Anactoria

2009-08-09T17:12:00.003-05:00

The Sword in the Stone

"It is well fixed," he said.

He took hold of it again and pulled with all his might. The music played more strongly, and the light all about the churchyard glowed like amethysts; but the sword still stuck.

"Oh, Merlyn," cried the Wart, "help me to get this weapon."

There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with it. All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about – but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.

"Put your back into it," said a Luce (or pike) off one of the heraldic banners, "as you once did when I was going to snap you up. Remember that power springs from the nape of the neck."

"What about those forearms," asked a Badger gravely, "that are held together by a chest? Come along, my dear embryo, and find your tool."

A Merlin sitting at the top of the yew tree cried out, "Now then, Captain Wart, what is the first law of the foot? I thought I once heard something about never letting go?"

"Don't work like a stalling woodpecker," urged a Tawny Owl affectionately. "Keep up a steady effort, my duck, and you will have it yet."

A white-front said, "Now, Wart, if you were once able to fly the great North Sea, surely you can coordinate a few little wing-muscles here and there? Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind, and it will come out like butter. Come along, Homo sapiens, for all we humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer."

The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time. He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.

from T.S. White's The Once and Future King (p 203)

This scene reminds me of the incredibly moving moment in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when Harry and Voldemort's wands connect and temporarily lock together causing ghostly echoes of Cedric, Lily and James Potter, and others whom Voldemort has recently murdered to come out and offer their protection.

IMAGE: "Arthur with Excalibur" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

2008-08-17T01:27:00.003-05:00

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

This is one of my favorite poems. It brings to mind images: night on the water, drinking coffee in empty cafes, starry lit streets; the feeling of a strong but pleasant wind blowing; images of New York, real and imaginary - glamorous, gritty, mysterious; that mood one gets in the middle of the night when you're out with friends or someone you're in love with - a wildness, a feeling of incredible happiness to be alive mixed with the knowledge that time is short so cram in everything you can, that tenuous balance between complete happiness and complete despair. And playing over everything the sound of The Bleeding Heart Show by The New Pornographers - probably because, to me, that song conjures up similar feelings.

IMAGE: "Couple watching the moonight" by Howard Sochurek

2008-07-31T18:37:00.018-05:00

"She learned romance as she grew older..."

"They knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change, on the one leading point of Anne's conduct, for the subject was never alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen. She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good. She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it...

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! How eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning."

from Jane Austen's Persuasion (Chapter 4)

* * * * *

Anne Elliot is my favorite Austen heroine. I agree with Jacqueline Reid-Walsh when she writes that the tone of Persuasion is not autumnal but rather spring-like. Or, it could be said that it transitions from winter to spring as Anne moves from a period of sadness and regret to experience a second chance at happiness in love. At twenty-seven, Anne is the eldest of Austen's heroines and I find her the most easy to sympathize with and relate to. She is past her first bloom of youth (as the novel explicitly tells us - see Footnote 1) and her chances of marriage, and with it a home and family of her own, have all but vanished.

Eight years before the novel begins Anne was engaged to a young naval officer but she relinquished the attachment upon the advice of an older and, supposedly, wiser family friend - thus the context of the quote above and the recurring theme of 'persuasion.' Since I read Emma and Persuasion right after the other, I can't help but compare the charming, very youthful Emma to the wiser, steadier but no less passionate Anne. While Emma goes through a series of errors of judgment, often humorous ones, Anne's predicament is pitiable rather then amusing. Her acceptance of the advice of her elder friend results in a life-altering mistake that causes her great pain and sadness. While Emma is certainly pained while she believes Mr. Knightley to be in love with Harriet, her experience is very brief compared to Anne's period of remorse which lasts eight long years.

Interestingly, once Anne has experienced pain, has 'learned prudence,' she is finally able to pursue romance when presented with the opportunity: a second encounter with Captain Wentworth. Wiser and more experienced, Anne seems quietly determined not to let this second chance pass her by. As Jacqueline Reid-Walsh puts it, when Wentworth comes to Bath, Anne "instigates a delicate pursuit of Wentworth which bends the conduct book rules," 'stretching and even overturning the rules concerning proper ladylike behavior.' While remaining true to the feminine ideal of the time, she exercises assertiveness - going so far as to deftly announce her constancy in front of Wentworth. The interactions between Anne and Wentworth are beautiful and amusing to read and in the process of her 'delicate pursuit,' Anne enters into a "second spring of youth and beauty," regaining that blush which she had lost prematurely:

"Anne saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliancy of the room. Her happiness was from within. Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks glowed; but she knew nothing about it. She was thinking only of the last half-hour, and as they passed to their seats, her mind took a hasty range over it. His choice of subjects, his expressions, and still more his manner and look, had been such as she could see in only one light. His opinion of Louisa Musgrove's inferiority, an opinion which he had seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Captain Benwick, his feelings as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which he could not finish, his half-averted eyes, and more than half-expressive glance, all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment, avoidance were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past. Yes, some share of the tenderness of the past! She could not contemplate the change as implying less. He must love her." (Persuasion, Chapter 20)

Check out the full Jacqueline Reid-Walsh article: "She Learned Romance as She Grew Older”: From Conduct Book Propriety to Romance in Persuasion. It was only by reading some of the passages from the conduct books that Reid-Walsh references that I was reminded that while Anne may seem rather timid and restrained to me, she was actually acting quite boldly; particularly when doing something so seemingly tame by today's standards: initiating a conversation with a male acquaintance (Wentworth at the opera) instead of waiting for him to speak first.

___________________
IMAGE: Detail from "Portrait of Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan" by Thomas Gainsborough

1 "A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but, not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect." (Persuasion, Chapter 4)

2008-07-30T17:27:00.023-05:00

What the #$@%'s with the double standard?

I'm going through the Huff English blog archives. Two years ago she posted regarding a case in Washington (remarkably the news article is still up!) where a high-school English teacher was forced to step down after permitting a student to enter a poem which included an expletive in the school lit magazine. Since the magazine had already gone to press, all copies that could be found were shredded and the magazine was reprinted minus the 'offensive' poem. I've cited the poem below and the gist is that its about a girl's first sex experience.

The uproar over the poem began, unsurprisingly, with complaints from parents. Take this comment from parent Lorna Soules, for instance:

"This is not the kind of things we need; we need schools that support healthy living and healthy language, that take a moderate view and help parents raise kids," Soules said. "When I came upon that I said, 'Geez, this is too bad and unfortunate — somebody didn't do their job.' "

Interesting choice of words. We need schools that take a "moderate" view? What exactly does the word "moderate" mean in this context? Schools that don't fight the status quo? In the past, taking a "moderate" stance would have meant anything from denying women access to higher education or resisting desegregation in public schools. A moderate stance does not automatically equal a correct stance or a fair or a just one. In fact, this could lead to an entirely new tirade on my part so I'm going to move on for now to what I originally wanted to post about.

What I wanted to address is an apparent double standard. For Huff Teacher writes that schools have an established right to control what is printed in their publications (as per the American Supreme Court).

Alright, that makes sense.

However, does it make any sense that while curbing student expression by suppressing the usage of profanity in student writing, schools are simultaneously teaching students using literature that contains it?

Interestingly, Huff Teacher believes that it does. In her opinion the school was entirely within its right to censor the poem and yet at the same time she strongly feels that "students should have access to reading material without censorship. I don’t agree with preventing access to works of literature."

So basically, its okay to censor students writing, but not their reading? When it comes to specifically school printed publications schools should be free to censor, while they simultaneously provide students with profanity-laden reading material that falls under the approved heading of "literature"?

Cases like these make me terrified of getting in trouble myself some day. I mean, this was an established teacher who had been in the profession for over 35 years who was forced to resign as magazine editor due to - so it would seem - a single misstep.

Does it make sense that such an experienced teacher would purposely go against school rules by printing the poem? It seems unlikely. Which leads me to believe that there were no specific rules regarding the lit magazine's boundaries on student writing! In fact the Seattle Times article specifically mentions that the school district had never taken action in the past when the magazine had previously contained profanities. So evidently the teacher simply made a judgment call based on past experience - that seems entirely reasonable to me. But instead of a discussion subsequently taking place on the rightness or wrongness of his decision, the school caved in and got rid of him when a few parents flipped out and demanded disciplinary action.

What was this really about?

Based on the evidence, it was not about this teacher's worthiness or ability. Jill from Feministe attended the high-school and says that Mr. Kelly was one of Shorewood's "most well-known and well-liked teachers." And the Student Press Law Center has a follow-up article stating that after a grievance hearing Mr. Kelly was subsequently restored to his former position as magazine adviser.

Rather then being a matter of a teacher's failure to use common sense as Mrs. Huff believes, I see it as being about parents' fear and a school which cowardly and unreasonably caved in to that fear instead of standing up for their own employee or even taking the time to address the complaints after some contemplation and conference.

Why did this poem incite such a reaction from parents in the first place?

Read it and deduce what you will....

My first fuck

sure he claims he loves me
and holds me oh so tight
he makes me believe this is special
that he can hold on all night
he claims he isn't pressuring me
but his hand is down my pants
temptation rises and I give in
he turns over
checks the time
gets up and drives me home
no kiss goodnight
no I love you
and no telephone call

by Zoya Raskina

I can understand censoring student writing in extreme cases - like instances of hate speech, statements of threatened harm to self or others - but in this case it seems like an overreaction. Censorship should be a last resort and not something to be taken lightly. In this case, the profanity was chosen to perfectly fit the tone of the poem. When I read the body of the poem and then compare the title, I can think of no other word more appropriate. The poet is talking about sex without meaning, without love, the experience of simply being used and discarded.

Which leads me to believe that what is really disturbing about the poem to parents, to adults in general perhaps, is not the usage of the "f word" but rather the idea that a young girl has possibly already experienced sex in such a harsh way.

I'm curious about Zoya -- where is she now? does she still write? -- and I'm impressed with her father's tempered reaction to the poem:

Her father, Vladimir Raskin, thinks the poem raises a genuine issue. "She is a grown-up person," he said. "I told her my opinion that the poem is good, the title is bad." "It's poetry; some people like it, some people don't," he added. "The problem discussed in the poem is actually relevant and good."

IMAGE: "Open Book" by Nancy R. Cohen

2008-07-28T11:36:00.009-05:00

Suicide promotional literature for teens

I came into work an hour and a half early by accident today and since my car is currently indisposed that meant I was stuck here without a way back home. Thus I'm feeling tired, a tad cranky, and reading a lot of Hobo Teacher today mixed with the influx of idiotic customer calls has only increased my sarcasm level.

Anyhow, I just had a thought regarding the use of Romeo & Juliet in high school curriculum...

Who had the brilliant idea to promote a suicidal love story to large quantities of emotionally volatile teenagers?

My wonderment was sparked by Hobo Teacher's lamentation over the failure of students to sufficiently appreciate the... romance? passion? love? ...behind Romeo's choice to die rather then live without Juliet. And yet, if students don't immediately empathize with Romeo's extreme reaction to Juliet's death, if they actually feel it to be an unnatural overreaction, shouldn't we be kind of... well, glad? Are we actually supposed to be hoping that students will strongly identify with Romeo's decision to die rather then bear the pain of his loss? This with teenagers who are already often prone to emotional overreaction (hey, I know I was! possibly still am...) and are similarly going through all the turmoils of romantic love every day, often for the first times in their lives?

I mean, if suicide is romanticized and seemingly justified in Shakespeare... (Which is practically biblical, right? I mean, King James Bible/Shakespeare = practically interchangeable.)

There's no denying that R&J is a pretty darn attractive representation of death. There's even the whole "happy dagger" bit. I mean, R & J are right in there with the other ultimate pin-ups for star-crossed love: Heloise and Abelard, Antony and Cleopatra, Dante and Beatrice, Tristan and Isolde, Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley... okay, that last one might be a stretch. I suppose teachers could always draw upon the sorrow that Romeo and Juliet's families experience to negate any justification for the double-suicide. (Not to mention perhaps adding a mini-lecture on the pitfalls of impetuous decision making - if Romeo had just waited one second longer!)

Anyways, I'm not by any means trying to start a campaign for pulling R&J from classrooms (although I wonder how successful said campaign might turn out to be). I love Shakespeare and I love R&J. Artists aestheticize death and killing all the time. And I mean, we read Macbeth in high school as well and I know that it doesn't immediately follow that teaching it will cause kids to go out on a murderous rampage of politicians. Right? (Now, A Clockwork Orange - maybe.)

But I do think having teachers lecture teens on a play which romanticizes the suicides of its specifically teenage heroes is just a tiny bit funny.

IMAGE: "Antique key and metal heart on open book, close-up" by David Muir

2008-07-27T02:32:00.007-05:00

"O lady, my heart..."

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twist lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart

but come here if ever before
you caught my voice far off
and listening left your father's
golden house and came,

yoking your car. And fine birds brought you,
quick sparrows over the black earth
whipping their wings down the sky
through midair---

they arrived. But you, O blessed one,
smiled in your deathless face
and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why
(now again) I am calling out

and what I want to happen most of all
in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)
to lead you back into her love? Who, O
Sappho, is wronging you?

For if she flees, soon she will pursue.
If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them.
If she does not love, soon she will love
even unwilling.

Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally.

by Sappho (translated by Anne Carson)

IMAGE: "Woman wearing a black dress" by Bragi Thor Josefsson

2008-07-25T21:05:00.006-05:00

Piles of Books & Puppets

The stacks of books lying around the apartment have been slowly growing and may become ridiculously numerous in the very near future as I just learned on Wednesday that I get a 50% off discount at the used bookstore I've been working at. Above are a few of the treasures I grabbed as soon as I found out about the discount. Among them are The DNA Dimension by Carol Matas, The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (a total perv, by the way), The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, and a Longman anthology of world literature.

Carol Matas is an old favorite. I still remember clearly the day in fourth grade when I pulled The Fusion Factor (disregard the "with reservation" comment at the end - even at 9 years old I had no difficulty comprehending the utter horror of nuclear war) at random off a shelf in my elementary school library. Along with Roald Dahl's The Witches and C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, it comprised the beginnings of my love for fantasy and science fiction. The Dying Earth has been on my Amazon WishList for so long that I can't remember why I added it - I think I was reading about great sci-fi classics and came across it. Hopefully it'll prove to be better then Vance's Big Planet - which I thought had horrible characterization. From what I've read about Faulkner I anticipate loathing The Sound and the Fury, but I could definitely be wrong (I anticipated loving Milan Kundera only to find him totally misogynistic and egotistical; I anticipated hating Anne Michaels and yet now Fugitive Pieces is possibly my favorite book of all time). In any case, I've heard mention of it so many times and have seen it feature on so many high school English teachers' lesson plans/curriculums now, that I've decided to suck it up and give it a try. As for the Longman, I've always liked anthologies of any kind - poems, short stories, plays, etc. And this one actually contains 11 novels/novellas, including The Metamorphosis - which will be my first introduction to Kafka. Plus, I've been reading a bunch of teachers' blogs lately and one, Hipteacher, kept mentioning World Literature classes that she has to teach. Since the extent of my exposure to World Lit in university has basically just been Canadian, American, and British I feel like I should start to broaden out on my own.

I've noticed that since I've started to read teacher blogs, I've begun to become considerably more nervous about the prospect. Previously I was simply worried that I'd be a bad teacher. And still am. But as I'm at least 3 years away from getting into an actual classroom, I'm a long way away from finding out whether that fear will turn out to be justified (but nevertheless I'm preparing a stratagem that I hope will help at least a bit). My new fear is that I won't be well-educated enough to be a good teacher, that all of the other teachers will have had more of a "classical" education then I'm getting in my undergrad degree, that my knowledge isn't going to be well-rounded enough, etc, etc. - basically, the fear that I'm not going to be "smart enough," that I won't be a brilliant teacher, just an average one. I think there are actually a lot of things I can do to counter both of these worries - read more about teaching, for one and do more volunteer work with youth, for another. I've picked teaching after so much indecisiveness and now that I've made a choice I'm going to do my best to throw myself into it.

On Wednesday I was at the store shelving Poetry, Local Authors, Literary Biographies, Prairie Fire, and a bunch of other sections (have I mentioned I really like jobs that involve me going through piles and piles of interesting books?) near the front entrance when a woman and her husband started chatting with me. It turned out they were both English teachers from BC and had dropped in to get some ideas as they're planning on opening their own used bookstore on Vancouver Island. The woman actually doesn't teach in the classroom anymore, but her husband does so she kind of shoved him at me so he could give me some ideas. However, he seemed really shy, and, being tired and covered in book dust, I wasn't in that talkative a mood even though I knew I was in the midst of a great opportunity. I was pretty much standing there racking my brain, trying to think up some intelligent questions to ask. Eventually we talked a bit about BEd's and since I said I was looking at options all over the country and the US, he and his wife recommended Malaspina (now the University of Vancouver Island).

He also said that when he started teaching he was completely and utterly terrible at it.

And since he absolutely refused to tell me why, I deduce that there must be some kind of interesting story behind it.

He's now over sixty, has been teaching for over thirty years, and loves it.

Hearing that a rough start isn't a sign of total doom is good to know.

(The finger puppets are lying out so that I remember to bring them along on Sunday when I go to see a weird Lovecraftian themed Fringe play. You get a discount if you bring your own puppet.)

2008-07-25T17:26:00.011-05:00

"We must carry each other..."

“We must carry each other. If we don’t have this, what are we? The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light… It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.”

from Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces (p. 22)

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IMAGES
1: Lodz Ghetto, child deportation (Wikipedia)
2: Nazi soldier laughing at Jews (United States Holocaust Memorial online archive)
3: "Austrian Nazis and local residents watch as Jews are forced to get on their hands and knees and scrub the pavement" (The History Place)
4: "Child prisoners at Auschwitz just after its liberation in 1945" (Source unknown, probably a Google image search)
5: Nazi soldiers, "Laughter lines the faces of camp staff as they prepare for a sing song" (United States Holocaust Memorial online archive)

2008-07-20T02:54:00.010-05:00

The Village

Ivy Walker: When we are married, will you dance with me? I find dancing very agreeable. Why can you not say what is in your head?

