Tag Archives: Charles Bivona

It Seems I’m a Professor Again: for my former and future students #njpoet

I have two bosses down at the university. One of them seems just as, if not more anxious than I am. We’re cordial to each other, and he is a very nice man—don’t get me wrong—but we also seem to repel each other like the neurotic poles of two powerful magnets. It’s like a physics. We’re helpless before these forces.

I will say this for my co-superior, Dr. _________, his work is damn impressive. He helped design the writing curriculum. He knows his pedagogy inside and out. He must be as obessive as I am when I get lost in study.

My other boss, the man who hired me, he held onto my CV for several years after I first emailed it to him. He was impressed. He filed my credentials away, waiting for an adjunct position to open. That’s the story he told in the email requesting an interview.

I had given up on ever working in academia again. I hadn’t been in a college classroom for over three years. At the time, I was blogging for donations, selling my books, writing letters for my doctor friends—50 bucks, by the way. I was doing anything I could to pad Luz’s salary, to keep our bills paid, but we were still falling behind a little more each month. Another eviction notice was coming soon.

The course paid $3800, enough to avoid the eviction and keep us in a paycheck to paycheck safe zone so we could catch our breath for awhile.

I nearly had a panic attack during the interview because we needed the job so much. I was sweating and stammering and unsure of myself. It was a disaster. But he hired me anyway. He said my CV, my experience, was too impressive to pass up. I may suck at job interviews, but I’m clearly a very good teacher.

How about that?

He assigned me a College Writing course my first semester, then an Early American Literature course last semester, and this coming Fall semester I’ll be teaching two sections of World Literature.

How about that?

It seems that I’m a professor again, at least until the end of 2013. I’ll take it.

#njpoet

Feeling Tired: a note #njpoet

By Charles Bivona.

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I’m feeling tired tonight, run down, yawning through conversations. My eyes have been drooping all afternoon.

The great news, my blood pressure is finally coming down—thanks to the medication, I suppose. But as my friend Luke insists, it’s probably the result of a combination of changes I’ve been making.

To give myself some credit, I’ve lost over 20 pounds these past few months, 31 pounds total in the last year. I’ve been exercising without obsessing, without pushing myself until the gym becomes another source of stress and anxiety. And I’ve been writing every day—blog posts and book ideas that I’m building up the confidence to just freewrite, revise, edit, proofread, and finally publish.

I’m tired of people asking where they can buy my books, and having no books to sell them. It’s time to get this done. It’s time to just write.

However, I can’t let my writing process stress me out either. Nothing good will come from that, for my health or for my work.

So, since I nearly pulled a msucle writing my Father’s Day post last night, I’m going to cut this note a little short and take some time off. Have to keep this healthy living thing going, ya know?

Maybe I’ll go sit on my front stoop and meditate, listen to the wind in the trees and the sounds of my neighbors getting home. Or maybe I’ll casually work on some books I’ve been reading for pleasure: World War Z—highly recommended. Or maybe I’ll just take a hot shower, do some light yoga, and get to bed super early.

Exhale.

Until tomorrow, then. Be well, my faithful readers. And, as always, thank you so very much for always reading along.

#njpoet

Happy Father’s Day #njpoet

By Charles Bivona.

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for my siblings and their children

No one ever asks for my side of the story when I tell them I don’t really celebrate Father’s Day. They just jump to assumptions, accusations, and lectures. Every year, the same: I should forgive my father. I’ll regret it when he’s dead.

I’ve been estranged from my father since 2003. He called me out of the blue one afternoon, screaming accusations, gripped by the paranoia he brought home from Vietnam. I haven’t spoken to him since. I finally stopped trying to reconcile last year.

The last time I reached out was in desperation. I was unemployed. My wife and I were facing eviction and eating from a food bank. I sent a message through the grapevine I’d been using to keep tabs on him for years.

“Dad, I need help. Please.”

My father owns three houses and pays no property taxes because he’s a disabled veteran.

Dad’s response to my cry for help: “No.”

So, Father’s Day hits me hard. Every year, it’s depression, bitterness, and a deep anger. I’ve learned to keep these feelings to myself on Father’s Day, lest I get subjected to the lectures.

“You should really forgive your father. You’ll be sorry when he’s dead. You’ll wish you hadn’t rejected him like this.”

To which I want to explode, “Reject him? He rejected me!”

But saying that has never pierced the clouded awareness of most people. They just unconsciously move on with the pre-recorded Father’s Day lecture.

“Look,” they say, “we all have issues with dad, but you really need to let it go, man.”

I used to eventually get rude with people like this. I was filled with poetic rage. I used to tell these people to go fuck themselves in the face with a rusty hammer, or something equally vivid.

That was then.

Moving into my forties, I intend to make myself clear. If my father called me tonight, I would talk to him. I would try to work it out. But he won’t call me. And he has never returned my calls when I’ve reached out. Even when I reached out in desperate trouble, I got nothing from my father. He rejected me. He’s rejected me dozens of times. He abandoned me in countless ways. Please try to understand this, I argue.

