime scene that Harry himself feels is his (as it later turns out, his superior had intentionally reassigned him).  In criticism of Harry’s own reputation for being forceful, his superior proudly states that he has never taken his gun out of its holster in all his years on the police force. Harry, knowing his subordinate position and knowing that an outright critique would render him fired, disciplined or demoted, smartly replies: “You’re a good man lieutenant,” in a patronizing manner,” continuing “a good man always knows his limitations.” The lieutenant, while unhappy with the comment, thinks better than to say anything else, knowing he is the authority. After reviewing the scene, Callahan comments to his superior that whoever committed the murders at hand did a good job and that the lieutenant would need someone like him to pursue the murderers. The lieutenant declines. The scene ends with Callahan opening the door of his vintage car while exchanging banter with his partner. His partner asks him “what’s with you and briggs anyway?”  In a self-assured way, Callahan comments that “jealousy, he knows this is the kind of case I should be on: it’s just a matter of time.” Casually watching clips and thinking nothing of the descriptive or prescriptive value they might present for me, I was struck head-in-the-lights by this quote (exaggerating a bit here). This line “it’s just a matter of time” perfectly described a situation I find myself in, and while there is the possibility of betrayal of the significance of the line or misappropriate or misapplication to my own circumstances, it reverberated throughout my body in a way wholly unexpected. And I hadn’t heard this particular phrase in some time, and I think this is why it held such significance. Even a few short words can be produced, reproduced and apply to so much.

What do I make of it? A kind of non-divine insertion of truth in a moment that otherwise was filled with emptiness? Or total coincidence? It is hard to know, but it did affirm some of my own feelings on the matter I feel here reluctant to share too publicly. Words and phrases anchor and buoy us. They inspire and discourage us. We must see them as tools but as tools that can be mishandled and used to hurt. But I do feel I have a pretty good sense of when they are truthful or not, and this is what seems to make all the difference.

In Defense of Housing, Review

Book Review, "In Defense of Housing" Peter Marcuse, David Madden

By Joseph Homer

In their recent book “In Defense of Housing,” Peter Marcuse and David Madden chart the history of housing in urban New York as a way to help us understand the social significance of housing as well as provide a critique of the currently-popular formulation of the problem of 'affordable housing crisis.'

Marcuse and Madden begin with an appreciation of the importance of housing in the everyday lives of people and its role as an anchor and as a sanctuary. On this view, “Housing is the precondition both for work and for leisure” (12). While the world outside might be contested and unequal, one's domicile might very well provide the kind of refuge that each of us needs. Moreover, the analysis considers the psychological consequences of having one's housing be under threat. The fear of housing insecurity may force people to stay together when they might like to part, people to stay in jobs they dislike and exacerbate anxieties experienced in other aspects of their lives (67) In this way, the fear of losing one's housing or the stress involved in having to keep it create dual traumas for many.

“For the oppressed, housing is always in crisis. The reappearance of the term 'housing crisis' in headlines represents the experiences of middle-class homeowners and investors” (10). Marcuse and Madden also assert that the “housing crisis is not a result of the system breaking down but of the system working as it is intended,” to drive up prices, create scarcity and discourage development if there isn't any economic incentive.

This book is primarily concerned with the treatment of housing as commodity, as 'real-estate' instead of as necessary place of refuge. On this critique, there is a “conflict between housing as lived, social space and housing as an instrument for profit-making – a conflict between housing as home and as real estate” (4) . We see this problem play out today in the affordability problem: developers seek to build high-end properties, but the market fails to create incentives for the development of solutions around low-income and affordable housing. For Marcuse and Madden (and for the rest of us), “what needs defending is the use of housing as home, not as real estate.” (11).

And yet, even state-sponsored building and building incentive creation has long been bound up with problematic housing practices and attempts to preserve the capitalist system. While creating the framework for widespread housing ownership, federal housing programs such as the Federal Housing Administration and laws like the Glass Steagall Act and other New Deal initiatives “ used redlining, discrimination, and restrictive covenants to entrench racist patterns of land use and to exclude African-Americans from home finance, creating unjust housing patterns that continued to have destructive consequences far into the future.” (24) Restrictions like this hardly disappeared in following years, and the lost wealth involved with not being able to own a home still plagues communities today. Aside from outright racism, most housing policies are driven by the demands of private developers, and this has been the case since the postwar boom years and led to a “state-supported system dominated by private ownership” (25). Importantly, the state is often depicted as a benign actor which acts on the behalf of the poorest and stands as a counterpoint to private development, that is the myth of the benevolent state (140). But an analysis like this is itself hollow: in so many cases, “the actual motivations for state action in the housing sector have more to do with maintaining the political and economic order than with solving the housing crisis” (120). That is, if the state did not act, it would have to deal with an even worse problem of social instability, and so the incentives for addressing the housing crisis may just as well be reformist as anything else.

While the tenant movement is nearly non-existent in Modesto, there is a long history of radical tenant organizing in older, urban places like New York. These tenant movements date back decades to overcrowded tenements in the late 19^th Century, the efforts of which created cooperative housing developments in New York as well as strong community organizing groups dispersed throughout the New York urban area (115). Moreover, housing movements such as these are made up of people of all walks of life, and in some cases, they have had great impact on city and state actions (147).

It is crucial that we come to some new consensus on how we think the significance, ownership and development of housing. This is crucial as “housing preeminently creates and reinforces connections between people, communities, and institutions, and thus it ultimately creates relationships of power” (89). And so, neglecting the relations of power bound up with the production, ownership and development of housing is akin to neglecting the realities of power. Marcuse and Madden suggest several palliatives for us, although some of these are a bit clouded and need testing. First, they encourage us to “decommodify and de-financialize the housing system” (201). They suggest we do so in many ways, some having to do with rent control and others with public housing. Importantly, they also recommend that we consider cultivating “community land trusts,” or ownership situations in which a “nonprofit corporation holds land in trust and offers permanently affordable limited-equity, long-term leases to residents (209). Other prescriptions involve democratizing housing management and housing policy and seeing the housing struggle as part of a larger political and economic struggle created by the depredations of Capitalism (211, 212, 213). Moreover, they criticize the all-too-easy action of creation housing rights which are not enforced or fail to have the impact they intended.

So what does this mean for us? Modesto can certainly learn from some of these lessons, and as it grows as a town, it must take care not to invite the kinds of development that would inhibit the fair sharing of public space and the ability even of the poorest to have a place to find their refuge and rest. Remember, there are people living downtown already, and building them out might very well reproduce the kinds of inequality of ownership and power described here. And now is the time to make sure it does not happen.

Joseph Homer is a local organizer, fundraiser and homeless advocate who was worked with several community-based organizations to call attention to and highlight inequalities. Please reach out to him if you are interested in our Friday political chats or getting involved in activism or organizing work Email - jhomer42@gmail.com.