Lucius Hunt: Why can you not stop saying what is in yours? Why must you lead, when I want to lead? If I want to dance I will ask you to dance. If I want to speak I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying that I sometimes cannot think clearly or do my work properly? What gain can rise of my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others. And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night.

from The Village (M. Night Shyamalan's best)

2008-07-19T02:34:00.004-05:00

"Altered beyond his knowledge"

"Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so attentive to me. Henrietta asked him what he thought of you, when they went away, and he said, `You were so altered he should not have known you again.'"

Mary had no feelings to make her respect her sister's in a common way, but she was perfectly unsuspicious of being inflicting any peculiar wound.

"Altered beyond his knowledge." Anne fully submitted, in silent, deep mortification. Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse. She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of her as he would. No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth.

from Jane Austen's Persuasion (Penguin edition, p. 57)

IMAGE: Photograph by Robert Warren

2008-07-18T17:43:00.009-05:00

Louisa May Alcott: "I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls"

"I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman's body ... because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

(from an 1883 interview with Louise Chandler Moulton)

* * * * *

Quote:

Daughter of educator and reformer Bronson Alcott, raised in the heady intellectual milieu of midcentury Concord, Louisa May Alcott was encouraged in her literary aspirations to a degree unusual in Victorian America. Yet that encouragement was qualified in a variety of ways. Since Bronson and Abba May Alcott strictly monitored their four daughters' development, Louisa's work had to satisfy strict parental standards of philosophical value and moral worth; further, since Bronson was chronically insolvent, her writing had to bring financial rewards to support the family. The larger intellectual world of Concord in which the Alcotts circulated added to this sense of constraint. "To have had Mr. Emerson for an intellectual god all one's life," she once remarked in conversation to a friend, "is to be invested with a chain armor of propriety."

Despite the innovations of her upbringing, in short, Louisa May Alcott came of age in a culture whose moral and familial constraints compounded, rather than undercut, the propriety demanded by Victorian gender ideology. It is no surprise that by age twelve, she registers the "chain armor of propriety" in her journal as a homiletic discourse on the necessities of self-denial: "What are the most valuable kinds of self-denial? Appetite, temper. How is self-denial of temper known? If I control my temper, I am respectful and gentle, and every one sees it. What is the result of this self-denial? Every one loves me, and I am happy." Faithfully copied from her daily lessons, these comments were almost certainly read by her parents; Bronson had been observing Louisa closely since her infancy, while Abba wrote in the same journal entry, "I often peep into your diary, hoping to see some record of more happy days." Even Alcott's private exercise of self-discipline was open to surveillance, in a pedagogy of self-control monitored both internally and externally. Her coming-of-age accords closely with what Richard Brodhead, following Foucault, has termed the "disciplinary intimacy" characteristic of antebellum America, whereby self-imposed restraint lovingly taught by the family, rather than corporal punishment harshly imposed by an external authority, became the privileged mode for disciplining the self. For all the joyful eccentricities of Alcott's early life, she was governed by a self-regulating pedagogy that rewrote the implicitly male credo of Emersonian self-reliance as female self-denial.

In this narrative of female identity as psychic self-regulation, Alcott's work provides insight into the possibilities, metaphoric as well as literal, afforded women by the onset of the Civil War. Alcott's private writings make clear an identification with masculinity that long predated but was energized by the war. At fourteen, for example, she wrote in her journal: "I was born with a boy's spirit under my bib and tucker. I can't wait [for a time] when I can work"; and at twenty-eight she echoed in a letter, "I was born with a boys nature & always had more sympathy for & interest in them than in girls, & have fought my fight for nearly fifteen [years] with a boys spirit under my 'bib & tucker' & a boys wrath when I got 'floored,' so I'm not preaching like a prim spinster but freeing my mind like one of 'our fellows.'" In these quotations, a woman who speaks assertively is immediately suspect--"preaching like a prim spinster"--while maleness, by contrast, signifies a way of working and speaking freely, as much a style as an identity. Long before the war begins, Alcott identifies agency with masculinity, in a culture in which the only way to imagine being a person is to envision being a man.

When war arrives, it offers Alcott a particular psychic charge, since it increases the value of masculine freedom by framing it as patriotic duty. "War declared with the South," she writes in her journal, "I've often longed to see a war, and now I have my wish. I long to be a man; but as I can't fight, I will content myself with working for those who can." At a turning point in her own life, she declares, "Thirty years old. Decided to go to Washington as a nurse. . . . Help needed, and I love nursing, and must let out my pent-up energy in some new way. . . . So I set forth . . . feeling as if I was the son of the house going to war." Metaphorically turning from thirty-year-old "prim spinster" to "son of the house," Alcott grows up in wartime by growing down to her favorite state, that of boyhood. The war, in short, marks Alcott's coming-of-age as a man...

...Alcott's topsy-turvyness implicitly involves inversions of sexuality as well as gender and race. She declared in an interview, for example, that "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman's body . . . because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls, and never once the least bit with any man." Bringing together masculine identification with female object-choice, this passage is startlingly proleptic of the sexological language of the "invert," only just beginning to emerge by the end of Alcott's lifetime, which pathologized the lesbian as a "man's soul trapped in a woman's body." Such codifications were prescriptive rather than descriptive, and Alcott's biographers provide little conclusive evidence about whether she was lesbian. But her comment suggests at minimum her swerve away from the accoutrements of heterosexuality--husband, children, household--which normatively accompanied Victorian womanhood. Thirty and still unmarried when she went to Washington, Alcott was topsy-turvy--or, to use another of her favorite adjectives, "queer"--by virtue of being a permanent spinster as well as a "boyish" girl.

from Elizabeth Young's A Wound of One's Own: Louisa May Alcott's Civil War Fiction
(American Quarterly 48.3 (1996) 439-474)

IMAGE: "Sabinella" by John William Godward

2008-07-16T19:35:00.002-05:00

Sunday sermons:
A humorous passage from A Handful of Dust...

The vicar climbed, with some effort, into the pulpit. He was an elderly man who had served in India most of his life. Tony's father had given him the living. He had a noble and sonorous voice and was reckoned the best preacher for many miles around.

His sermons had been composed in his more active days for delivery at the garrison chapel; he had done nothing to adapt them to the changing conditions of his ministry and they mostly concluded with some reference to homes and dear ones far away. The villagers did not find this in any way surprising. Few of the things said in church seemed to have any particular reference to themselves. They enjoyed their vicar's sermons very much and they knew that when he began about their distant homes, it was time to be dusting their knees and feeling for their umbrellas.

"...And so as we stand here bareheaded at this solemn hour of the week," he read, his powerful old voice swelling up for peroration, "let us remember our Gracious Queen Empress in whose service we are here, and pray that she may long be spared to send us at her bidding to do our duty in the uttermost parts of the earth; and let us think of our dear ones far away and the homes we have left in her name, and remember that though miles of barren continent and leagues of ocean divide us, we are never so near to them as on these Sunday mornings, united with them across dune and mountain in our loyalty to our sovereign and thanksgiving for her welfare; one with them as proud subjects of her scepter and crown."

from Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust

2008-07-09T12:38:00.010-05:00

Bookish things

Though Mr. Darcy is apparently the ideal romantic hero for many modern women, it would seem that Austen wasn't one to hold out much hope in real-life soulmates:

"There are such beings in the World, perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature You & I should think perfection, where Grace & Spirit are united to Worth, where the Manners are equal to the Heart & Understanding, but such a person may not come in your way, or if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a Man of Fortune, the Brother of your particular friend, & belonging to your own County."

Jane Austen in a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight
(November 18, 1814)

I think I've finished my Jane Austen kick, though there are still a few articles and quotes that I'll probably be posting when I get around to it. I've read Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma over the last few weeks. Persuasion was definitely my favorite - Anne Elliot is an endearing, sympathetic heroine and the themes of sadness, regret, and lost youth make the final happy resolution of the story a very satisfying one.

This just leaves Mansfield Park (I've already been through Pride & Prejudice and Northanger Abbey) - which I think I'll save for another time. I bought a copy of MP from Aqua Books the other day but I haven't been able to move past the introductory essay. Mansfield Park is so far my favorite Austen film-adaptation, but supposedly Fanny Price is Austen's most hated heroine.

So instead I've moved on to Heart of Darkness and a Y.A. series by Tamora Pierce that I've been wanting to check out for a long time, ever since I read that it didn't shy away from plotlines related to gender and sex. That's pretty rare for a medieval fantasy series - especially a Young Adult one. (Can you imagine a young character having sex in a Susan Cooper or a Narnia book?)

I'm at a hilarious bit right now where the heroine Alanna has just been given a magical gold pendant that will keep her from getting pregnant indefinitely. (Well, its hilarious to me anyway - in the book I don't think its necessarily meant to be funny.)

2008-06-22T02:01:00.007-05:00

Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th'eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th'hills shadow steals.
Off with your wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes: and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou, Angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these Angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are as Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus arrayed.
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why than,
What need'st thou have more covering than a man?

by John Donne

Ok, I'm sorry to display my ignorance but when I first read this, I admit my first thought was, "Wow! Who knew John Donne had it in him!!" I had him pegged as being passionate, of course - but passionate only for God! So this was a nice surprise.
However, I'm a huge fan of the first line, but hate the last. My modern female mind construes it as overtly sexist.
And yes, I realize this is a cop-out post - the trouble is that every time I feel like posting in my blog, I'm too tired to actually write something original. Bah!

P.S. Check this out - Rebecca Ann Bach argues that Donne was actually gay. It seems a well written article, but I'm too tired to read it in full now, I'll have to look at it tomorrow.

(The photograph is of Julianne Moore and it's a favorite.)

2008-06-20T01:17:00.010-05:00

'Grand, venerable, and sweet, all at once'

"I paused upon the bridge, and admired and wondered at the beauty and glory of this scene...it was grand, venerable, and sweet, all at once; I never saw so lovely and magnificent a scene, nor, being content with this, do I care to see a better."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne on Durham Cathedral, from "The English Notebooks"

(The photos are of Mont Saint Michel from my trip there in April.)

2008-06-19T14:34:00.001-05:00

The hilariously hypochondriacal Mr. Woodhouse on the danger of open windows

She was obliged to repeat and explain it, before it was fully comprehended; and then, being quite new, farther representations were necessary to make it acceptable.

"No; he thought it very far from an improvement—a very bad plan—much worse than the other. A room at an inn was always damp and dangerous; never properly aired, or fit to be inhabited. If they must dance, they had better dance at Randalls. He had never been in the room at the Crown in his life—did not know the people who kept it by sight.—Oh! no—a very bad plan. They would catch worse colds at the Crown than any where."

"I was going to observe, sir," said Frank Churchill, "that one of the great recommendations of this change would be the very little danger of any body's catching cold—so much less danger at the Crown than at Randalls! Mr. Perry might have reason to regret the alteration, but nobody else could."

"Sir," said Mr. Woodhouse, rather warmly, "you are very much mistaken if you suppose Mr. Perry to be that sort of character. Mr. Perry is extremely concerned when any of us are ill. But I do not understand how the room at the Crown can be safer for you than your father's house."

"From the very circumstance of its being larger, sir. We shall have no occasion to open the windows at all—not once the whole evening; and it is that dreadful habit of opening the windows, letting in cold air upon heated bodies, which (as you well know, sir) does the mischief."

"Open the windows!—but surely, Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent! I never heard of such a thing. Dancing with open windows!—I am sure, neither your father nor Mrs. Weston (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer it."

"Ah! sir—but a thoughtless young person will sometimes step behind a window-curtain, and throw up a sash, without its being suspected. I have often known it done myself."

"Have you indeed, sir?—Bless me! I never could have supposed it. But I live out of the world, and am often astonished at what I hear. However, this does make a difference; and, perhaps, when we come to talk it over—but these sort of things require a good deal of consideration. One cannot resolve upon them in a hurry. If Mr. and Mrs. Weston will be so obliging as to call here one morning, we may talk it over, and see what can be done."

from Jane Austen's Emma
(Chapter 29)

2008-06-17T12:24:00.006-05:00

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely...

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;—but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

Frank Churchill had danced once at Highbury, and longed to dance again; and the last half hour of an evening which Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded to spend with his daughter at Randalls, was passed by the two young people in schemes on the subject..."

from Jane Austen's Emma

(Illustration artist unknown)

2008-06-15T03:10:00.003-05:00

The Fist

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

by Derek Walcott

(I find it interesting that the person this reminds me of is also the same person who told me they disliked all poetry. How is that even possible...??)

2008-06-14T16:08:00.007-05:00

Books Read in 2007

A somewhat belated list...

THE BOOKS:

FICTION

The Knight (Part 1) by Gene Wolfe

The Wizard (Part 2) by Gene Wolfe
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Grey King by Susan Cooper
The Secret Island by Enid Blyton
Greenwitch by Susan Cooper
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory
The Playboy Book of Science Fiction by Alice K. Turner
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn (only read half)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (the book is better than the movie, but the movie is still gorgeous and well-done)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Crisis on Conshelf 10 by Monica Hughes
The War With Mr. Wizzle by Gordon Korman
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
The Englishman's Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Old Songs for New Ears by Pygmalion Books
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Brain Wave by Poul Anderson
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (for which I wrote one of my most favorite entries)
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut (I'm not a fan of his fiction but I am of his person)
I Never Liked You by Chester Brown
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

NON-FICTION
Ara Pacis Augustae by Erika Simon
The War for Children's Minds by Stephen Law
Woman of Letters: The Life of Virginia Woolf by Phyllis Rose
Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World by Louis Fischer
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu
Experiencing the World's Religions by Michael Molloy
An introduction to Philosophy of Education by Barrow & Woods

(There's a sad lack of much non-fiction. Actually, though, the list is kind of deceiving - I did read a lot of non-fiction in 2007 for my classes but what I read was mostly just parts of books along with a ton of journal articles.)

* * * * * * *

BEST
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

(I feel a bit weird putting The Time Traveler's Wife next to To the Lighthouse as TTL was possibly the greatest book I've ever read. But still, they were both really good in their own ways.)

WORST
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn (Its one of Elliot's favorites and it has a really interesting premise, but I found it really slow moving and dull. It some ways it seemed like a less well-written Doomsday Book.)
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (Compared to The Night Watch - which is one of my favorites - or Affinity, this was not up to par.)

RE-READS
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
The Englishman's Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

There are a fair number of "kids" books and re-reads on my list. When I'm stressed out with school work or when its dark winter, I think I tend to find familiar or really light-reads comforting.

Further annoying categorization for no one's pleasure but my own...

SCI-FI/FANTASY/SPECULATIVE
The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Playboy Book of Science Fiction by Alice K. Turner
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
Crisis on Conshelf 10 by Monica Hughes
Old Songs for New Ears by Pygmalion Books
His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
Brain Wave by Paol Anderson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

GLBTT RELATED
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Woman of Letters: The Life of Virginia Woolf by Phyllis Rose

2008-06-11T12:00:00.004-05:00

Margaret Atwood on "God"

BT: When The Handmaid's Tale was published, Contemporary Authors listed your religion as "Pessimistic Pantheist," which you defined as the belief that "God is everywhere, but losing." Is this still an accurate description of your spiritual philosophy?

MA: I expect you don't have the foggiest what I meant in the first place. On bad days, neither do I. But let's argue it through. In the Biblical version—Genesis-God created the heaven and the earth—out of nothing, we presume. Or else out of God, since there was nothing else around that God could use as substance. Big Bang theory says much the same, without using the word God. That is: once there was nothing, or else "a singularity." Then poof. Big Bang. Result: the universe. So since the universe can't be made of anything else, it must be made of singularity-stuff, or God-stuff—whatever term you wish to employ. Whether this God-stuff was a thought form such as a series of mathematical formulae, an energy form, or some sort of extremely condensed cosmic plasma, is open to discussion. Therefore everything has "God" in it. The forms of "God," both inorganic and organic, have since multiplied exceedingly. You might say that each new combination of atoms, molecules, amino acids, and DNA is a different expression of "God." Therefore each time we terminate a species, "God" becomes more limited. The human race is terminating species at an alarming rate. It is thereby diminishing God, or the expressions of God. If I were the Biblical God, I would be very annoyed. He made the thing and saw that it was good. And now people are scribbling all over the artwork. It is noteworthy that the covenant made by God after the flood was not just with Noah, but with every living thing. I assume that the "God's Gardeners" organization in I used this kind of insight as a cornerstone of their theology. Is that any clearer?

from the BoldType interview

* * * * *

I imagine that if Margaret Atwood were an English prof, she would be a tough one. She seems like she has an excellent, dry sense of humor but also a no-nonsense, straight-up attitude.

2008-06-05T00:43:00.007-05:00

In thy face I see
The map of honour, truth, and loyalty!

Henry VI
Shakespeare

(Ok, the quote and the pics don't match, but I'm a fan of Desdemona. Especially Irene Jacob's portrayal.)

2008-06-04T10:12:00.004-05:00

More evil than Walmart

"...controlling the seeds is not some abstraction. Whoever provides the world’s seeds controls the world’s food supply."

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear (from Vanity Fair, May 2008)

Every time I read about Monsanto I'm reminded of the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. Now that I've read Margaret Atwood's amazing, scarily possible Oryx & Crake another comparison might be to OrganInc or HelthWyzer.

One of the VF article's most damning tales is of the town of Nitro where Monsanto ran a chemical plant:

On March 8, 1949, a massive explosion rocked Monsanto’s Nitro plant when a pressure valve blew on a container cooking up a batch of herbicide. The noise from the release was a scream so loud that it drowned out the emergency steam whistle for five minutes. A plume of vapor and white smoke drifted across the plant and out over town.Residue from the explosion coated the interior of the building and those inside with what workers described as “a fine black powder.” Many felt their skin prickle and were told to scrub down.

Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions. Many were soon diagnosed with chloracne, a condition similar to common acne but more severe, longer lasting, and potentially disfiguring. Others felt intense pains in their legs, chest, and trunk. A confidential medical report at the time said the explosion “caused a systemic intoxication in the workers involving most major organ systems.” Doctors who examined four of the most seriously injured men detected a strong odor coming from them when they were all together in a closed room. “We believe these men are excreting a foreign chemical through their skins,” the confidential report to Monsanto noted. Court records indicate that 226 plant workers became ill.

According to court documents that have surfaced in a West Virginia court case, Monsanto downplayed the impact, stating that the contaminant affecting workers was “fairly slow acting” and caused “only an irritation of the skin.”....