Sadly, some people just will not accept this. The blame and the burden will always be on me. I must have done something wrong, or I should be the bigger man, or I’m supposed to honor my father no matter what, or some other variation of the victim-blaming story. Familiar.

As an adult survivor, this blame has the potential to feed a resentment strong enough to make me slowly divorce myself from American culture, go hide in the mountains and write poetry until this whole silly game collapses. But that’s the artist in me talking, or the borderline hermit.

As a cultural theorist, as someone who pays attention for a living, however, I find it interesting that so many will not face the crisis of fatherhood that continues to rage in this culture, even though there are deadbeat dads and their damaged children walking around everywhere. I find it interesting that well-meaning, compassionate people continue, year after year, to lay the blame for my shitty father’s choices at my feet.

Denial and projection and blame, it’s what we do best in America, I suppose. That, and feeling offended. We’re very good at being offended by every little thing.

So, on the off chance that I have offended anyone with this Father’s Day post, let me say that I am truly sorry. I’ll try to end on a positive note.

Happy Father’s Day to my brother and my brother-in-law, the two greatest dads I know.

Happy Father’s day to my father-in-law, Leo Costa. Thank you for letting me call you daddy since day one. That has meant more to me than you will ever know.

And to my biological deadbeat father, I’m sorry, but your rejections have poisoned my life for too long. It’s time for me to let you go, to give up hope. I’m glad I got to know you. Those years we spent communicating in my twenties helped me to better understand myself. I’m glad we had that time. Do enjoy your new family. You deserve each other. Farewell.

…

And one last thing, dad, before you go.

In about five or six years, give or take, maybe sooner, you’re gonna meet someone new at a party or a barbecue. When you introduce yourself, when this new person hears your name—Charles Bivona—that person will say this:

“Oh! Like the famous writer?!”

And maybe, in that moment, something will click, and maybe my faithful reader will realize that you’re the father I’ve been writing about all these years.

In that moment, you’ll be confronted with someone who knows the truth about you, all of it. You’ll be standing there naked in a pool of your own karma, all thanks to the poetically prolific son that did more with your name than you ever did.

When you’re in that moment, daddy—and I have every faith that you will be very soon—please do imagine that I’m whispering this little poem in your ear.

“Fuck. You.”

I said I’d try to end with something positive. I’m working on it.

#njpoet

If You Know In Your Heart That You Are Batman #njpoet #WEareBatman

By Editors.

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LEGENDS OF THE KNIGHT is a feature-length, not-for-profit documentary film about the power of storytelling to create positive change.

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Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Batman

American Failures: sounding like a manifesto writer #njpoet

By Charles Bivona.

3 Replies

She told me she doesn’t expect me to ever make any money. Her love for me isn’t about that. That’s what she told me during one of our rides from the train station last week. She desperately wants me to let go of the feeling of failure that burns into the pit of my chest until my stomach hurts.

“You’re a brilliant man,” she says. “I just want you to write.”

But I don’t just write. I mean, I write plenty, sure, but I also teach at this local university, because I have to bring money into this home. I have to. It’s a matter of my mental health.

And that’s my point right there. I don’t mind teaching, but I hate that shitty need to make as much money as possible, that shitty drive to make more and more money. And I hate when people do ugly things to make tons of money, and then act like they really made that cash because they’re so much smarter, more talented than you are. You just didn’t try hard enough to do ugly, degrading shit to get ahead, they say. But don’t worry, they can teach you! Unless you’re just deficient in some way.

Seriously? Fuck off. I’d rather drop the whole game, instead, to be honest. I’d rather find some way to barter with people more and use money less, join a food co-op to keep costs down, move to a cheaper apartment that’s closer to mass transit. Less driving. Less gas. Less worry about the car dropping dead.

In fact, now that I write about it, I would gladly do whatever it takes—simplify, simplify, simplify—just to escape from the tossing and turning, all night, no sleep, wide awake and exhausted and running numbers in my head, groping for creative ways to manauever not enough cash.

If I can just convince the electric company to give me one more week, I can call them, charm them, and then I could keep them from repossessing the car until our next paycheck, end of next week. Is there any way I can set up a payment now to go through on payday? I’ll have to ask them. I’m sure they can do that. Why wouldn’t they do that? It might be time to cash in that bucket of change.

Meanwhile, my good friend, Matt, was living without electricity for three months before he finally got evicted. He lost his job because his company completely collapsed with the economy. He managed to hang on to his rat infested apartment—somehow—for three years.

When the eviction finally caught up with him, he lived in a motel for an entire Spring. He played underground poker, every night, to pay the motel bill, buy some gas and food.

His luck ran out in early Summer. He was removed from the motel, at which time he relocated to my couch for a few weeks.

He looked like he’d been through a war when he showed up at my apartment. He was carrying his clothes in a black garbage bag.

“Hey, dude… what’s up? Listen… remember when you used to say I could crash on your couch if I ever…”

I told him to shut up and get his ass inside.

He never applied for any public assistance, food stamps or welfare or housing assistance, despite my constant goading. Eventually he drove to Florida to crash with family, a cosuin or something. And, eventually, he wandered back to New Jersey—drifitng as a means of survival. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t hear from Matt much anymore. I think he finally let the cell phone go for good.

