Zentopia

It's holiday time in Kailua and all is zen.

In addition to everything else he may represent, it feels very strange to watch the President-Elect become the poster-boy for a lifestyle practice some of us have been developing for many years:

The mood of Mr. Obama, to many observers here in Hawaii, embodies the Aloha Spirit, a peaceful state of mind and a friendly attitude of acceptance of a variety of ideas and cultures. More than simply a laid-back vibe, many Hawaiians believe in a divine and spiritual power that provides a sustaining life energy.

[...]

Mr. Obama is spending Christmas secluded in a compound of rental houses that he and his family are sharing with a group of friends from Chicago along the handsome beaches of Kailua, on the windward coast of Oahu. It seems a world away from the hustle of Honolulu, which is the face of Hawaii for many residents of the continental United States who have never traveled to this part of the world.

For now, the vibe in town is that most locals think "it's all good."

But then again, we think remixing Wallace Stevens with Malevich with Nietzsche is a good thing and have totally bought into The Supreme Fiction.

Current mood: Zany.

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Metadata: Obama, Kailua, beaches, fiction

Samples for Future Mash-Up

The dream: to know a foreign (alien) language and yet not understand it: to perceive the difference in it without that difference ever being recuperated by the superficial sociality of discourse, community, or vulgarity; to know, positively refracted in a new language, the impossibilities of our own; to learn the systematics of the inconceivable; to undo our own "reality" under the effect of the other formulations, other syntaxes; to discover certain unsuspected positions of the subject in utterance, to displace the subject’s topology; in a word, to descend into the untranslatable, to experience its shock without ever muffling it […]

Roland Barthes

I became very interested in the model of schizophrenia. I wanted to explore the use of the word 'I', that’s the only thing I wanted to do. So I placed very direct autobiographical -- just diary material, right next to fake diary material. I tried to figure out who I wasn’t and I went to texts of murderesses ... I was doing experiments about memory.

Kathy Acker

"I want to revolutionize biography in a night."

Virginia Woolf

What's the connection?

Cut-up / cut-in / copy it out.

Overwrite.

Oozing suture.

Signature effect.

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Metadata: Roland Barthes, Kathy Acker, Virginia Woolf, autobiography, meta-tag team

The Big O

The Big O is back in town.

Things are still sleepy in Kailua but the spotlight is definitely back on the neighborhood even more than in August and no doubt we'll be encountering the motorcade every now and then although it's clear that this post-election victory is different than the visit this past summer:

When Barack Obama vacationed on Oahu as a presidential candidate in August, he was seen all over the island: playing basketball at his alma mater, eating shave ice with his daughters, bodysurfing in the Pacific, touring the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and trekking to a scenic overlook atop windward peaks.

But this month, returning to his former home as president-elect, Obama has gone from Hawaii's tourist in chief to its hermit in chief. He has been unusually private at the start of his 13-day holiday vacation, providing an early glimpse of what any tropical getaways during his presidency may be like.

Still, it's nice to know the Prez-Elect has such good taste when it comes to choosing the world's best beaches (Kailua and Lanikai). Plus, since he's a real homie born on the other side of the Pali, he's very welcome here. I'll never forget the night of the Democratic caucuses back in February. This P-VJ blog post caught the attention of major right wing blog sites the day of the caucus.

Meanwhile, Professor VJ's top priority is not patiently awaiting the next Obama sighting but finishing the first draft of the new book, Remixology.

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Metadata: Obama, Kailua, beaches, Remixology