....In 1981 several former Nitro employees filed lawsuits in federal court, charging that Monsanto had knowingly exposed them to chemicals that caused long-term health problems, including cancer and heart disease. They alleged that Monsanto knew that many chemicals used at Nitro were potentially harmful, but had kept that information from them. On the eve of a trial, in 1988, Monsanto agreed to settle most of the cases by making a single lump payment of $1.5 million. Monsanto also agreed to drop its claim to collect $305,000 in court costs from six retired Monsanto workers who had unsuccessfully charged in another lawsuit that Monsanto had recklessly exposed them to dioxin. Monsanto had attached liens to the retirees’ homes to guarantee collection of the debt.

Monsanto stopped producing dioxin in Nitro in 1969, but the toxic chemical can still be found well beyond the Nitro plant site. Repeated studies have found elevated levels of dioxin in nearby rivers, streams, and fish. Residents have sued to seek damages from Monsanto and Solutia. Earlier this year, a West Virginia judge merged those lawsuits into a class-action suit. A Monsanto spokesman said, “We believe the allegations are without merit and we’ll defend ourselves vigorously.” The suit will no doubt take years to play out. Time is one thing that Monsanto always has, and that the plaintiffs usually don’t."...

...What had Monsanto known—or what should it have known—about the potential dangers of the chemicals it was manufacturing? There’s considerable documentation lurking in court records from many lawsuits indicating that Monsanto knew quite a lot. Let’s look just at the example of PCBs.

The evidence that Monsanto refused to face questions about their toxicity is quite clear. In 1956 the company tried to sell the navy a hydraulic fluid for its submarines called Pydraul 150, which contained PCBs. Monsanto supplied the navy with test results for the product. But the navy decided to run its own tests. Afterward, navy officials informed Monsanto that they wouldn’t be buying the product. “Applications of Pydraul 150 caused death in all of the rabbits tested” and indicated “definite liver damage,” navy officials told Monsanto, according to an internal Monsanto memo divulged in the course of a court proceeding. “No matter how we discussed the situation,” complained Monsanto’s medical director, R. Emmet Kelly, “it was impossible to change their thinking that Pydraul 150 is just too toxic for use in submarines.”

Ten years later, a biologist conducting studies for Monsanto in streams near the Anniston plant got quick results when he submerged his test fish. As he reported to Monsanto, according to The Washington Post, “All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10 seconds and all were dead in 3½ minutes.”

2008-06-01T02:57:00.006-05:00

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

(The rest of the poem sucks, so I'm only posting the first part.)

2008-06-01T02:46:00.006-05:00

"The places you love that you can never return to are also places
you can never leave.
They become part of your own small portion of eternity."

.

2008-05-25T17:23:00.008-05:00

Paris: April 22 - May 1, 2008

"All Paris was spread out at his feet, with her thousand turrets, her undulating horizon, her river winding under the bridges, her stream of people flowing to and fro in the streets; with the cloud of smoke rising from her many chimneys; with her chain of crested roofs pressing in ever tightening coils round about Notre Dame."

- Victor Hugo, 'Notre-Dame de Paris,' Chapter 2

2008-05-25T17:03:00.003-05:00

Grave matters

"Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful? That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."
- Yudhishtara answers Dharma, from "The Mahabharata"

Some people find it morbid to think about death - particularly their own or that of those they love - and so never dwell on it, never discuss it. But I can't help contemplating the inevitable on at least a weekly, if not daily basis. Maybe its because of my religious background - death was a constant topic and was nothing to be feared at the time because we were so completely confident that we knew what would come after. Of course now not so much. Now its just a huge unknown. (Though not necessarily a terrifying one.)

Anyway, it was interesting to come across this and see that I'm not actually alone in this obsession with my own mortality and that thinking about it may even be healthier than not. I'm not a fan of the "psycho" fields (psychology/psychiatry), but this seems like undeniable common sense thinking to me:

The Salon interview with Irvin Yalom

2008-02-28T17:53:00.003-06:00

-a-note-

I have a new (anonymous) blog, thus the lack of posts in this one.
I may still use this one for nonpersonal posts. We shall see. I'll at least retain the alias.
I feel like instead of being a place to record what was happening in my life so that I'd be able to look back and remember years later, this blog turned into a mess of posts on random things.
And at this point, I'm just not the kind of writer who wants to journal openly. I end up going overboard and putting waaay too much time and thought and effort into my posts. Plus, there are so many things I feel I can't post about here. And life is so busy right now that when I do have time to write, I don't want to have to hesitate or censor myself.

2008-02-08T17:22:00.000-06:00

A Newborn Girl at Passover

This is for my sister, a somewhat belated birthday poem:

Consider one apricot in a basket of them.
It is very much like all the other apricots--
an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day. One you will probably forget
The next breath you take, a long drink of air.
Holiday or not, it doesn't matter.

A child is born and doesn't know what day it is.
The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.
The taste of apricots is in store for her.

by Nan Cohen

2008-01-01T19:14:00.000-06:00

Not such a wonderful wizard

I'm reading Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water for my English class. Today I went through it and looked up a bunch of the names and events that it references.

By way of the Wikipedia articles on Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee I was led to this:

"The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism."

"The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

Who wrote the above?

L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books.

Are you wondering what I'm wondering?

Can a good thing be "tainted"? A "bad person" (what does the term really mean though - is anyone ever wholly "bad"?) can create "good" art. But if the artist is racist and cruel can those aspects of their character "infect" their art? Without our realizing it? And even if the art is free of the unsavory aspects of the creator's character, is it wrong for us to enjoy it? Should we dismiss it completely as an unacceptable product of a "bad person"?

If Hitler had written great children's' books would we be reading them to our children today?

How much consideration should we give to the moral character of the author of a piece of art?

This could obviously be taken to extremes (and already is).

Should we start banning The Wizard of Oz? Should it join Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret on the list of books that have already been banned for their supposed moral offensiveness?

Or should we perhaps preface our reading of The Wizard of Oz to children with a comment about the author's hatred for Native American people so that they're provided with a greater awareness of the complexities of life?

Its a quandary.

In any case, I've never really liked The Wizard of Oz much...

2007-12-17T16:14:00.000-06:00

In Winnipeg at Christmas

In Winnipeg at Christmas
there's lots and lots of snow,
Very clean, and crisp and hard
And glittering like a Christmas card
Everywhere you go;
Snow upon the housetops,
snow along the street,
And Queen Victoria in her chair
Has snow upon her snowy hair
And snow upon her feet.

In Winnipeg at Christmas
they line the streets with trees-
Christmas trees lit up at night
With little balls of coloured light
As pretty as you please.
The people hurry past you
in furry boots and wraps;
The sleighs are like a picture book,
And all the policemen look
Like Teddy Bears in caps.

And oh! The smiling ladies
and jolly girls and boys;
And oh! The parties and the fun
With lovely things for everyone-
Books and sweets and toys.
So, if someday at Christmas
you don't know where to go,
Just pack your bags I beg,
And start at once for Winnipeg;
You'll like it there I know.

Rose Fyleman

2007-11-10T20:45:00.000-06:00

Reading journal for A Complicated Kindness

I’m not sure I can write about A Complicated Kindness (or Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, for that matter) without straying and making personal references. And I’m not at all sure I want to or even should make those references (one reason simply that it can be incredibly difficult to write sensibly about something close to one’s heart). Suffice it to say that shunnings do not just happen in small rural communities and they are not a solely Mennonite phenomena. Seven years ago, my sister, like Tash, 1 came home with science books from the public library and set in motion a series of events that culminated in our being shunned by our family and community. The people we left behind would never pick up a book like A Complicated Kindness and so they will never see themselves reflected in it. Everything they read (or watch, or listen to) is strictly dictated by a biblical code. If you – an outsider – were to challenge their tradition of shunning, perhaps calling it cruel (or ‘destructive, sad, ridiculous, hateful’ as Toews has done), they would explain that though having to enforce the practice deeply saddened them it was absolutely necessary in order to keep their community (“God’s people”) free of impurities and apostate influences.2 They would have no trouble justifying the practice biblically or telling you that it was what God wanted them to do. They believe that what they are doing is fitting and right. (And after all, as an outsider, an unbeliever, who is hardly living what they would consider to be a “godly life” why should your opinion really matter to them?)

Miriam Toews has written about a fairly obscure religious practice and the story has been welcomed and praised – by a mostly secular audience but also by some more liberal Mennonites. But among all those who have read and praised A Complicated Kindness, there are certain basic things that must be held in common to be able to read and appreciate such a book; the most essential of them perhaps being the willingness to admit doubt, to question, criticize, challenge. How does one reach people who refuse to do those things? The people we call “fundamentalists” who will accept no lesser authority than God, who accept the Bible as infallible truth, who believe that the men (for it is almost always men) who lead their church are divinely appointed and thus who’s judgments are beyond question.

Perhaps I’ve made it sound too black and white. Perhaps the urge that follows is to dismiss the people who believe this way as being radical, intolerant fundamentalists, lacking in rational thought. But the beauty of A Complicated Kindness lies in the way that Nomi – Toews – refuses to do that: “…there is a kindness here, a complicated kindness. You can see it sometimes in the eyes of people when they look at you and don’t know what to say.” (P. 46) Nomi “sees all this, names all this, yet recognizes in the same moment that there is in East Village a kind of goodness, a complicated kindness; recognizes that while this excuses nothing, it is not, at least, a place of uncluttered cruelty.”3 The people who choose to live a religious type of life – one that can seem medieval and foreign to us, are incredibly complex, complicated beings, more than just the sum of their parts (or their prejudices). Behind Toews story is a real community with real people in it – flawed, yes, but not lacking in human kindness and who shunned, not necessarily out of malice, but out of misguided love. And if we resort to a reductionist way of looking at them, of distancing ourselves from them, we are falling into a similar fundamentalist trap.4

___________________________
1 “Why did my sister require more than that? What the heck was she doing with that library card of hers? She’d gone too far, I knew that much.” (P. 120)
2 “And everybody was sad, I’d say. Right? Yes, everybody was sad. It was a very difficult position to be in not only for the person who was shunned but for the people who loved them. God especially, I’d say. Right? Yes, God especially. I loved that hook. Even though he was the ultimate punisher, he got no satisfaction from it. It hurt him, but it had to be done. I thought that was damn heroic.” (P. 44)
3 Richardson, Bill. “A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.” The Globe and Mail. May 1, 2004.
4 “Fundamentalism offers a really simplistic, easy version of things to believe in. All those difficult, unanswerable questions that real life asks, are answered.” (Toews, as quoted in “A Complicated kind of author,” Herizons, Vol. 19, No. 1, P. 20)

[Sorry, this is totally not a real entry, I'm too busy with school work right now to write a real one. I'm just posting this due to a request. For the record, my prof responded to the "black and white" query with the comment of, "No, not really." And to the final sentence, with: "Perhaps, but it's arguable..." I'd also attached a print-off of the Wikipedia entry for "Jehovah's Witnesses and congregational discipline" (a.k.a. shunning) to my RJ so my prof would understand my allusion.]

2007-10-28T00:55:00.000-05:00

Excuses, excuses

I have to re-read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and write a Reading Journal on it by Tuesday. Its not that the reading journals are such difficult assignments... in theory. But I always go a bit over and above the call of duty and feel like I have to *cough* research them as thoroughly as possible. Which in the case of A Complicated Kindness, for instance, meant finding everything possible on Miriam Toews (which admittedly wasn't that much) and reading it. Did I incorporate everything I'd read into my RJ? Of course not. Instead I mostly rambled in a likely ambiguous and unintelligible way about my fundamentalist Christian upbringing (read ACK and you'll see the connection). But I had to do that research before I could start writing. Same with Oranges (one of my favorite books by the way, and also closely connected in subject matter with ACK) - right now I'm typing this up in Firefox and I have five other tabs open in JSTOR with various scholarly articles to do with Jeannette Winterson open.

Its very weird. In some ways I am such a lazy, procrastinatorious (C) person and in other ways I can be oddly industrious and dedicated. We have to write RJs for each of the novels we're studying in this class; six of the twelve I've already read so you'd think that would make my life easier right? Because technically I've read them already so all I have to do is write the RJs. No, no, no! I can't do that. I have to read them cover to cover all over again in case something completely obscure comes up in class and I don't get the reference.

*sigh*

I also have at least two chapters to catch up on in my ridiculously badly-written philosophy textbook, Remains of the Day to re-read, a scholarly article on Remains to re-read, a class presentation (which I'd thought wasn't until the end of November but it turns out is next week) to create, two History of Art chapters to read, and a topic and bibliography/references list to hand in in three weeks.

This is the first time I've ever tried to take three classes at once and I thought I was handling things pretty well and I still am not that worried but... I just wish I'd remembered my class presentation date a little sooner...

I guess if I were also willing to sacrifice more doing-nothing (i.e. online Scrabble, random website browsing, watching tv with Colin until 3 a.m.) and socializing time I'd be more than caught up. But that's where the whole "lazy and procrastinatorious" part comes in.

Tomorrow I'm going to be out all evening wearing a long black, red velvet lined cloak.

Before you get any funny ideas (which are perfectly alright with me, don't get me wrong), let me clarify that by saying I'll be at the Zoo.

What? That clarification didn't help?

Okay, okay - at the Zoo volunteering for UNICEF. Normally at this time of year I'd be at the Zoo every night for four to five hours, fundraising and supervising fellow high school volunteer fundraisers, but due to some changes in the Zoo's priorities we're no longer welcome there every night - we've been allocated just this one, in fact.

Which, as part of this totally unfocused post, leads me to Elliot's comment:

One of the activities I listed, helping with UNICEF's Halloween fundraiser at the Zoo, is organized by Anactoria, who puts tons more work into it than I do. So she was a little sad to hear that she missed out on this scholarship. She's got a point. But all I can say is NEXT TIME APPLY FOR IT, WOMAN!

Part of being procrastinatorious and forgetful (I forgot to mention the forgetfulness earlier) means forgetting to apply for such things as scholarships. I'll be lucky if I remember (please remind me everyone) to apply for the Faculty of Education in time for the February 2008 deadline!

Plus, Elliot has a much better GPA than me (and may quite possibly just be naturally brilliant) so he's pretty much a shoe-in for the scholarships. I could make the excuse that my GPA suffers because I'm so busy being self-sacrificing and giving back to my community and the world, but you can probably guess the truth - its just because I'm lazy.

Goodnight.

2007-10-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

Luriana Lurilee

Come out and climb the Garden path
Luriana, Lurilee.
The China rose is all abloom
And buzzing with the yellow bee.
We'll swing you on the cedar bough,
Luriana, Lurilee.

I wonder if it seems to you,
Luriana, Lurilee,
That all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be,
are full of trees and changing leaves,
Luriana, Lurilee.

How long it seems since you and I,
Luriana, Lurilee,
Roamed in the forest where our kind
Had just begun to be,
And laughed and chattered in the flowers,
Luriana, Lurilee.

How long since you and I went out,
Luriana,Lurilee,
To see the Kings go riding by
Over lawn and daisy lea,
With their palm leaves and cedar sheaves,
Luriana, Lurilee.

Swing, swing, swing on a bough,
Luriana, Lurilee,
Till you sleep in a humble heap
Or under a gloomy churchyard tree,
And then fly back to swing on a bough,
Luriana, Lurilee.

by Charles Elton

Its my birthday today.
I'm 26.
Time goes by so fast.

2007-09-29T09:39:00.001-05:00

Three things

1 - Yesterday I wore red (well, dark burgundy) as part of the Red Shirt for Burma event. I'm not sure whether the event existed outside of the Facebook community (I did a quick Google search and the first things to come up were links to the Facebook group, I couldn't find anything more organized than that) but in any case, I'm a huge fan of using tools like Facebook to push involvement in movements (can we call it that?) like this. I mean, going by the date on the first post the group was only created two days ago and in that time they had amassed almost 80,000 members! 80,000 in two days with no "man power"! I think that's pretty amazing.

2 - Thin Air International Writers festival is on right now. Last night, a friend and I went to one of the Mainstage events to see William Gibson speak and read an excerpt from his new novel, Spook Country. Actually, there were a number of authors presenting new works but the one we were specifically going for was Gibson. It turned out to be a more painful experience than one might have expected. The first three authors to read excerpts from their latest books were all... horrible. Horrible!! For almost an hour my friend sat next to me with his head in his hands (we were sitting in the back, don't worry - we didn't psyche out any of the authors, that would have just been mean); I have to say I actually admired his restraint in not moaning or groaning. As I sat there - part of me listening unwillingly, part of me trying not to fall asleep - I tried to figure out how I would elaborate on my strong feelings of dislike besides just saying, "I didn't think they were very good." What specifically about their writing made me dislike it so much? I came up with a few ideas and I plan on getting into this more when I do my reading journal for A Complicated Kindness. I figure there must be some reviewers out there who hated ACK as much as I do (so far - I haven't actually finished it, so maybe I'll have a change of heart and end up eating my words; unlikely) and thus my strategy will be to seek them out and see what they've said about it. That should help me get a better idea of how to criticize intelligently without just saying something is "stupid" but being unable to pinpoint what precisely. Okay, moving along...

3 - Actually, the third thing I was going to post about I've decided to hold off on. I'll just say it involves a jerk in an SUV and a Tim Horton's drive-thru. (And me possibly reacting like a raging maniac. Although I prefer to see myself as a vigilante for justice. You know, like in V for Vendetta... Without any killing, of course. Or physical violence of any kind, don't worry.) So anyways, as a stand-in for number three, I'll write about... Sincerity and honesty. Although, on second thought that might be too big a topic to cover at the moment. Well, I'll make a brief attempt. You see, I'm reading Northanger Abbey and I'm really enjoying it. I started reading it because it ties in closely to Ian McEwan's Atonement (also a fantastic book) - its a novel about novels and the people who read novels and how it affects them. One of the things that becomes apparent by reading much Jane Austen is how she greatly values personal honesty and sincerity. She dislikes people who say one thing but mean another or who talk a lot of silliness without ever saying anything of sense or consequence (e.g. Mrs. Allen and her muslin) or who are inconstant in their loyalties and opinions and emotions (e.g. Isabella). I find that while reading Austen, I start to analyze my own reactions to people and peoples' reactions to other people more carefully.