There must be a lot of people like Matt wandering around the United States these days. Nomadic survivors who at least find a way to maintain their sanity, traveling from couch to couch, like Matt did/does.

What a lonely thought.

Anyway, at the very least, what Luz said during that car ride was absolutely correct. Matt, and those who have it so much worse, the millions of people in this country who are flat on their backs—these people aren’t losers or failures any more than I am.

The underemployed, the unemployed, and the homeless—we’re all refugees of our economic system, do people understand that? Can anyone glean that from inside the social fog of the mainstream media bubble? We are the battered survivors of the economic collapse that many in our country still refuse to acknowledge with critical honesty.

But a lot of people are ready to talk about it. And I’m certainly going to keep talking about it, growing increasingly louder as this crisis rages on. I’m tired of waiting for the fortunate to wake up to the suffering all around them. And I really don’t care who doesn’t like me anymore.

This is the new normal. American capitalism failed. That’s a fact. And we’re likely heading for another massive failure. We have to start dealing with that, bracing for that, preparing ourselves, collectively, for the worst that can happen.

In short, we have to get organized.

#njpoet

Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

An Ode to My Debt Collector: in prose

By Charles Bivona.

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I wholly accept that the occasional bad day is part of life. However, when my day is ruined by some bottom-feeding debt collector, that just makes me snap like an angry dog for the duration.

Of course, I’m blowing it out of proportion. I’m sure. One of the credit card debts I accumulated during an extended illness has finally reached the Superior Court of my Republican county, and I am hereby commanded to fill out an incredibly intrusive form—commanded?—or I will be punished. Punished? What am I twelve? Such language from these lawyers, I swear.

Hell, if I talked to someone that way—in real life, not in lawyer land—I bet they just might feel—what’s the word?—threatened. Yes, that’s the word. Threatened.

So, I’d like to send a heartfelt THANK YOU! to Vulture and Vulture, LLP for the threatening letter and the sour day it caused me. My high blood pressure thanks you for the spike, and, just to inform you, I am officially shopping around for an affordable lawyer, someone to help me become another American statistic: one of the medically bankrupt.

Until then, my jolly debt collector, have a great weekend! And please please please don’t go choke on something. Because that would be awful.

Sincerely yours.

#njpoet

Poetic Blogger Mantra: and the fight for economic justice [for @profwolff]

By Charles Bivona.

1 Reply

I’m noticing a serious craving for structure simmering just below the surface of my consciousness. The world is chaotic enough, the last thing I need is for my work to stress me out. I’ve never minded long hours of reading and intimidating writing assignments, as long as I could find the joy in my work, as long as I understood the ultimate purpose, as long as I really wanted to know what I was studying.

When I really want to know something, I tend to stalk the subject, consuming all the media I can find about it. And I decided a long time ago that I wanted to understand my father, I wanted to know why he behaved like an awesome dad in one moment, only to transform into a total violent asshole in the next. Several in my family told me that marijuana made dad nuts, an addiction he picked up in Vietnam. That’s what some told me, but I never believed that. Eventually, my stubborn questions landed me in the office of some expert in some long dropped PhD program.

“Everything you need to know about the United States,” he told me, “can be learned from a close study of the Vietnam War.”

He assigned me a list of thirty or forty books, and a list of articles and films—heaven—and scheduled my final doctoral exam. I had six months to prepare. I was three months in when the word Wikileaks first hit the media. I took the exam, passed it, found the empathy to finally forgive my father for the abuse, and dropped the doctoral program as an ABD: All But Dissertation. Technically, I earned an M.Phil—Master of Philosophy—which makes me a poetic philosopher, I suppose.

Since then, I’ve been watching the shock of 9/11 ripple through my culture. I’ve been reading and writing and teaching whenever and wherever I can. Things are already much worse than I thought they would be almost thirteen years after 9/11. We have conversations that we would have never had before: legitimate rape and all the other offensive war on women talking points, and the spying, and the passive acceptance of the death of privacy, and on and on.

The economic crash surely helped us spiral down a little bit more. I’m startled by how many homeless people I see wandering around. The police scream at them for panhandling in the train station. I wonder how long it will be before I’m getting arrested for giving money or food to another human being in need. That’s the day I’ll gladly sit in a cell to escape the madness that’s raging outside the prison walls.

Anyway, when I started this typing, I said I crave for structure, but I think it’s more a sense of purpose I grope for. What is my place in the fight for economic justice? What do I contribute to the cause?

Like a good academic, I’ve been falling back on study for years—working though reading lists, listening to lectures, taking notes. A lot of study and a little writing, that’s been my safety dance.

Then Richard Wolff knocked me on my intellectual ass in his monthly economic update for June 2013. He does that to me often.

We don’t have a shortage of smart people, Wolff said in this paraphrase, what we desperately need are courageous people, people who take risks, people who take chances for the sake of change.

Translation into my poetic blogger mantra in progress: bear witness, be an honest emotional reporter of the American collapse. Be a poet—one courageous voice—and write it all down. All of it. Write more.