Yesterday someone told me a story about a person they had recently met and who they had decided they didn't like because they had a bad attitude. In the course of the story, it came to light that what this person had actually done to my acquaintance was to simply decline the offer of friendship that had been made to them - they were nice to my acquaintance when they first met, but upon subsequent attempts to hang out the person avoided them, essentially snubbing them. For that reason my friend had decided that the person was not a good person and wasn't worth their time or friendship after all.

It seems like this is something many of us tend to do - tell ourselves that someone isn't a good person because they don't reciprocate our attentions, because they don't like us (or they're just ambivalent about us). Why do we do it? To save face, to protect our self-esteem, so that we don't have to address the reality and admit to ourselves that not everyone in the world finds us charming. That can be a really hard thing for some people to accept, I think. I like to think that as I "grow-up" I become more resigned to certain facts of life - one of those being that not everyone is going to like me (even people who's favor I really would like) and that's okay. But sometimes it can definitely be hard, like when you like someone romantically who doesn't reciprocate (been there). But I think that even when its tough to do so, its really important to be honest with oneself instead of searching for any justification to dismiss the other person in turn. Everyone is entitled to their likes and dislikes, aren't they? If someone simply chooses not to befriend us without giving any reasons why (which I think is the proper thing to do), accept it - don't just start badmouthing them for it. And yes, absolutely, being "rejected" can really suck, but can't we at least face up to it with honesty? If we can't even be honest with ourselves...

2007-09-27T19:40:00.000-05:00

What a piece of work is man...

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"
~ from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

"I have examined Man's wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine. The peasant I tempt today eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons."
~ The Devil speaking in Don Juan in Hell, Act III of Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw, 1902

"This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death."
~ Albert Einstein, Jan 22, 1947

"The drama of our time is the coming of all men into one fate."
~ Robert Duncan

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
~ Salvor Hardin, from the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

"Time is the wisest because it discovers everything.”
~ Thales of Miletos

The threat of violence at the University of Winnipeg did not come to pass on Wednesday.

2007-09-26T01:03:00.001-05:00

Untitled

I'm sitting here sniffling. I just finished watching an episode of Ally McBeal. The two things are not related; I just have a cold. I blame some contagious friends for the cold. The Ally McBeal I'm not going to excuse - its just an indulgence; if I was watching it alone maybe it would feel more "shameful" but its a way to hang out with a friend; and, please, some people fill their nights watching Wrestlemania or reality TV - compared to which Ally is almost.... intellectual?

Anyhow, these past few days have been a little unusual. Last week I went to check my email and found a security bulletin my school had just sent out; it was to be the first of six (so far, anyhow). It seems a threat was found graffitied on one of the men's bathroom walls and the university has decided to take it seriously. You can read about it here and here, if you want to.

I've been trying to figure out what I think about all of this. Its hard to do with a cold; I really do feel like the cold muddles my thinking abilities (or at least my ability to write coherently) - all that stuffiness, ugh. Anyhow, I'm sure my reactions have been pretty much the same as everyone else's - angry at the person who wrote the threat, angry at the little we can do about it, afraid that something terrible will happen, horribly sad that some people want so badly to destroy. I think above all I hate feeling like, when it all comes down to it, in so many cases we're completely helpless, unable to prevent terrible things from occurring. Sure, in this case we have been given warning (if you can call it that). And we can boost security for a while - the police will certainly be on site all day tomorrow. But what about next week? And the week after? We can't always be on "red alert." Even if nothing happens tomorrow, it feels like the possibility is suddenly so much more real now that something could. (Even though the possibility hasn't really changed; its always been the same, hasn't it?)

I don't want to be afraid to go to my own school. I want to trust my neighbours, my fellow students. I want to be able to stop when someone's standing on the street asking for help (or even a ride!). I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, to assume they're good until something proves me wrong. I don't want to have to hesitate, to be afraid to intervene. I don't want fear to keep me from reacting the way I know I should, to keep me from stepping out the door. (Of course, all that's easier said than done, and this has really only brought to light one fear out of many.)

I hadn't come to a decision on whether to go to class tomorrow night. And as it turns out, I don't have to since my class - among many others - has been canceled by the prof.

I don't think I want to write anything else until after tomorrow. I feel like anything I can write (have written already) is totally inadequate and the stupidly superstitious part of me is telling me to just... stop.

2007-09-12T10:26:00.001-05:00

Thoughts on 'To the Lighthouse'

Don't you just love re-reading something you've written for school and cringing in dismay at all of the things you wish you could change in hindsight but can't because you've already handed it in?

For every novel we read in my English class - The Novel, I have to write a corresponding "reading journal" - about 250 words (1 double-spaced page). At first glance this assignment seems very easy - just respond to the novel, write a record of your thoughts, your reactions, your "wow"or "what the heck?" moments, or some of your observations or interpretations. But I always find these reading journal type assignments surprisingly hard. I think its because I think of a journal as being a private thing (yes, even though I post in a public blog) and so when I sit down to write one that I know my prof will be reading I get really self-conscious.

Anyways, yesterday over a span of about two hours I wrote my journal entry for the first novel we're taking up - To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Our apartment was freezing! Its only plus 5 and the heat's still not on, so I sat on the couch in the living room with my laptop on a little side table and the electric fireplace turned on. (I pretended I was writing in a cold, dark garret by candlelight with a lace shawl wrapped around my shoulders.... No, I didn't, I'm just kidding. But I did forget to turn the fireplace off again and only remembered six hours later. Fortunately one of my roommates had come home by that point and shut it off.) I ended up having to write my prof two times as I wrote - the first time to ask just how formal he wanted the piece to be (not formal at all, he responded) and the second time to find out if I was allowed to exceed the 250 word limit (I was but by no more than a page).

As I prepared to write I decided I was going to try to not edit myself as much as usual. Now as I read over what I ended up with I'm not sure that was such a good idea. There was so much I wanted to say - I had so many "wow" moments as I read it (well, I'm actually still reading - my journal entry is only based on Book I - The Window, which makes up a good two-thirds of the book as a whole) that I think I ended up feeling overwhelmed at being asked to sum up my thoughts in just a few short paragraphs. I'm starting to see now how some academics are able to spend their whole lives writing and analyzing the works of just one author; I think I could very contentedly spend a great deal of time reading, talking, and writing about Woolf.

Wow. That was a long intro just to get to the point of this post. The point being that I'm going to post my reading journal here in my blog and I'm opening it up to discussion/dissection/feedback/whatever. I'm not so much concerned with what you think of the style I wrote the entry in, because like I've already said I know its very rough and I'm definitely not satisfied with it. I'm more interested in hearing thoughts on the points I made from anyone who has read To the Lighthouse. (Also, if you're interested in reading it or comparing passages, there is an online version here.)

* * *

Reading Journal #1

What is To the Lighthouse about? It has characters and a plot (though perhaps a less conventional one) and a setting – but describing those things won’t give a person who hasn’t read the book a true sense of what it’s about. I watched a documentary on Virginia Woolf the other night and in it Nigel Nicolson, the son of Vita Sackville-West, says about her: “She was really attempting to describe people’s relationships. Not in the way that they talked to each other or behaved to each other, but what they didn’t say to each other.” I think that’s so true of TTL – it is all about what goes unsaid – what the characters are afraid to say, or what they think they shouldn’t say (because it wouldn’t be polite or because they’re being protective), or what they wish they could say but can’t because they can’t find a way to put into words that will convey the entirety of what they are thinking and feeling.1

It is also a collection of comments on art – Woolf addresses the difficulty of the creation process is, why it is that we want to create art in the first place, and offers some suggestions of what truly great art is. Lily is constantly frustrated by her inability to paint to her satisfaction (p. 27 “it was when she took her brush to her hand that the whole thing changed”). Mr. Ramsay is constantly brooding about his failure in measuring up to great men, to have left more meaningful creation behind (p. 43 “How many men… reach Z after all?”). Perhaps it could be said that Mrs. Ramsay’s “art” is her life – she wholly invests herself in the role of the perfect wife, mother, and social hostess; she believes her children are her legacy and her living art will go on in them.2 This all goes back to the reason we want to create in the first place – some do so because they simply cannot help it, they are naturally driven to create (e.g. Lily?); others create very consciously (e.g. Mr. Ramsay?) with the motive of being remembered, out of fear of being forgotten. Mrs. Ramsay’s art might be of a more transitory (or what some might even call trivial) kind and yet it gives her pleasure and happiness in the present – she has the satisfaction of knowing that she is needed and loved.3

In the private thoughts of its characters, TTL shows us a reflection of the inside of our own minds – our vanities, our frustrations, our fears, our insincerities. Woolf writes in a way that seems so simple and obvious (the simplicity of truth); she captures the feelings of utter aloneness we all have and then reminds us that yes, we are individuals, trapped in our own minds, cut off from each other, but yet still we are somehow connected: “All of them bending themselves to listen thought, ‘Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed,’ for each thought, ‘The others are feeling this…’” (P. 104)4 As I read TTL, a quote from the title page of Howard’s End (E.M. Forster) keep coming to mind: “Only connect.” I think that this is where the meaning of great art comes in. During dinner at the Ramsay’s a poem is recited: “And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves.” (P. 121) The poem moves Mrs. Ramsay greatly: “She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her own mind the whole evening while she said different things. She knew, without looking around, that everyone at the table was listening… with the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had, as if this were, at last, the natural thing to say, this were their own voice speaking.” (P. 121, 122) The poem has drawn these individuals together, it has connected them; when we hear the truth echoing in art we recognize it, it resonates with us like a memory, like a thought we’ve always had but never knew how to articulate. Great art puts into words what we’ve always wanted to say (or to ask) but could never find the words for.

______________________________
1 “They both felt uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back… No, they could not share that; they could not say that.” (P. 77)

2 “Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For one’s children so often gave one’s own perceptions a little thrust forward.” (P. 90) “It flattered her… to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven” (P. 124)

3 “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” Raymond Carver

4 And she is constantly asking what it all means: “How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after all?” (P. 33)

2007-09-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

A liberal education, indeed

Yesterday was my first Philosophy of Education class (okay, so it turns out that the class is actually called A History of Educational Ideas and therefore you'd suppose it would be considered a History class, right? Nope, its a Philosophy class. The real Philosophy of Education class doesn't count as credit towards an Education degree. Go figure. Just one more of the wonderful incongruities of academia); it promises to be the easiest class I'll have ever taken. The prof will never win any awards for his public speaking abilities - instead of saying more with less, he says less with more. Much more. He's hung up on using philosophical turns of phrase instead sacrificing those for nicer things like clarity and conciseness. However, he does seem like a genuinely kind and nice prof who is really interested in being helpful and in making things easy for his students.

Almost too easy, in fact.

We have no essays or research papers or book reviews to write for this class. In fact, from what I can tell, no research of any kind will be needed whatsoever. All we'll have to do is read the assigned texts and come to class (but there's no mark for attendance or class participation). The grades will be determined based on a couple of take home tests and a final exam. The test questions - including those for the final exam - will be given to us weeks in advance so that we can muse them over and formulate answers ahead of time so that we are full prepared (a.k.a. ask our friends/Google?).

Wow. Now, keep in mind that I'm someone who will drop a class if I think the work load is too much for me to handle or if I feel like the prof has gone on a bit of a power trip and that the class doesn't warrant so many assignments. (For example, I dropped the class that Elliot and I had signed up for over the summer because I felt like for a 3 credit, 2nd year class that would only span about a 6 week period the work load was ridiculously heavy; on the other hand, the not-as-lazy-and-complainy-Elliot continued with the class and loved it and had a lot of fun with the assignments.) Anyways, the point being that I won't usually complain about having less work. However, this is a second year Philosophy class and I guess I was just expecting it to be... well, harder.

Oh, and I was also expecting my fellow classmates to grow in sophistication and maturity as I proceeded further into the university curriculum. I'm being disappointed in that respect as well. Last night I arrived a couple of minutes late and ended up sitting wedged between two other people at the back of a large theatre-style classroom. The prof was standing way up at the front talking us through the syllabus. As I've mentioned, his speaking style could be improved upon and it seems that the guy sitting directly behind me agreed with upon this rather strongly. Over the next hour and half we got to listen to him mutter in varying volumes his opinions on the prof, the syllabus, and the class itself: "What a f---ing waste of time this is!" or "Oh geez, shut the f--- up your moron, won't you!" etc, etc. interspersed with loud clattering noises as he "dropped" his pen on the table for the trillionth time.

After a while of this I was getting pretty annoyed and started going through my options. I could turn around and punch the guy in the noise? Nah, violence seemed a little extreme given the situation. I could turn around and hiss "Shut up!" - but that might have provoked an outburst from the guy and I didn't want to disturb the class or be rude in turn. I could go with ultra civilized option and say "Excuse me, but could you please stop talking?" Or I could turn around and say, "If you don't like the class, why don't you leave?"

I decided this last option was the best one. But then I never used it. I ended up wasting too much time trying to figure out whether it would be hypocritical to blast someone for complaining about something that I was actually mostly in agreement with them about. On the other hand, I did strongly disagree with his disturbing myself and others in such a juvenile way and in being disrespectful towards a professor (who couldn't hear the insults and so couldn't even defend himself). Mix that in with the fact that I'd just come from work and was really tired and not feeling particularly bold. It was a quandary. I thought I'd left lumpheads like him behind and that I'd never have to deal with that kind of thing in university.

Now you might think that this kind of thinking is naive on my part, but I've been in university for over 4 years now (taking classes on and off part-time) and before this I'd never encountered a rude student. Yes, I'm serious. Not one. (There have been varying degrees of arrogant students but that's another thing entirely.) Most of my random interactions or forced, group-work interactions with classmates have actually really impressed me.

But above all, what started to really disturb me as I sat there was the thought: "What if lots of the students in the faculty of Education are like this?" After all, where do we get the snarky science teachers? The mean math teachers? The nasty, grumpy gym teachers who won't let you sit out even when you tell them your stomach hurts (okay, so I faked that a lot of the time, but still)? Those awful teachers had to come from somewhere... And isn't there a kind of stigma or stereotype about the kind of people who go into Education? About how they just want an easy job that pays well and where they'll have the summers off (okay, again, in my case that does happen to be true but I also genuinely LOVE the prospect of always being in a school environment and being paid to teach to talk about novels and history)?

All of a sudden I had the sinking feeling that I was going to end up in classes with a lot of idiots. And that feeling hasn't quite gone away.

P.S. Maybe I'm being too hard on my prof and his speaking style will be more enjoyable the next time when I'm not so tired. Let us hope for the best!

2007-09-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

What sort of diary should I like mine to be?

"I might in the course of time learn what it is that one can make of this loose, drifting material of life. . . . What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art."

~
Virginia Woolf,
from A Writer's Diary

(As quoted in "Some Deep Old Desk or Capacious Hold-All": Form and Women's
Autobiography, Suzanne Juhasz, College English, Vol. 39, No. 6. (Feb., 1978), pp. 663-669.)

2007-09-09T15:01:00.001-05:00

"Of course I'm Meg"

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

* * *

"...Christians build up little gods, little temples of Baal. We begin to worship them. And we must tear them down, destroy them. The gods we erect are easier to worship than the Creator of the universe. They're more comprehensible. The God I believe in is not comprehensible in finite, mortal terms. God is infinite, immortal, all-knowing."

Madeleine L'Engle has died.

(Links by way of the Claw.)

2007-09-05T23:38:00.002-05:00

By the pear tree

"How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by the pear tree, impressions
poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one's pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity."

from To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
p. 33

2007-09-05T13:06:00.000-05:00

Writing-on-demand

After all the fuss I made about writing in my blog, here I am signed up for two English classes in which I'll be made to write constantly. Kinda funny, that.

My first class - The Novel (and by "novel" the prof really meant "the modern novel") - was last night. Despite my best efforts to be extra-early, I arrived just at 6 pm to an extremely crowded classroom. I ended up sitting next to a guy in the very back of the room in a corner off to one side (if the fire alarm had gone off, I'd have been a dead woman). It was actually a lucky pick - that seat, because as high school teachers and - so it seems - university profs are want to do, we started the class off with one of those annoying "introduce yourself to the person next to you" task. This one wasn't too bad because we got to find out what our classmates' favorite novels were (one of Anactoria's ideal questions). And the guy sitting next to me was - blessedly - intelligent and friendly and nice so it was fun. He also seemed tolerant of the fact that I'd just had 3 cups of coffee and thus was in a rather hyper, over-talkative mood (*sigh*). And he patiently waited while I changed my favorite novel choice multiple times in a 3 minute period - finally settling on A Canticle for Leibowitz and making him write down the title, author and my reason for liking it... only to change my mind at the last second and go with Middlemarch instead. Ha.

It was pretty interesting to hear the favorite novel picks of 37 other students. There was a surprising amount of overlap - Oryx & Crake (Atwood) was mentioned three times, A Complicated Kindness (which we will be reading for this class, gag-me-with-a-spoon) was listed two times, and Stephen King - that literary whiz - three times. The classics were almost completely overlooked - there was one mention of The Great Gatsby but nothing earlier than that. I think two people mentioned Gabriel Garcia Marquez - one named Love in the Time of Cholera and the other One Hundred Years of Solitude. One girl named Interview With the Vampire as her all time favorite. Need I even say "Yuck"? I'm surprised she had the nerve. Another named off the Betty & Veronica comics - what??? And one guy couldn't narrow it down to more than three, including a graphic novel (The Watchmen) - totally understandable, of course.

By next Tuesday I have to have To the Lighthouse (Woolf) read and a one page "reading journal" entry ready to hand in. Its weird, I used to have no problem rattling off comments (a.k.a. b.s.?) but now those reading journal type assignments really get me! I make myself so self-conscious that nothing will come out! Hopefully I'll fare better this year since we have to write twelve of them.

Also, I think my state of mind was best-revealed at the end of the class. One of the assignments is an individual class presentation given once each term on one of the novels we'll be reading. Our prof had forgotten the sign-up sheet at home and so just ended up scribbling off a new one in a hurry and then calling out our names randomly. I was called third - a great pick, right? Right!

We had two options when it came to presenting - we could either present on the novel itself (e.g. the themes of the novel, the setting, etc) or we could present "criticism" of the novel - and I'm still not at all sure what our prof means by criticism. Does he mean we have to look for flaws in the novel or just present some outside material? Regardless the criticism option appealed to me so I knew I wanted to pick that. However, in the mad dash to the sign-up sheet (I was cut by 5 people before I got to it) I was in such a frazzle that I ended up signing up to give criticism on The Remains of the Day!

In hindsight the problem with that only came to me as I lay in my bed last night, about to fall asleep. I loved The Remains of the Day! I don't want to have to criticize it! I thought it was pretty much flawless!

Why oh why didn't I sign up to criticize A Complicated Kindness - I'm still only on page 9 but I already loathe it as much as I did Kerouac!

Argh.

P.S. I finally responded to the comments made in response to my August 22 post. Sorry it took me so long! Thanks for all of the feedback!

2007-08-26T14:23:00.001-05:00

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
"the heart and stomach of a man"

"My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

Following the speech, news came that the Armada had been driven from the Channel. The Queen left her bodyguard before the fort at Tilbury and went among her subjects with an escort of six men. Lord Ormonde walked ahead with the Sword of State; he was followed by a page leading the Queen's charger and another bearing her silver helmet on a cushion; then came the Queen herself, in white with a silver cuirass and mounted on a grey gelding. She was flanked on horseback by Lord Leicester on the right, and on the left by Lord Essex. Sir John Norreys brought up the rear."

The above quotes are from Wiki, but there's also a great essay on Elizabeth here.

I wonder if they'll have her give the full speech above or a trimmed version in the movie. Based on the trailer (which gives me tingles) and the super-interesting (that's an academic term, of course) events that I know took place during this part of Elizabeth's reign, I'm very excited about seeing it! And it comes out on my birthday so that's a good omen, right?

However, I do really hope the moviemakers will attempt to be more historically accurate than they were with the first movie.

2007-08-22T17:04:00.001-05:00

Me + Blog = ?

Sometimes I wonder whether my blog reflects my true potential. I like to think I can "write" (write what?) but when it comes down to it, it takes an awful lot to get me started (well, if a school deadline can be considered 'an awful lot'). Often times I'll come up with blogging ideas that never come to fruition - they just stay in my head, partially formed, half-ideas really. Sometimes (read - lately) I'll avoid my blog altogether for days on end because I feel guilty for *not* writing in it. I like to tell myself that its because I'm too busy living Real Life to write in my "stupid blog" but the real reason might just be plain old laziness (it certainly wouldn't be the first instance).

And sometimes I realize the limits of this particular blog - sometimes I want to write things that are really personal, but I don't want to do it in a forum where people who know me will read it. Which makes me think I should have multiple blogs... but when I can barely keep this one going, is there any point? I used to "blog" (I would have called it journaling though) at least a few times a week about what was going on in my life. I still have five years worth of those posts. I rarely read them, but I like to know that they're still there, that they exist, that my memories are in a tangible format and I can go back and check the details of things I've started to forget.

But back to the idea of whether one's blog reflects one's true potential. Some of the people I know are prolific bloggers (does this reflect their innate genius, their better work-ethic, or their admirable supply of post ideas?) and others can barely post once a month. If a blog is a way of putting one's opinion out there for the world to see, I'm not really doing a great job of it. At the same time, I like to think that this blog is mostly for me - just a little pretty website for me to record my random thoughts (or rants, as it mostly happens). I'm not in competition with anyone and no one is grading this blog (judging maybe, but that's doubtful, and if so, do I really care?). Whether I write in it or not - will it matter in the grand scheme of things? And if the "scheme" of things is essentially just life - my life - then maybe if I want to write, I should be writing something more thought out, like an essay, or a journal with a specific theme, or a story, or even a book. In the long run, I might end up with more to show for it then just a blog full of scattered thoughts.

(And while I'm at it, have you ever noticed how many bloggers end up blogging about not blogging?)

2007-08-19T03:57:00.000-05:00

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-- William Butler Yeats

2007-08-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

Goodbye, Harry Potter

From the Salon review by Laura Miller (there are definitely spoilers in it, so consider yourself warned):

"But Rowling is most definitely a novelist; she writes about people and stuff, not about elemental forces and unconscious urges. Like all true novelists, she is the champion of the specific and the domestic, the often unsung pleasures and perils of a good lunch, a crush, a ball game with friends and a little gossip about machinations at the ministry -- which is why the doings at Hogwarts and in the Weasley household were always the best parts of the series. Her books, for all their spells and incantations and magical creatures, have never been the stuff that dreams are made of. Instead, they're the stuff that life is made of.

That's why Harry's great reward isn't something otherworldly, like Frodo Baggins sailing into immortality with the elves in the Uttermost West. He gets married, settles down with a good woman and has a few kids. His fate is to make many return visits to platform nine and three-quarters, even if he never again boards the Hogwarts Express. He gets to feel that twinge, that "little bereavement" that every parent feels on his child's first day of school; time passing, life going on. It's a very ordinary, unheroic sort of feeling, and that, more even than the assurance of the book's final sentence, tells us that all really is well. "

I also like her response to A.S. Byatt's criticism of HP. She doesn't dispute it, but she does justify why HP lacks the sublime quality that other (higher?) fantasy achieves:

"Some critics have objected to an Op-Ed the British novelist A.S. Byatt wrote for the New York Times in 2003, in which she complained that Rowling's books lack the "shiver of awe" she expects from superior fantasy. But you don't have to dismiss Harry Potter the way Byatt does to recognize that she has a point. The sublime is missing from Rowling's series, but then you won't find it in "Barchester Towers" or "A Confederacy of Dunces," either, which doesn't make them anything less than masterly novels. The sublime and the comic don't mix well, and to try to squeeze both into a children's book is the kind of experiment even a master potion-concocter like Severus Snape would wisely avoid."

And lastly - to this, of course, I would answer YES!

"Much as we may love Harry, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and Dumbledore, don't we all love Hogwarts just a little bit more?"

You can read the whole review here.

2007-07-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space

"To summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs, where they are in a position to wonder a the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care.

'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princess Di is expecting again?"

from Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder
p. 20

2007-07-21T16:34:00.001-05:00

The Deathly Hallows: Predictions

Last night was a complete fiasco. I would have thought that the park was more than ample room for an event such as this, but no - it was insane. As packed as it is for the Teddy Bears' Picnic (which is a big deal in Winnipeg). There were security and police everywhere directing traffic. We ended up parking on the road down by the Zoo and trekking back to the Conservatory area. Not a bad walk since it was a beautiful night out.

But anyways, I'm not going to go over the night in detail - the main thing is that it was a pretty amazing thing to be out there with all of those people who were feeling the same excitement that I was and, more importantly, I did end up with a book. It was in my possession for approximately 30 minutes before I passed it along to someone more deserving. All I had read was the introductory page.

When I got home at 3 a.m. I tried to continue reading The Half-Blood Prince where I'd left off but it was no good. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't keep reading it now that the final book was out. I ended up sitting in bed sleepless (unable to even solace myself with the Gilmore Girls since Stephan had fallen asleep on the couch), berating myself for giving up my book (even if it was to a good cause/person).

Today we're having a bbq party at our place and so there was a lot to do this afternoon to get ready. But first things being first, I picked up my own copy of the book at McNally and then proceeded with errand duties. I'm going to start reading it in just a few minutes. Well, unless I get distracted again by party tasks and cooking...

To reiterate - all I've read so far has been the intro page. With that in mind, I'm going to make some very last minute predictions. Maybe reading the first page means I'm disqualified from doing so, but I can't resist.

First, here's what's prompted me to do so. These are the quotations on the preface page of the book:

Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house
and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.

Now hear, you blissful powers underground --
answer the call, send help,
Bless the children, give them triumph now.

Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude

After reading these quotes - these extremely moving, powerful quotes, my predictions are as follows:

1 - Snape is going to die saving Harry
2 - Dumbledore had a master plan all along
3 - Regardless, Harry is going to die
4 - Voldemort is going to die
5 - Ron, Hermione, and Ginny will live
6 - I'll be crying by the end of the book

2007-07-20T18:28:00.001-05:00

Harry Potter's significance

So, this is it. In five and a half hours all will be revealed.

Actually, that's rather an exaggeration since the book is over 500 pages and I'm not necessarily extreme enough to stay up all night reading until the end. (Although perhaps that would be a nice way of paying homage. So maybe I will stay up, we'll see.) But still, for those who flip to the last chapter - all will be revealed very shortly.

I don't think I'm the biggest HP fan out there. Not even close. I do love the books. I think the movies are mediocre but I still go to see them either opening night or week. I've gone to a book release party - the 2005 one at McNally for The Half-Blood Prince. I've dressed up as a Gryffindor student for Halloween. I've got an HP poster on my bedroom wall.

But this is all unusual for me. I don't usually dive into fandom like this (seriously). And not all of my HP memories are nice, happy ones.

In fact, my first memory of HP goes back to before I'd ever picked up the first book. Dip into the pensieve and you'll see my mom sitting at our old kitchen table, reading the Winnipeg Free Press. The third book has just been released and the article describes the frenzy of fans rushing to Chapters to get their copies. My mom is exclaiming in a dismayed voice about how troubling it is to see so many people are interested in a book filled so blatantly with witchcraft. She sees it as another sign that we're living in the Last Days.

I don't know if this was the moment I became intrigued by Harry Potter. I honestly can't remember when that was or what went through my head when I decided I wanted to read the books. But I know it was sometime around then that I bought the first book from our local Chapters. This was probably around 2000.

This wasn't the first contraband book I'd ever read (or even the first that I'd read and kept in the house). My reading of literature that went against the JW grain started in Grade 4 when my class read The Witches by Roald Dahl. I wasn't allowed to read it, of course. So while my class would gather on the floor around my teacher while she read, I was sent to play Winnie the Pooh on the computer.... all the way on the other side of the room. Noteworthy is the fact that the other side of a room is rarely out of hearing distance. It certainly wasn't in this case. As I played I couldn't help but hear the story being read aloud and finally I didn't even bother trying not to listen. To this day, The Witches is one of my favorite "kids books." (If you've never read it, read it - its fantastic!)

The next "turning point" (although at the time I'd never have called or recognized this as such) was reading the Chronicles of Narnia. My teacher had the entire set in our classroom reading section and she recommended them to me (she remains one of my favorite teachers to this day... unfortunately I can't remember her name).

I picked up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and couldn't put it down. I was so into that book! I had never, ever read a book as good before and I was in heaven. I went through the whole series as fast as I could. I brought them home from school with me - getting them past my parents somehow. In fact, I remember reading them on the couch just before our family study began and being reprimanded by my dad - not because of the book but because I was reading when I should have been getting my Bible. They didn't even notice the title (that time).

And so it went - through our entire time at home, my sister and I read books that deep down we knew our parents and our congregation (church) wouldn't have approved of us reading. But that didn't stop us.

Why? Were we just willfully disobedient and rebellious? Well, partially yes - we were pretty stubborn kids and I feel sorry for my parents somewhat, in hindsight, and hope that my kids aren't as stubborn and bratty as we were at times. But at the same time, I've always thought of our stubbornness - when it came to challenging authority - as rather special and something to be proud of. It meant that we always questioned things - even things we were told we shouldn't question and that we were being taught as "gospel truth." This didn't mean that we didn't believe - at least, I know I did - but we never saw a problem with debating our beliefs in order to understand them more fully or to see if there was another way of doing something or interpreting something. (For me, this was particularly when it came to the JW interpretation of womens' role in the church - it began when I was 12.) I don't think it was until much later that we realized that there would never be another way and that challenging would never do any good because this was very definitely not a democratic or egalitarian religion. And I never would have thought that asking questions would ever get us into so much trouble.

Of course, we weren't reading books because we wanted to get into Satanism or the occult or even because we were purposely trying to piss off our parents'. We were reading because we couldn't help being drawn to good books and that was that. Coincidentally, the good books were often the ones with the timeless stories of good verses evil. Just because the books featured magic didn't mean we weren't going to dismiss them. We refused to believe that magic in itself was an evil thing (or, in my case, that it even existed in real life and not just in a story as something fictional and intangible). In all of the stories we read, there were always two sides and the good side always won - the right side, the god-approved side, or even, in my interpretation of things, the "JW side."

Plus, our friends were bending the rules, too - only in slightly different ways. They'd listen to music with explicit lyrics (I still remember the first time I listened to Shawn's Redman CD and my horrified reaction) or get drunk at parties or go to dance at "worldly" clubs or "school date" worldly boys (oh, man, I can't believe we had a term for that), and they had no problem with watch the Lord of the Rings movies when they came out. What we were doing seemed pretty tame in comparison.

Of course, ultimately it ended up being the reason for everything.

So back to Harry Potter. One of my other not-so-sweet memories is of my dad finding one of my HP books and ripping it into pieces in front of my sister and I. Another not-so-sweet one is of my dad going through the books that my sister had been given by the Claw and taking all of the ones he thought looked questionable, putting them in the car, and tossing them into random dumpsters. For two girls who loved books as much as we did (do), this was a travesty and there were tears and rage.

Its weird to remember all of this right now, actually. But as I think back on it, I notice that we were always on the side of the books. Always. Knowledge - no matter what the cost?

When we were called in for "questioning" before our church elders, I defended the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter even then and chimed in when Karina defended herself for having taken out "questionable" books on evolution out from the public library. (I remember using the good verses evil argument, but comparing Frodo to Jesus - not explicitly, but I guess it was pretty much implied - didn't really go over very well.) In hindsight, this was of course incredibly stupid of me and I should have realized how it would have been taken as a sign of deviance and rebellion.

But then, I've never been very good at keeping my mouth shut when I think that someone or something is wrong. Something wells up inside of me and I have to speak out (Jeremiah 20:9). And, even though it ultimately ended up with our leaving them, I still credit the JWs with giving us all this boldness. I still see it in each of us and I think that its one of the more admirable parts of our characters.

Back to Harry Potter again. I've lost a lot in the way of family and friends, but I've gained the freedom to read whatever I choose. I think my indulgence in HP fandom is the way I exercise this right.

And now, with that abrupt conclusion, I'm off to the release party in the park. Its going to be a historical night.

2007-07-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

A conflict of interest

Emma Bull and Will Shetterly are going to be at the Grant Park McNally Robinson next Wednesday at 7:30pm. Going to see them would be so deliciously ultra-geeky. I don't think I've ever met an author I've loved in person before. The closest I've ever come was talking to Carol Matas on the phone (by total fluke). That in itself was a pretty neat experience. (I think I even gushed a little bit.)

However, Wednesday night is also my final Religious Studies class... and we're going to be reviewing for our final exam.

Grrr.

Oh, what to do...

2007-07-15T14:16:00.000-05:00

Periphescence

"This morning I took the train to work as usual. The U-Bahn carried me gently west from Kleistpark to Berliner Strasse and then, after a switch, northward toward Zoologischer Garten. Stations of the former West Berlin passed one after another. Most were last remodeled in the seventies and have the colors of suburban kitchens from my childhood: avocado, cinnamon, sunflower yellow. At Spichernstrasse the train halted to conduct an exchange of bodies. Out on the platform a street musician played a teary Slavic melody on an accordion. Wing tips gleaming, my hair still damp, I was flipping through the Frankfurter Allgemeine when she rolled her unthinkable bicycle in.

You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders -- you don't see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet.

The bicyclist was Asian, at least genetically. Her black hair was cut in a shag. She was wearing a short olive green windbreaker, flared black ski pants, and a pair of maroon Campers resembling bowling shoes. The basket of her bike contained a camera bag.

I had a hunch she was American. It was the retro bike. Chrome and turquoise, it had fenders as wide as a Chevrolet's, tires as thick as a wheelbarrow's, and appeared to weigh at least a hundred pounds. An expatriate's whim, that bike. I was about to use it as a pretext for starting a conversation when the train stopped again. The bicyclist looked up. Her hair fell away from her beautiful, hooded face and, for a moment, our eyes met. The placidity of her countenance along with the smoothness of her skin made her face appear like a mask, with living, human eyes behind it. These eyes now darted away from mine as she grasped the handlebars of her bike and pushed her great two-wheeler off the train and toward the elevators. The U-Bahn resumed, but I was no longer reading. I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out."

from MIDDLESEX
by Jeffrey Eugenides
p. 41

2007-07-14T11:48:00.000-05:00

The Abduction

Some things I do not profess
to understand, perhaps
not wanting to, including
whatever it was they did
with you or you with them
that timeless summer day
when you stumbled out of the wood,
distracted, with your white blouse torn
and a bloodstain on your skirt.
"Do you believe?" you asked.
Between us, through the years,
we pieced enough together
to make the story real:
how you encountered on the path
a pack of sleek, grey hounds,
trailed by a dumbshow retinue
in leather shrouds; and how
you were led, through leafy ways,
into the presence of a royal stag,
flaming in his chestnut coat,
who kneeled on a swale of moss
before you; and how you were borne
aloft in triumph through the green,
stretched on his rack of budding horn,
till suddenly you found yourself alone
in a trampled clearing.

That was a long time ago,
almost another age, but even now,
when I hold you in my arms,
I wonder where you are.
Sometimes I wake to hear
the engines of the night thrumming
outside the east bay window
on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.
You lie beside me in elegant repose,
a hint of transport hovering on your lips,
indifferent to the harsh green flares
that swivel through the room,
searchlights controlled by unseen hands.
Out there is a childhood country,
bleached faces peering in
with coals for eyes.
Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?

by Stanley Kunitz

2007-07-10T19:58:00.000-05:00

Eggs Benedict or Jesus?

WaiterRant has started doing some "Ask the Waiter" style blog entries. His latest is from a guy who writes:

"Dear Waiter,
Over the past year, my girlfriend and I have forsaken going to church in favor of the other American Sunday morning ritual—brunch..."

AHA! A Sunday morning ritual: brunch in lieu of church. Interesting...

Not that I go to church much anymore but when I did as a JW, it was quite an ordeal to get my sister and I out of bed. I'd much rather go in the evenings then in the mornings. So yes, brunch over church on Sunday mornings any day!

Nowadays, brunch on Sundays is probably one of the few "rituals" I have with my friends. (Although since one of the key players often doesn't get home until 5 am and another has a predilection for sleeping until 1 pm, the brunching usually doesn't happen in the mornings; so I guess its more like... lunner? dunch? Hmm.) We'll generally go to Stella's, but sometimes we mix it up with Baked Ex or Cora's or The Nook or The Pancake House. I've noticed that Winnipeg suffers from a deficit of quality all-day breakfast spots. I mean, Stella's has great atmosphere and their French toast and cinnamon buns are awesome but their omelettes aren't the greatest and their hash browns are awful (just ask Colin).

But anyways, go and read the Waiter's response to the letter - its pretty hilarious.

2007-07-10T19:19:00.001-05:00

Small Things

A few little things that I'm happy about right now...

- the free tickets I got from work for a Fringe play & the fact that Fringe Fest is coming up soon and I should have the money to see a bunch of plays

- getting to talk about the Bible and debate the gospels this week in class (I might even bring my JW Bible in tomorrow)

- Elliot's post about his awesome Folk Fest experiences (I wasn't there myself but its nice to share happiness)

- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix comes out today (in which Helena Bonham Carter plays Bellatrix Lestrange)

- I've started watching the Godfather movies for the first time ever and so far they're amazing

- I have an overabundance of good books to read (The Man Who Was Thursday; Tender is the Night; The Other Boleyn Girl; I, Claudius)

- tomorrow is my registration day at the UofW and I might sign up for an English class called Fairytales and Culture and possibly another called Art & Ideas

- the"High A" I received on the season-myth/story/research paper that I wrote for my Religious Studies class

I think that last one is the most satisfying for me. For the assignment, we had to write our own myth story on how the seasons came to be. We had to show a "why" for the seasons and we had to back-up our mythology with scholarly, researched footnotes. I didn't have that much trouble coming up with the story but after I'd written it I started to wonder whether I'd really followed the assignment well enough or if I'd gone off on a different track. Plus, I stupidly left the writing of my footnotes until the last minute and then ran out of time to add in all of the great stuff that I'd wanted to say/reference.

Then to make things worse, our prof prefaced the passing out of the papers with this long spiel about how they had found three papers that had been plagiarized and would the people with special notes on their papers please come up and see him after class.

Of course, I hadn't plagiarized anything. But one of my paranoid fears when I write something fictitious is that I'm unintentionally going to rip off something that's been thought of or written already. So when he said that, I started to panic and mentally ran through all of the stuff in my story trying to think of whether I might have subconsciously grabbed ideas from a real myth or from something I'd read. (Gene Wolfe's The Knight was probably my main inspiration in that I went with a medieval-esque setting, but I don't think anyone would ever think my writing was anything like his.)

Anyhow, finally my name was called and I went up and looked at my paper and saw the High A (a.k.a. A+ - I don't know why, but in this class they call the grades 'low' or 'high'). I think I probably had an appalled expression on my face that was actually just shock/disbelief/relief.

Another bonus to this grade is now that now I'm not going to bother doing the make-up assignment (I missed two of the "pop quizzes") - my grade is so high right now that if I do well on the final exam I should pass with at least a B+/A-. Yay!

P.S. Sometimes when I contemplate the idea of me teaching junior or high school I find myself wondering whether someone like me will ever be able to relate to kids who don't care what kind of marks they get... *sigh*

2007-07-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

Two more good ones...

"Moe is every jerk I've ever known. He's big, dumb, ugly, and cruel. I remember school being full of idiots like Moe. I think they spawn on damp locker room floors."

"I've never understood people who remember childhood as an idyllic time."

Bill Watterson
from The Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

2007-07-04T23:24:00.000-05:00

Bill Watterson on licensing...

"The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life. I don't want some animation studio giving Hobbes an actor's voice, and I don't want some greeting card company using Calvin to wish people a happy anniversary, and I don't want the issue of Hobbes' reality settled by a doll manufacturer. When everything fun and magical is turned into something for sale, the strip's world is diminished. Calvin and Hobbes was designed to be a comic strip and that's all I want it to be. It's the one place where everything works the way I intend it to...

My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who would trust the honesty of the strip's observations when the characters are hired out as advertising hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it up to be an ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out my own creation. I have no use for that kind of cartooning."

p. 10-11
from The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

And here's an interesting fan website detailing the history of legally produced Calvin & Hobbes merchandise

2007-06-28T23:59:00.000-05:00

for Elliot on his birthday

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

by Joyce Sutphen

2007-06-21T21:24:00.002-05:00

For I am persuaded

"Buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave... No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world." - Agniola Di Tura, Siena 1347

I just finished Connie Willis' Doomsday Book and despite a few quibbles I ended up liking it very much. I'm not going to write a regurgitated synopsis of the book - if you want to know what its about you can read the Amazon or Wiki synopses. Instead I'm going to cheat and mostly just take snippets from the email conversation Elliot and I had about it earlier today. Oh, and there will be spoilers.

First, a couple of things I found frustrating about the book:

-1 - The illogic of dropping a female historian in a forest in the Middle Ages and expecting her not to be taken too far away from the drop location and for her to be able to find it again in 2 weeks with little trouble; when Dunworthy and Colin go back to find Kivrin they have a *locator device* with them - so what, they can break the rules when its an emergency but not to prevent one? In my mind the fact that the entire plot centered around a drop that went wrong, but didn't have to have gone wrong in quite that way detracted from the realism of the book. (I mean, I know academics are supposed to be a little off, but c'mon!) And I know that Kivrin's being taken away from and not being able to relocate the drop was integral to the plot, but I feel like Willis could have achieved the same effect but set things up so that we didn't question the characters' intelligence as much.

- 2 - The sparsity of character development. You never learn anything about who Kivrin is - her family, her likes, her dislikes, her more private feelings (like for Roche). And the family she's with - Eliwys and Agnes and Rosumund and Imeyne and Gawyn - sometimes they feel like carricatures. Eliwys in particular - you never find out what she's thinking about anything and her dialogue makes her seem so dense. Its too bad because you suspect that she's really a fascinating character and has a story to tell but we're never allowed to hear it. (Actually one could easily make the same argument with Roche.)

And time and again when Kivrin was with Rosamund or Eliwys or Imeyne, I was so frustrated that she didn't ask them more things - like about Eliwys' sons and husband and why exactly they were in Bath (you never find out!) and how old the sons were and whether Eliwys' marriage was a happy one and etc etc - or even show more outright sympathy, rather then just implied sympathy. I mean, Rosamund is a 12 year old child bride who is clearly going through emotional hell and Kivrin recognizes that but does a baffling job of being encouraging. She pushes her towards doing her duty and rarely shares her own opinion of things. Maybe this is Willis trying to have Kivrin be an impartial historical observer, but one wonders who would really be capable of being such under the circumstances!

However, the second half of the book became so intense that I gave up objecting and just fell into it. Despite all I just said about the character development (and my objection stands!), you still manage to start loving the people as Kivrin does (Imeyne and Mrs. Gaddson excluded - I never did stop wanting to slap some sense into them).

Especially Father Roche - I think I developed a small crush on him - well, who wouldn't love a "cutthroat"? This led to Elliot (Claw of the Conciliator) and I having a mini-debate over whether things between Roche and Kivrin should have been *ahem* consummated (hmm... this lends a whole new meaning to "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished"...). They never are. In fact, in most of what passes between them you have to read between the lines and guess at what they truly feel for each other.

Elliot says: "...chaste love can be very classy. And really, the 'priest-breaking-his-vows-for-love' trope has gotten kind of hackneyed. That idea comes up in The Child Goddess, an sf novel I just read, except in this case it's a futuristic female (Catholic) priest, who's broken her vows in the past and now is struggling against breaking them again with the married man she loves."

I say: "Unconsummated love is sometimes better. I kept thinking of how it would have worked if they had done anything and it might have wrecked things. Or it might have been totally awesome like the scene in The Name of the Rose..."

The Doomsday book is steeped in religion (for some reason I wanted to say "dunked," like a donut, but I stopped myself just in...). This is a pretty obvious statement when you think about just how Christianized Britain and Europe had become by the Middle Ages, but this didn't have to be the case for the parts Willis set in "present day" (actually the future - around 2200 AD). She chose to set the entire story - both Middle Age and present day - at Christmas time and include as much religious paraphernalia as she could cram in - complete with numerous visits to church(es), Latin chants, bell ringers and all. She tries to diversify a bit in her present day story by name-dropping a few non-Christian religions that exist, but you can tell her imagined world is at heart a very Christian one (well, at least, Britain specifically is). Though this is a bit annoying, she does manage to do a very good job of showing a broad spectrum of Christian faith - from the absolutely galling, jeremiad-spewing Mrs. Gaddson to the gentle, quiet, subtler faith of Father Roche - and many more in between.

And then there's Kivrin - who, despite my complaints above, is still a fantastic heroine and who goes through what can only be called hell-on-earth. She's swept up in the wake of the Black Death - the most horrific disease imaginable (though one contender has put forth the Ebola virus as a possible second), which historians - as Willis reminds us through Kivrin - believe wiped out up to seventy-five percent of Europe.

Elliot says: "I thought Doomsday had a really interesting and sophisticated ending. She rages against God, against the meaningless of it all, which is completely the right and understandable thing to do. I mean, it's the freakin' Black Plague. But then Willis weaves in these hints that Kirvin's presence was actually a blessing, that people who saw her as an angel weren't entirely wrong. The message I got was 'it's not *that* you die, but *how* you die that matters.'"

The questioning of faith and the questioning of time - in the world that Willis has created, a world in which the past is mind-blowingly accessible, Willis questions time's significance: when Kivrin is trapped in the Middle Ages and time is a barrier keeping her from home, friends, and family, there are moments where a feeling that all times are one time comes over her - that the past, present and future are all happening at once - Rosamund and Agnes and Mr. Dunworthy and Badri and Montoya and the Black Plague and Baliol - everything. At her most despairing, with death all around her, Kivrin speaks into her recorder: "Is God there, too, I wonder, but shut off from us by something worse then time, unable to get through, unable to find us?"

I don't think I'll ever be able to get certain lines of Shakespeare or the Bible out of my head, and when I'd finished the book, one came to mind: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God."

P.S. Elliot says that in Willis' next book, which continues in the same world as the Doomsday Book, Kivrin is mentioned briefly and offhandedly as a church-goer.

2007-06-19T17:32:00.001-05:00

Social utility... or social crutch?

The lack of posts are a direct result of my recent Facebook addiction.

I said I'd never join because they "steal your soul" (i.e. steal your personal information and hoard it) and I find that scary - but then I discovered a work around (i.e. lie about my real information) and signed up.

I'll return to my regularly irregular posting just as soon as the novelty of it all wears off.

2007-06-14T18:10:00.000-05:00

After Harry...

"Vancouver’s Raincoast Books keeps its offices over a 44,000-square-foot warehouse on the banks of the Fraser River. As the Canadian publisher and distributor of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the company’s headquarters has become a kind of paean to Potter paraphernalia. When you walk in, pennants and a huge pair of handmade quilts — depicting cover art for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — frame the entranceway. Four conference rooms (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin) are named after the houses at Harry’s fictional alma mater, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And there’s a prominent spot for Rowling, too: her only visit to the complex, seven years ago, is captured in a large photograph hanging near the front desk."

An interesting article on what the last Harry Potter book will mean for Vancouver's Raincoast Books

(But really, I think the more important question should be: What will the last Harry Potter book mean for me!? )

2007-06-11T12:17:00.000-05:00

In case you were wondering...

.... what I've been up to lately....

I have an exam tomorrow for my Exploring the Religious World class and so I've been studying for that. Well, except for the time I spent yesterday watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Jared and Aelys. And the hours and hours I spent reading The Queen's Fool on the balcony and watching the rainstorm and eating Chinese food. Oh, and the time I spent on Saturday going out for dinner with Vanessa, dropping in at Dirk's 26th birthday party, and then hanging out at the Toad with Sarah, Tim, Jenn, Karina, Erin and others in celebration of Erin's graduation from the UofM.

Besides all of that I've been studying. Yep. On Wikipedia. :P

Okay, okay - and in my textbook, too. I'm actually really lucky because I love reading my textbook. Its very well written - to the point where I often read further ahead then I have to just because I can't wait to find out what's next.

Other then the exam, I'm also reassessing my... well, life, I guess. My priorities. (Yes, I have priorities!) I've realized that I'm stuck in a trap right now. My cushy, mindless, overpaid unionized job (not saying where) with its terrible schedule and constantly changing hours allows me to have a car and eat out lots but its awful for school. It means that I'm never able to take anything close to a full course load because of my schedule and because I make too much money to qualify for a student loan. So instead I've been paying for school myself. On the one hand, that's a good thing because it means less debt. On the downside, I can't afford to take more then 2 courses at a time. So, I've decided I don't care about the debt - I just want to graduate and get a Real Job that I actually enjoy and which can move me towards other goals, like traveling and moving to another city/country.

So, to stop rambling, the point is - I'm probably going to be selling my car soon and getting a new, part-time, less-well-paying job that will enable me to take out student loans and go to school full time (or as close to full time as I can handle without having a nervous breakdown from too much homework). At this point I'm back to thinking of Education - either Middle or Senior years. I just have to decide what I want to teach. Probably History or English with a minor in either Politics, Religious Studies, Philosophy or International Development...

Wish me luck!

2007-06-04T23:45:00.000-05:00

The World Is a Beautiful Place

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling

mortician

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I know - too much poetry; not enough prose. *sigh*)

2007-06-03T19:27:00.000-05:00

The hour is getting late...

"There must be some way out of here,"
said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief."

Season 4 will be the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica.

They have 22 episodes in which to bring it all together and finish off with a glorious bang.

2007-05-29T12:52:00.001-05:00

Feast

I drank at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root.
I ate of every plant.
I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and bean
To the vintner and monger;
I will lie down lean
With my thirst and my hunger.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2007-05-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

The Golden Compass

The first book in His Dark Materials trilogy is being made into a movie and the trailer is out!* It looks quite good, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high because they could still mess about with it enough to make it just good, rather then spectacularly good (compare the LOTR movies to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for an example of this). I think Daniel makes a formidable looking Lord Asriel, just as should be; though I'm torn over Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. There's something about her that's just so... vanilla. Kind of boring, not enough edge. Mrs. Coulter is a very tricky character - you're always uncertain whether she's good or evil or a mixture of both. I don't know if Nicole Kidman will be able to play her and show all of her... nuances, I guess. Hmm, let's see... If I were to have cast Mrs. Coulter, my top choices might be...

... actually, Angelina Jolie comes to mind and won't go away. You know that half-smile she's so good at (and usually over uses)? Well, that would actually be perfect for Mrs. Coulter... And she's definitely lushly beautiful enough...

_______________________
*Actually, the trailer may have been out for a while, but Karina just discovered it today!

2007-05-25T18:39:00.000-05:00

The Ballad of High Noon

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
On this, our weddin' day
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
Wait, wait along

I do not know what fate awaits me
I only know I must be brave
And I must face a man who hates me
Or lie a coward, a craven coward
Or lie a coward in my grave

Oh, to be torn 'tweenst love and duty
S'posin' I lose my fair-haired beauty
Look at that big hand move along
Nearin' high noon

He made a vow while in state prison
Vowed it would be my life or his'n
I'm not afraid of death but oh
What will I do if you leave me?

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
You made that promise as a bride
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'
Although you're grievin', don't think of leavin'
Now that I need you by my side

Wait along,(wait along) wait along
Wait along, wait along
(Wait along, ,wait along, wait along, wait along)

Sung by Tex Ritter in the film High Noon
Written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington

2007-05-24T15:31:00.000-05:00

Bad civics

I forgot to vote (well, I didn't get a voter registration card and I forgot to call in about it) on Tuesday in the provincial election.

Fortunately, the NDP have won anyway!

*phew*

(I really do feel guilty about not voting. How can I be (annoyingly?) opinionated about everything if I don't do what I say we all should do? Argh.)

P.S. This is also really cool: Record number of female MLAs elected

2007-05-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

The Movie Game

The Claw tagged me for this quiz/meme thing a while back, so here goes...

Instructions:
1. Go to IMDB.com and look up 10 of your favourite movies.
2. Post five (5) official IMDB "Plot Keywords" for these 10 picks.
3. Have your friends guess the movie titles.
4. Then tag three people.

* * * * * *

1. eye patch, saloon, Quaker, beautiful woman, revenge

2. deja vu, infatuation, beach, dyed hair, surreal

3. sorrow, disease, insanity, male nudity, subterranean

4. one night stand, religion, twist in the end, flashback sequence, based on novel

5. brothel, boarding house, historical, undressing scene, Oklahoma

6. archeologist, cross dressing, dog, based on autobiography, American

7. star crossed lovers, fishing, death, shotgun, prison

8. New York City, drug addict, nightmare, confession, mask

9. remake of French film, courtroom, imposter, historical, tobacco

10. Shakespeare References, horseback riding, inheritance, atlas, resignation

I tag... Jared, Melissa, and whoever else wants to play and actually reads this and actually has a blog. :P

Since I found the "hints" others left in there memes really hard to guess at, I tried to make mine extremely easy. Guess we'll see!

2007-05-17T22:56:00.000-05:00

Mouseworld adventures & the impermanence of reality

I haven't been writing on this blog much (no kidding, hey?) because I've been writing on our Disney trip blog instead. I saw a sign in a museum today that said something like "in the end, all we'll have left are our memories." Not a very cheery quote. At least, I don't think so. I've always been rather terrified over the fact that memories will someday be all that I have left because I don't think I have a very good memory. At least, that's my fear - that my memory is sub-par. In reality, my memory is probably average. But I feel like its not good enough. I want to be able to remember the details of everything. And of everyone who has been important to me. Maybe this feeling has been even more enhanced because of the many people who now only exist in my past, in my memory.*

Or, right now, it could be because I've been reading about Buddhism for my Exploring the Religious World class (which I love so far). According to Buddhism, everything in life is inconstant and impermanent, there is no such thing as a permanent identity, and suffering will always exist and affect us - no matter how much we might try to avoid it. And "even in the midst of pleasure, we often recognize that pleasure is fleeting... Try as we might to put everything in our lives in order, disorder soon reasserts itself. In the midst of happy experiences, we may worry about the people we love..." (Molloy, p. 127)

Anyhow. I didn't really mean to have that long and melancholy preface. All I intended to say was that the quote got to me and as a result I'm trying to write down the details of our trip. Its not exactly exciting stuff - just the things we did each day. But it feels good to write it down and to know that next year, or years from now, I'll be able to go back and read and really remember what it was like. Instead of just having a vague, foggy recollection (as is the case with other voyages I've taken).

Oh, and I had a good time, by the way. Maybe too good of a time. It made coming home a little sad at first. Its a bit of a letdown to have to go back to the real world. But at the same time its also nice to be able to relax and not have to rush everywhere.

Yep. That's what I'll keep telling myself.

:P

_______________
* Well, technically they do still "exist" in the real world - somewhere. But for me, its as if they don't exist. And vice versa, I guess. (This goes back to the exJW thing.)

2007-05-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

Song for the Mira

Out on the Mira one warm afternoon,
Old men go fishing with black line and spoon
And if they catch nothing they never complain,
I wish I was with them again.

As boys in their boats call to girls on the shore,
Teasing the one that they really adore,
And into the evening the courting begins,
I wish I was with them again.

Can you imagine a piece of the universe
more fit for princes and kings?
I'll give you ten of your cities
for Marion bridge and the pleasure it brings

Out on the Mira on soft summer nights
Bonfires blaze to the children's delight
They dance round the flames singing songs with their friends;
I wish I was with them again.

And over the ashes the stories are told
Of witches and werewolves and Oak Island gold
The stars on the river they sparkle and spin;
I wish I was with them again.

Can you imagine a piece of the universe
more fit for princes and kings?
I'll give you ten of your cities
for Marion bridge and the pleasure it brings

Out on the Mira the people are kind,
They'll treat you to home-brew and help you unwind.
And if you come broken they'll see that you mend
I wish I was with them again.

And thus I conclude with a wish you go well,
Sweet be your dreams, may your happiness swell,
I'll leave you here, for my journey begins,
I'm going to be with them, going to be with them,
I'm going to be with them again.

Allister MacGillivray

There is a beautiful scene in New Waterford Girl in which a group of Nova Scotian kids sing this around a campfire. (It may sound cheesy but it was actually very heart-wrenching.) Thanks to Sarah for showing me the movie. It was interesting.

2007-05-04T20:03:00.000-05:00

Gone Fishing

2007-05-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

Summer Storm

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn't explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn't speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening's memory
Return with this night's storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

Dana Gioia

2007-04-29T19:26:00.001-05:00

A Geek's Dream

I just got back from seeing Meet the Robinsons and it was awesome! I liked it even better then The Incredibles.

What makes it a geek's dream, you ask?

Time machines, memory scanners, and intergalactic pizza delivery super heroes for starters.

Its a very, very Disney movie.

Which makes me even more excited about leaving for DW in 5 days!

P.S. Check out this article about the wave of new 3-D movies. Pretty neat! (Or should I make that "Neat-O"?)

2007-04-29T04:36:00.002-05:00

Disiri of the Aelf

Her laugh was like nothing on earth. It was as if there were golden bells hanging among the flowers through a forest of the loveliest trees that could ever be, and a wind sighing there was ringing all the bells. When I could open my eyes again, I whispered, "Who are you? Really?"

"She you called." She smiled, not trying to hide her eyes anymore. Maybe a leopard would have eyes like those, but I kind of doubt it.

"I called Seaxneat's wife Disira. You aren't her."

"I am Disiri the Mossmaiden, and I have kissed you."

I could still feel her kiss, and her hair smelled of new-turned earth and sweet smoke.

"Men I have kissed cannot leave until I send them away."

I wanted to stand up then, but I knew I could never leave her. I said, "I'm not a man, Disiri, just a kid."

from THE KNIGHT
by Gene Wolfe
(p. 57)

2007-04-27T19:06:00.000-05:00

A Literary Trinity

By way of the Claw...

Name up to three (Ha! three, my foot!) characters from books...

1). You wish were real so you could meet them.

Heroines
Janet Carter of Carterhaugh
Eddi McCandry of the Oaks
Friday
Elnora Cornstock of the Limberlost
Cim Glowing
Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch

Heroes
Sir Able of the High Heart
Peter Pan of Neverland
James Cobham

2). You would like to be.

Claire Randall
Susan Voight
Disiri
Dr. Eleanor Ann Arroway

3). Who scare you.

Fear-Inducing Villains
Voldemort
Sauron
Mr. Croup & Mr. Vandemar of London Below

Formidable Adversaries
(These women don't so much terrify me as intimidate.)

Jadis, the White Witch
Professor Medeous
Mrs. Coulter
The Queen of Air and Darkness

P.S. Whoops! I forgot to say last night when I first posted this that I tag: Namor, Stars, and Lux! Actually, I'm tempted to tag Spark too - because I'm curious about what fiction books she's into! - but she seems to be very busy.

2007-04-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

as it's said

because
i buried my sense of wonder
under the old apple tree,
in the backyard
you know, the one that got cancer and grew all those grotesque lumps and bumps
somehow-mysterious-shapes
that we worshiped, as faces of the tree or of the cancer
depending on our mood
my mood needs to regrow (i am more than ready)
instead of cancerous outbursts of bark it seems to have caved in on itself
i'm going to look for my sense of
awe.curiosity.fascination.
my senses
and this time i'll refuse to show

to any kids next door, three blocks down, or across the bridge
i won't be shamed or shammed into hiding [it] under stupid old trees
that never existed but might as well have
as it's said

K.J. Grey

2007-04-26T21:20:00.000-05:00

Sir Chubcelot and the Case of the Pink Bunny

(In case you can't tell - that is a look of utter disgust upon Chubby's face. With his eyes, he is saying, "How dare you put this thing next to me and make it look as if we were pals?")

2007-04-22T01:43:00.001-05:00

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver

2007-04-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

No PR for a killer

CBC News has decided not to broadcast pictures, video or audio from the package which the Virginia Tech killer sent to NBC:

"At the CBC, we debated the issue throughout the evening and made the decision that we would not broadcast any video or audio of this bizarre collection.

On CBC Television, Radio and CBC.ca, we would report the essence of what the killer was saying, but not do what he so clearly hoped all media would do. To decide otherwise — in our view — would be to risk copycat killings.*

I had this awful and sad feeling that there were parents watching these excerpts on NBC who were unaware they will lose their children in some future copycat killing triggered by these broadcasts.

Tony Burman
Editor-in-Chief, CBC News"

The reaction to their decision has been, for the most part, positive.

Here's the comment I left (please keep in mind how sleep deprived I am as you read it):

"I'm very pleased with the CBC's decision. I only wish that the NBC had reacted the same way rather then sensationalizing something so despicable.

Also, I don't believe that this is a very strong case of 'censorship.' People toss that word around a lot, but the reality is that CBC does not have the ability to broadcast every single thing that occurs in the whole wide world. It has to make decisions every day on what it will and will not cover. The decision to only broadcast what it considers to be worthy news is not censorship, its just the reality of running a media corporation. And after all, we all still possess the freedom to look elsewhere for a fuller picture, if we so choose."

________________________________
* Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner told ABC News the airing of the tape was a "social catastrophe." "This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character," Welner told Good Morning America on Thursday. "There's nothing to learn from this except giving it validation."

2007-04-17T14:38:00.000-05:00

Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Virginia Tech Victims

2007-04-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

Absolutely loathing Grindhouse

I made the mistake of going to see Grindhouse last night with Colin. I'd only seen one preview for it and had had a favorable recommendation from a friend (whose name I shall not mention). The preview had certainly made it look trashy. But I couldn't remember any of the details and so I just thought it would be a Gone In Sixty Seconds kind of a movie except a lot cheesier. Of course, I should have realized that it was actually going to be more of a Sin City/Kill Bill kind of a movie.

And it was - to an extent. Only a lot worse. In fact, it was the worst movie I've ever seen. And by that I mean it was disgusting, it was horrific, it was pointless, it was misogynistic, it was lacking any sort of believable or interesting plot; in short, it was utter trash. It was everything that a real grind house movie would have been. Too bad I didn't know the meaning of the term 'grind house' before I saw the movie...

I began to long to leave the theatre part way through the first half of the first movie (Grindhouse is actually 2 movies - both terrible - shown together) when I realized my eyes were closed more then they were open. But Colin had been nice enough to pay for my ticket and he was enjoying it (he's an avid video game/anime fan with a high tolerance for extreme violence) so I felt bad for disrupting him. Plus I felt like I needed to sit there a while longer to figure out why it was that I wanted to leave so badly (yes, really).

I've walked out of a few movies. And I've sat through one or two movies that I wish I'd walked out of. My sister and I walked out of Blade II because of its stupid plot, terrible dialogue, and over-the-top violence. I walked out of Sleepy Hollow when I was still a JW because I was getting scared out of my wits.

I guess what perplexed me as I watched Grindhouse was the fact that I'd watched Kill Bill 1 & 2 and liked them. And I'd also watched Sin City in its entirety (although I seem to recall wanting to walk out but not following through on the urge). All of those movies are full of bloodshed and gore. So what made me stay for them but leave Grindhouse? The only reason I could come up with was that, in contrast to Grindhouse's gore-fest, the violence in Kill Bill and Sin City is extremely stylized. If you've seen the Kill Bill movies you'll know what I mean.* The violence is shocking at first (at least to me it was - am I just that easily shocked?), even revolting, but it soon becomes tolerable because they make it seem so damn cool and fashionable. Plus they've got this awesome music playing over the killing sprees turning it all into one big, beautiful death dance.

I'd also argue that Kill Bill and Sin City at least had semblances of a plot. Maybe not very good plots, but still - the plots were there and they were intriguing enough that you wanted to keep watching and just keep your eyes closed for the gory parts. Ultimately you left the movie theater feeling slightly stunned and nauseous but not quite to the point where you wanted to demand your money and your wasted time back.

Grindhouse, on the other hand, has NO PLOT (or if you're going to insist that it has one, then it is an awful plot). The first segment of Grindhouse - called Planet Terror - can be summed up in a few sentences: a virus is released into a dark, misty rural countryside. All but a few of the local citizens become infected. Most of the uninfected are soon killed in grisly, horrific ways. In the end, those that have survived the gauntlet of infected zombies escape by helicopter. So, as you may have already surmised, to create a movie like Planet Terror you'll need the following: take the plot of any Resident Evil movie or game, then dumb it down as much as you can (I know, its hard to believe that's possible), add 10x the blood, gore, and random nudity, insert as many disgusting ways of dying as possible (no matter whether you're dealing with men, women or small children), toss in some extreme misogynistic violence,* a cameo appearance by Quentin Tarantino [gag], and there you have it.

The second segment is called "Death Proof" and as soon as the violence in this one started up - a man offers a girl a ride home in his stunt car which has no seat belt on the passenger side and is boxed off by glass from the drivers side... can you see where this is going? - I walked out and sat in the lobby for the next hour reading Great Expectations. (Unfortunately, I was at the part where Pip arrives in London; Dickens' descriptions of dirty London and its filthy inhabitants were not the best thing to be reading in a queasy state. It just felt like grime on top of grime. Ugh.)

But back to the point. The point being, why do we watch these movies in the first place? Whether its The Matrix or Seven Samurai or A Clockwork Orange - most of us are susceptible to the lure of stylized violence.

There is actually a very well written Wikipedia article on the topic of aestheticized violence. According to the article, film critics have generally fallen into two categories: One side "sees depictions of violence in films as superficial and exploitative" and "argue that it leads audience members to become desensitized to brutality, thereby increasing aggressivity." The other side includes "critics who view violence as a type of content, or as a theme, claim it serves a 'cathartic or dissipating effect..., providing acceptable outlets for anti-social impulses.' They argue that '...screen violence is not real violence, and should never be confused with it. Movie violence is fun, spectacle, make-believe; it's dramatic metaphor, or a necessary catharsis akin to that provided by Jacobean theatre; it's generic, pure sensation, pure fantasy. It has its own changing history, its codes, its precise aesthetic uses.'"

I'd love to say that I fall unconditionally into the first category of critics and abhor all glorified violence and avoid it completely. But evidently I don't since I can tolerate violence in certain movies, in certain contexts, and up to a certain level.

I think most of us are like this. When violence serves to propel the plot we often have a higher tolerance for it.

But when the violence is the plot?

That's when I walk out.

P.S. I have so much more I could say on this topic but I'll leave it for another time.

P.P.S. Colin redeemed himself by buying me chocolate donuts on the way home. However, when I got out of the car I dropped them on the ground. I considered picking them up and eating them anyways (you know, the 3 second rule) but I could see the gravel. Yuck!

_________________________________
* Xavier Morales writes of Kill Bill in his review Beauty and Violence: "Tarantino manages to do precisely what Alex de Large was trying to do in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: he presents violence as a form of expressive art. We watch in wonder and awe, not horror. Intellectually, we should be horrified by what we see. But the violence is so physically graceful, visually dazzling and meticulously executed that our instinctual, emotional responses undermine any rational objections we may have. Tarantino is able to transform an object of moral outrage into one of aesthetic beauty. Moreover, like all art forms, the violence serves a communicative purpose apart from its aesthetic value."
*And the few instances of what one reviewer has called Grindhouse's "sexy girl power" in no way redeem the movie from its overall portrayal of women as sex objects and victims. Letting the girls "win" in the end doesn't make up for all of the horrible abuses that are enacted on them throughout the majority of the movie.

2007-04-15T01:29:00.000-05:00

Overdue Balance Sheet

Forgot to mail my letter to my friend Death
lost my pocketbook
took a lot of turns too sharply to the left
caught cold caught hot caught tepid caught fire caught nothing
skidded on an ice patch
had to chase from one place to another
parked
screwed up (got control in time)
hit the jackpot in matters of sheer idiocy
buried a cat I wrapped in the morning paper
was ashamed
was brave
was down and out
talked too much heard too much
tore my life to shreds
burned a hole in my pantsuit with a cigarette
and all at once caught sight of night.

Therese Plantier

2007-04-10T14:52:00.000-05:00

A Quick Update

School is over. I finished my paper last Monday - the title was "In South Africa, to Forgive is Human" - and have been in recovery every since. I'm really going to miss that class. We started off a motley bunch but by the end - as is her usual style - Megan had miraculously turned us into a cohesive group of friends (or, close acquaintances who cared about each other at least). After much talk, we reached a consensus and chose to hold our last class at the Olive Garden. We were there for over three hours. Highlights included: Ron sneaking all of the leftover breadsticks into his take-out container (oh, and introducing me to his wife via cell phone - we'd been joking about what sort of a woman she must be to have married him), Cathy giving a sweet teary-eyed speech about how much she was going to miss all of us and calling Steve "the quirky one" (and believe it or not, me "the compassionate one" *cough*), and a group picture in which we posed as Jesus and the disciples from The Last Supper (at least, we tried to).

Now that I don't have anything to worry about, my brain has shut down in anticipation of our Disney trip (we leave May 5; no, Paul didn't quite persuade me out of it). As part of the whole brain-shut-down thing, I've been doing fun things. Like watching the amazingly fantastic Gilmore Girls (although, I'm trying not to rush through them too fast) and reading Tam Lin and drinking homemade wine and eating tofu-turkey (a.k.a. Herbert the Coconut) on Easter Sunday and watching A Streetcar Named Desire (I liked it as much as one can like a tragedy).

I've also been panicking a bit over the fact that the trip is so soon and have been considering pulling out the suitcases to begin preliminary packing. But that would be a little obsessive, I guess. Wouldn't it? (Jared - put the suitcases back in the closet when you get home.)

Funny enough, the second thing I'm excited about next to Disney is going to school... in a church. Yes, really - I'm excited about going to summer school.) I'm going to be taking Creative Tools for Social Change on Sunday afternoons starting April 22; its a cross-listed course for International Development and Conflict Resolution through Menno-Simmons/UofW. The class is going to be held at Augustine United in Osborne Village which, besides being a beautiful building, is located a very convenient distance from french toast (Stella's) and sushi (Wasabi)... if I don't feel too guilty after my class to consume such treats, that is. I'm also excited about the instructors. One is a pastor at Augustine and the other is a prof at the UofW who comes very highly recommended.

P.S. I guess I should specify that the homemade wine was not homemade by me, but rather by an Italian friend.

2007-04-10T10:20:00.002-05:00

Janet's Sonnet: The Atheist in Doubt

"...But Milton and Chaucer were Christians, there was no denying it. And while the early Greeks mercifully were not, they were most certainly not atheists either; even Euripides, deny them how he might, could not keep the gods out of his plays. The whole of theater was religious in its origin - rotten at its core, her father said gloomily, which was why he preferred the Romantic period, when nothing of the slightest interest was done in English drama. But Janet had been reading the medieval and Renaissance poets, and then Milton. It was not their arguments that oppressed her, on the rare occasions when they troubled to make any. It was the sense that the whole intricate, solid philosophy, stretching for centuries in both directions, infusing life like a strong light, taken for granted and used in a hundred ways for symbolism and imagery and situation, as clear and real as Tolkien or Eddison's worlds, that weighed her down with a sense of indefinable doom. Evans had made it clear to anybody who would pay attention that Milton had not been of the Devil's party.

On a particularly dreary Wednesday afternoon, Janet flung her astronomy text to the floor, dug her journal out of the bottom drawer of her desk, and sloshed over to the library, where she found a deserted padded room at the bottom and resigned herself to her fate.

This winter shrills its dirge self-satisfied,
And all is black, or grey, or ragged brown,
And all the world in rags its bread has cried,
And begged the gates of that unheeding town
Men once called heaven. Such a time as this
Must make our reasoned doubt a certainty:

We see the universe just as it is,
Not veiled by miracle of bud or tree.
But even while I watch the senseless sky
Cracked hideous in the water at my feet,
Dread rumors crowd me, dark forebodings; I
Remember, as improbable as spring
To this abyss where Night and Chaos meet,
The star, the cup, the cross: that tale's ending. "

from Tam Lin
by Pamela Dean
pg. 245-248

2007-04-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

Rehearsing for battle

Fantasies of violence,
Breaking bottles on the wall,
Hungry for the motion, for the action,
For it all.

Road noise on the night street,
See the taillights through the blinds,
Out there where your dreams slide,
Toward the night side,
For it all.

For it all, for it all,
What you're aching for,
Where the magic's real and you're like a fire in the sky,
when the deal calls for a sacrifice
And you know you cannot die.
For the edge the best ones live on,
For it all.

You want to be a hero
With the axe about to fall,
You'd buy it for the love and for the glory,
For it all.

You want to dress in black,
And lose your heart beyond recall,
Hunt a dream through rain and thunder,
On your honor
For it all.

In your head, no car is fast enough,
In your heart, no love is true.
Will it ruin all your solitary fancies
If I tell you that it isn't only you?

Keep your ankle off the tailpipe,
Keep your bootheels off the street;
We'll hit the throttle, hit the redline,
We'll find the edge,
We'll make it sweet,
We'll go for it all.

~
"For It All" by Eddie and the Fey
(or, alternatively, performed by Emma and Cats Laughing)
from WAR FOR THE OAKS
by Emma Bull
pg 227-229

Sorry, the Scribblies have enraptured me this past week. Must have something to do with rereading Tam Lin. I'm enjoying it much too much. Mix that with the GG Season 2 and I won't need to leave the house for days! (Well, or until tomorrow when I have to leave to take some pictures...)

P.S. The photos are by fakeplasticstars

2007-04-04T01:32:00.000-05:00

Identity

What did you say - they found another one?
I can't hear you - this morning
another one floating in the river?
talk louder - so you didn't even dare
no one can identify him?

the police said not even his mother
not even the mother who bore him
not even she could
they said that?
the other women already tried -
I can't understand what you're saying,
they turned him over and looked at his face, his hands they looked at,
right,
they're all waiting together,
silent, in mourning,
on the riverbank,
they took him out of the water
he's naked
as the day he was born,
there's a police captain and they won't leave until I get there?
He doesn't belong to anybody
you say he doesn't belong to anybody?

tell them I'm getting dressed,
I'm leaving now
if the captain's the same one as last time he knows what will
happen.
that body will have my name
my son's my husband's
my father's name
I'll sign the papers
tell them
tell them I'm on my way,
wait for me and don't let that captain take one step closer to him.

tell them not to worry:
I can bury my own dead.

Ariel Dorfman

(I think the above poem is... incredible. One of the best, most moving things I've ever read.)

2007-04-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

God-awful cats & Britain's 'Gay lit' experiment

"On the tallest mountain above the town lived a queen, the young crown prince and the crown kitty. The queen had ruled for many long years and she was tired of it. She made up her mind that the prince would marry and become king before the end of the summer."

Wilson turned to her daughter, "that's how stories go isn't it." With an "uh huh" from Ruth they continued reading aloud about the travails of the young prince, faced with introduction after introduction to princesses. The trouble is he doesn't much care for girls. Finally, there's a breakthrough.

"Presenting Princess Madeleine and her brother Prince Lee. At last the prince felt a stir at his heart. Look it was love at first sight! What a wonderful prince!"

Ruth echoed, "what a wonderful prince!"

The two princes marry and live happily ever after, of course.

I asked Ruth if she liked the book.

"Yes."

Why?

"Because it's nice."

Certain schools in Britain are introducing children's books that feature gay families and the result has been... ta da da da... controversy! (Really, what were they thinking?)

Of course, I think this is a great thing and that its about time.*

However, surprisingly not everyone feels this way.

In fact, some are in a right tizzy.

Take for instance the articulate (and ever-so-composed) comment made by Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice:

"They're trying to say to children that homosexuality is fine, so it's blatant propaganda … I just don't reckon school is the place for that. I just don't want children to be mentally interfered with in this way."

He just had to put the word "reckon" in there. Such a darn (or should I say 'dang'?) giveaway!

Steven, anytime we teach a child anything, it could be said that we are "interfering mentally." Teaching a child almost inevitably involves passing on to them our own personal biases and beliefs.

However, don't worry - just because a child reads a book about gay people doesn't mean they're going to become gay.* Because if that was actually the case we wouldn't have any gay people now, would we?

Anyways, I really think that the best part about this article has been the way most readers have responded to it with such incredible acceptance and humour. (It actually makes me feel slightly... dare I say it?... proud to be Canadian. Wow.)

My favorite comment is from Nathan in Moncton who says:

"If my kid can read Alice in Wonderland then why in God's name can't they read about gay parents. At least there won't be any of those God-awful cats in that."

ROFL!!!

If you want to read more comments go here.

_______________________
* Yes, I'm serious. This really is a worry of many - Steven Green for one. But please, don't go to Steven's website. I promise you won't like it. His website header scrolls "The enemies of God are all having their say!" I should send it to my parents...
* It just shows how far we've come when the article mentions that "twenty years ago, gay themes were introduced in British schools and quickly thrown out."

2007-03-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

Tell All The Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

Emily Dickinson

(Sorry for the lack of real posts; I'm still working on my paper!)

2007-03-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn't hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck's. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

First, the sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone's brain far clearer. The Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.

Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different now from all the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, "What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I'll turn the blood to fire inside your veins."

Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic.

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say to that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentleman and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

THE SILVER CHAIR by C.S. Lewis
(pg 157-159)

It does sound an awful lot like Pascal's Wager; but its still a powerful little speech, isn't it?

2007-03-29T16:00:00.000-05:00

Another Middlemarch quote

"If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new."

from George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH
(pg 547)

2007-03-28T15:32:00.001-05:00

The Star Splitter

‘You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion’s having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?’
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

‘What do you want with one of those blame things?’
I asked him well beforehand. ‘Don’t you get one!’

‘Don’t call it blamed; there isn’t anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight,’ he said.
‘I’ll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.’
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground
And plowed between the rocks he couldn’t move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
‘The best thing that we’re put here for’s to see;
The strongest thing that’s given us to see with’s
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it might as well be me.’
After such loose talk it was no surprise
When he did what he did and burned his house down.

Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren’t the least imposed on,
And he could wait—we’d see to him tomorrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,
We don’t cut off from coming to church suppers,
But what we miss we go to him and ask for.
He promptly gives it back, that is if still
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.
It wouldn’t do to be too hard on Brad
About his telescope. Beyond the age
Of being given one for Christmas gift,
He had to take the best way he knew how
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was
He took a strange thing to be roguish over.
Some sympathy was wasted on the house,
A good old-timer dating back along;
But a house isn’t sentient; the house
Didn’t feel anything. And if it did,
Why not regard it as a sacrifice,
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?

Out of a house and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn’t selling tickets,
Was setting out, up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as we spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter,
Because it didn’t do a thing but split
A star in two or three, the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It’s a star-splitter if there ever was one,
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
‘Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.

We’ve looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?

Robert Frost

2007-03-27T20:28:00.000-05:00

Special Greetings

Check out the postcard Jared got in the mail today!

P.S. Jared would like me to mention that he does not have a strange and unnatural obsession with Minnie Mouse and that he did not squeal with delight upon the reception of this card.

P.P.S. Made possible by the DIS and Geeks Like Me.

2007-03-25T16:07:00.000-05:00

Seven Songs

I've been tagged by the Spark (gracias!) and the Claw.*

First, a preface: I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever noticed that music is very definitely not just poetry put to music. You can't always read lyrics and get a feeling for the song. Sometimes the lyrics aren't anything special at all and yet hearing them sung is incredibly moving. (For example, a lot of Radiohead lyrics sound like something an angsty teenage boy might have written and yet put into the context of the music, they can sound extremely heart-wrenching/edgy/elegant/you-decide.)

That said, you sometimes start to realize this when you try to share a song with another person by just giving them the lyrics to read. Its usually just not good enough. Its one of those (rare?) cases where the words don't convey all that's being said.

Anyhow, whether or not the following are exceptions to this rule, you may decide.

I
Running Up That Hill
by Kate Bush
"And if I only could,
I'd make a deal with God,
and get him to swap our places."

II
Where Do We Go From Here?
from Once More With Feeling (BTVS)
"Understand we'll go hand and hand,
but we'll walk alone in fear."

III
Thinking About You
by Radiohead
"Been thinking about you, and there's no rest,
should I still love you, still see you in bed."

IV
The Bleeding Heart Show
by The New Pornographers
"We hunched together in one chair out on the deck
In snow that froze and fell down on the modern set
It looked as if I picked your name out of a hat
Next thing you know you are asleep in someone’s lap "

V
Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
by Stars
"There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave:
You were what I wanted,
I gave what I gave,
I'm not sorry I met you,
I'm not sorry it's over,
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say"

VI
No Man's Woman
by Sinead O'Connor
"I don't wanna be no man's woman,
I've other work I want to get done."

VII
Sometimes Always
by The Jesus & Mary Chain
"I won't get on my knees,
don't make me do that please."

I tag:
Sarah (because she really needs to start a blog!)
Jared
Karina
Colin

_____________________________
* It almost sounds like a pub name, doesn't it? The Spark & Claw. Or a bookstore...

2007-03-25T15:41:00.000-05:00

Desmond Tutu on Nelson Mandela

"Had F.W. de Klerk encountered in jail a man bristling with bitterness and a lust for retribution, it is highly unlikely that he would have gone ahead with announcing his initiatives. Mercifully for us... he found a man regal in dignity, bubbling over with magnanimity and a desire to dedicate himself to the reconciliation of those whom apartheid and injustice and the pain of racism had alienated form one another.

Nelson Mandela emerged from prison not spewing words of hatred and revenge. He amazed us all by his heroic embodiment of reconciliation and forgiveness. No one could have accused him of speaking glibly and facilely about forgiveness and reconciliation. He had been harassed for a long time before his arrest, making impossible a normal family life. By the time of his release on February 11, 1990, he had spent all of twenty-seven years in jail. No one could say that he knew nothing about suffering. A famous picture shows him on Robben Island with Walter Sisulu in the courtyard where they and others - who can be seen behind them in the photograph - sit in a row breaking rocks into small pieces. Such utterly futile drudgery could have destroyed lesser mortals with its pointlessness. And we know that his eyesight was ruined by the glare to which prisoners were later exposed as they labored in the lime quarry.

Everything had been done to break his spirit and make him hate-filled. In all this the system mercifully failed dismally. He emerged a whole person. Humanly speaking, we would be inclined to say that those twenty-seven years were utter shameful waste; just think of all he could have contributed to the good of South Africa and the world. I don't think so. Those twenty-seven years and all the suffering they entailed were the fires of the furnace that tempered his steel, that removed the dross... The true leader must at some point or other convince her or his followers that she or he is in this whole business not for self-aggrandizement but for the sake of others. Nothing is able to prove this quite so convincingly as suffering."

from No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu
(pg. 39)

2007-03-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

rest·less [rest-lis]
–adjective

1. characterized by or showing inability to remain at rest: a restless mood.
2. unquiet or uneasy, as a person, the mind, or the heart.
3. never at rest; perpetually agitated or in motion: the restless sea.
4. without rest; without restful sleep: a restless night.
5. unceasingly active; averse to quiet or inaction, as persons: a restless crowd.
6. me*

[Origin: bef. 1000; ME restles, OE restléas.]

—Related forms
rest·less·ly, adverb
rest·less·ness, noun

—Synonyms 1, 2, 3. restive, agitated, fretful.

______________________________
* Status of Paper: Undone. (This is because I, like an idiot, stayed home on a Friday night thinking I'd actually be able to concentrate. *sigh*)

2007-03-23T17:36:00.000-05:00

French men don't get caught?

Henri is the fairy-tale adulterer: European, sensual, guiltless. He is a figure we Americans look upon with wonder and terror, wanting to believe and desperately not wanting to believe that he (or she) exists. Because when we go too far at that bachelor party in Vegas, or at the office holiday party, or with the milkman or the butcher or the baker, we go into hysterics. We drink a bottle of Wild Turkey and drive onto our own lawn and confess, bawling, to our spouse. We cut our thighs with an X-Acto knife. We quit our job and work full-time for free at a soup kitchen. We enroll in specialized infidelity therapy. We hate ourselves. We fall apart.

An interesting article on infidelity.

2007-03-22T22:22:00.000-05:00

The Dwarf tells of Prince Caspian...

"When the night came, and his various strange subjects came stealing into the Lawn by ones and twos and threes or by sixes and sevens - the moon then shining almost at her full - his heart swelled as he saw their numbers and heard their greetings. All who he had met were there: Bulgy Bears and Red Dwarfs and Black Dwarfs, Moles and Badgers, Hares and Hedgehogs, and others whom he had not yet seen - five satyrs as red as foxes, the whole contingent of Talking Mice, armed to the teeth and following a shrill trumpet, some Owls, the Old Raven of Ravenscaur. Last of all (and this took Caspian's breath away), with the centaurs came a small but genuine Giant, Wimbleweather of Deadman's hill, carrying on his back a basketful of rather seasick Dwarfs who had accepted his offer of a lift and were now wishing they had walked instead.

The Bulgy Bears were very anxious to have the feast first and leave the council till afterwards; perhaps tomorrow. Reepicheep and his Mice said that councils and feasts could both wait, and proposed storming Miraz in his own castle that very night. Pattertwig and the other squirrels said they could talk and eat at the same time, so why not have the council and feast all at once? The Moles proposed throwing up entrenchments round the Lawn before they did anything else. The Fauns thought it would be better to begin with a solemn dance. The Old Raven, while agreeing with the Bears that it would take too long to have a full council before supper, begged to be allowed to give a brief address to the whole company. But Caspian and the Centaurs and the Dwarfs over-ruled all these suggestions and insisted on holding a real Council of War at once."

from Prince Caspian by C. S. LEWIS

(Narnia map image by way of Into the Wardrobe)

2007-03-22T15:14:00.001-05:00

The Story of Bonnie & Clyde

You've read the story of Jesse James--
Of how he lived and died;
If you're still in need
Of something to read
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang.
I'm sure you all have read
How they rob and steal
And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.

There's lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They're not so ruthless as that;
Their nature is raw;
They hate the law--
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
But I say this with pride,
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.

But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me,
"I'll never be free,
So I'll meet a few of them in hell."

The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn't give up till they died.

The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
But it's fight, man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.

From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
But take it all in all,
Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.

If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
If they can't find a fiend,
They just wipe their slate clean
And hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.

There's two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
They had no hand
In the kidnap demand,
Nor the Kansas City Depot job.

A newsboy once said to his buddy:
"I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
In these awful hard times
We'd make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped."

The police haven't got the report yet,
But Clyde called me up today;
He said, "Don't start any fights--
We aren't working nights--
We're joining the NRA."

From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
Where the women are kin,
And the men are men,
And they won't "stool" on Bonnie and Clyde.

If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night
They're invited to fight
By a sub-gun's rat-tat-tat.

They don't think they're too smart or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
They've been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.

Some day they'll go down together;
They'll bury them side by side;
To few it'll be grief--
To the law a relief--
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

by Bonnie Parker

2007-03-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

An update

In case you were wondering (despairing, even) - yes, I have been doing more then obsessing about Disney. I promise. I even went out this past weekend to celebrate Sarah's 24th birthday. That involved a very hilarious scavenger hunt where a 3-girl team sparred off against a 4-boy team in a fast-paced hour and a half race to the finish (the boys won). We also went out that same evening to The Elephant & Castle where we drank green beer in honor of Saint Patrick.

Oh, and I've also been researching for my final Conflict Resolution paper. Its worth 25% so I'm a bit nervous. And when I'm nervous I procrastinate. Then I panic two days before and write the entire thing in one night. At least, that's what I'm counting on happening.

My paper is going to be on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Some nice things about this are that 1) the topic is extremely interesting, 2) I already did a lot of research on it last year when I was torn over writing about the TRC or Rwanda's gacaca program for my Restorative Justice class, and 3) Elliot and Melissa were nice enough to buy me a copy of Desmond Tutu's No Future Without Forgiveness which so far is excellent. So this means I have all of my research gathered. I just need to finish reading/rereading it and then start selecting quotes and streamlining towards a thesis.

Generally, these are the steps I go through for writing any kind of a serious research paper:

First I choose a topic. If I can't think of a specific topic, I think of a general area that I'm interested in and start searching the UofW Cybrary databases until I find an article that looks interesting. Then I'll read that article and hope that it sparks an idea.

Once I've got a general topic, I pull up as many interesting looking articles as possible and print them all off. Sometimes I'll even go the library, but not usually as this has resulted one too many times in excessive late fees. *sigh* As a result I've learned that its smarter for me to buy a book than to borrow one and end up paying for it in the long run. So for a major research project I'll usually buy 1 really great looking book and start reading it about a month beforehand to get a feel for the topic. (For my project on Rwanda I read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. With the combination of the book, numerous articles, documentaries, and movies I ended up overdosing on genocide and experienced a hellish month of darkness. That's another story.)

If my topic is for a major research paper, I usually also watch a movie or documentary (or two or three). For my TRC project, so far I've only watched In My Country. Its gotten poor reviews but for my purposes I give it a 5 out of 5. It gave me a feel for what it must have been like to sit through the Commission hearings and it included numerous real life testimonies. (And I didn't realize until I watched it that the Commission moved all over Africa - it journeyed to the people, rather then making the people come to it like a traditional court would have.)

Once I've finished watching and reading, I take all of my material and start typing out all of the quotes I found interesting. For my Rwanda paper, I ended up with over 30 pages of quotes. For my Gandhi paper, I ended up with 15 pages (but that was for a much shorter assignment).

Once I've got all of my quotations typed up (with their page number and author and article title next to them), I start sorting them into made-up-Anactoria-categories based on the points I've realized I want to make as I write my paper. This way, as I go through the paper I can go to my quotes and just pick and choose - I've already got my layout, including a quotes section for my introduction, thesis, and conclusion.

Of course, sometimes I've gone overboard and ended up with waaay to much information.

In fact, that's probably always the case...

But I'd rather have too much than not enough because I like to be able to state things... authoritatively in my paper.

Anyways, once my quotes are sorted I start to write. It really, really helps to have all of those quotes right there for inspiration!

As I write, I use the best quotes in the body of the paper... but sometimes I have so many good quotes that I end up creating footnotes just so I can include the extra quotes that it would hurt me to leave out.

What was the point of this post again?

Oh yeah, do the rest of you do this? I guess I'm trying to figure out if this is the typical student way of writing a paper. If not, what do you do that is kind of special? (Or eccentric even!)

P.S. I got an A+ on the Rwanda paper. I got an A- on the Gandhi paper. So far the system is working. But if you have any better ideas, be sure to let me know! ;)

P.P.S. How desperate is it to write about doing your homework instead of actually doing it??? Argh. (And no, I didn't do any today.... I was too busy eating odd potluck food and watching Gilmore Girls.)

P.P.P.S./Amendment - I have been told this was an extremely boring post. So sue me, Sarah! :P

2007-03-20T18:15:00.000-05:00

Self-indoctrination

I've been listening to this.

Reading this.

And watching this and this and this.

Guess I'll never lose that JW mentality, huh? [wink]

(I know, I know - its sad.)