illuminated.:.scriptorium

Come on Down!

2005-10-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm over the rape of the locks--I've been coerced into making a main dish for a Halloween luncheon on Monday. Fine. Nobody can resist mom's scalloped potatoes. But that's not all--dressing up for Halloween is not optional, apparently. Thus yours truly will be dressed as Rod Roddy from The Price is Right. Sigh. What, my friends, could possibly be next?

But that's not the point of this entry. Now that I'm thirty, have (yet another) corporate entry-level job, kid on the way, etc., it's time for an SUV. (Or, as Rod would say, "A new car!")

Now, I know what you're thinking, but you don't live on a hill (in Pittsburgh!) where the City's salt trucks do not frequent. So, my question is this:

A) Jeep Liberty?
B) Toyota Rav 4?
C) Nissan X-Terra?
D) Subaru Outback? (ok, not exactly an SUV but it has that all wheel drive thing)

Suggestions (ok, and smart comments) appreciated.

Corporate Angst

2005-10-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember I have whorred myself out to companies in order to sustain life the way I want to live it. Most recently I've been working for Guardian Protection Services in their call center as a billing representative. Each Thursday and Monday morning I pray to the gods presiding over the Powerball lottery. No such luck.

In any case, said company says they want to "bring me aboard" as a permanent employee. Fine. I'll play the game. Next, they say, you have to go for a drug sceening (on my sacred lunch hour nonetheless). Fine. To my dismay, the drug test requires taking samples of my hair--three large chunks cut at the root. How pathetic. Now, I can see the reasoning behind such a test, and I would gladly give away my urine. In fact, I always felt that this type of test was kind of symbolic--I just wish I could piss in my boss' coffee mug.

But my hair! They've gone too far.

The Passion: Film and Drama

2005-10-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Part of the ideas here were (are) supposed to be included in a presentation I was proposing for a conference of Drama and Religion to take place in Chicago next year. Forgive me, I know I have repeated this elsewhere.

It seems we bloggers have a problem merely viewing the pain of the Crucified Lord according to the principles of realism in modern filmmaking. I would agree that a realistic depiction of the Passion of Christ depicted in film is indeed problematic. Gibson's version attempts to include the personal--the idea that he too is guilty for His suffering--by including his own hand pounding the nail into Christ's wrist. A nice touch, but not effective enough. We as audience members are still too distant. We watch, as voyeurs, a scence and time when things seem so different--the language, the custom, the costume, are all too unfamiliar to relate with the action--if indeed the purpose is piety.

The medieval York play of the Crucifixion overcomes this barrier. The barrier I speak of is the modern use of the fourth wall. Medieval drama, relatively speaking, does not employ a fourth wall in which audience members feel safe and distant from the action they are viewing. With Shakespeare and modern drama (eg. the sitcom) we finally have a defined fourth wall, a professional playhouse, the end of an era of beautiful and genius drama. (Although even with Shakespeare there are moments where the fourth wall is not fully dissolved.)

The York play was part of a cycle of plays depicting the sacred history of the world from the fall of Lucifer to the Judgement. This particular play was the responsibility of the Pinners and Painters guild (i.e. carpenters in our modern terms). These plays took place all over Europe and were a communal and civic festival of sorts. What is different and worth noting about the York Passion was its conscious use of relevant material, actors, and dialogue to an end that is ironically realistic.

In this play the soldiers complain about the hard work--of crucifying Christ! They tell Christ, as he is led to the place of death, that he will be judged for his "wikked workes," adding to the comic irony that they are the ones who are wicked. This all comes to task when ready to affix Christ to the cross they see that the holes where His hands are to nailed are bored too far apart. They must then stretch the suffering Christ with ropes (a scene that Mel borrows in his rendition) and even that they can't do well. After Christ has suffered at the hands of shoddy craftsmanship (recall He too is a carpenter), He offers a moment of grace to their fallen condition when He offers forgiveness to the soldiers, for they know not what they do--that is, they are not good at their job.

In a sense the playwright makes the connection that our mundane jobs, when done in a shoddy, non-pious manner, in effect crucify our Lord. By nature we are unable to perform our duties correctly and perfectly, and therefore we are in need of the master Craftsman to accept our "wirke"--imperfect as it is. Consider too, that we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works (deeds) that we should walk in them. For a working class audience and professional carpenters as actors, the Passion of Christ is woven into our very existence as humans who are a masterpeice in the making.

The metaphor of work involves the audience in this sacred event in a way that is personal--not distant and voyeuristic. In fact, the actual suffering of Christ is interenalized--as opposed to an interpretation of teh artist (as with Gibson). When Christ is stretched on the cross, the action takes place on the ground where an audience member must lobby for position. The voyeuristic instinct is indicted here. The crowd then becomes the onlookers at the original crucifixion. (Isn't this exactly what we are doing in watching, neigh purchasing, the Mel Gibson film!?!) What takes the place of realism in the York play is affective piety--a spiritual act of internalizing, personalizing the suffering of Christ (or any biblical scene) by inserting yourself as soldier or yourself as Christ (although that is clearly problematic).

Similarly, those members of the audience who find the soldiers' ineptitude comical are indicted as well. These soldiers are hilarious no doubt. But the setting is a place where this kind of humor is inappropriate (I think Mel attempts this too--his soldiers are quite believable as depraved humans who enjoy torture, but unlike the York play they more fearful than stupid).

Thus, in heaven's eyes, our work here is serious. When we take our eyes off of the suffering of Christ (when we are out of tune with the affective practice) we are in danger of commiting a torturous crime against heaven.

More Passionate Dialogue

2005-10-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

This entry begins in continuation from

Matt: I'm not following. Do you mean the Passion is reenacted in the Mass? Or that you know of actual Passion Plays being played?

Our parish (St Catherine's of Sienna) growing up used to enact the stations of the cross each year at Easter. They also had dramatic readings by parishiners of the trial of Christ. Eventually the congregation was encouraged to join in at times with, "We have no king but Caesar," "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!," etc. For a small Catholic congregation it was quite a spectacle--replete with kettle drums and a guy who REALLY looked like Jesus.

I laud Mel for his efforts in verisimilitude, but that is deceiving since much of his inspiration is from extra-scriptural writings (visions of medieval Saints, medieval drama, etc). At times it is a wonderful and moving film, in the Gibson-esque fasion.

I agree, however, that metaphors or allegory of the Passion are more powerful than a Hollywood-style documentary such as "The Passion of the Christ."

As far as "Love Actually" goes I don't recall it as a metaphor of the Passion--can you elaborate?

Great films employ visual metaphor and symbolism. Last night I saw "Crash" for the first time. It's contribution to the dialogue of racism was, at best, on the intellectual level of a freshman undergraduate. What is powerful about the film is when humanity suddenly becomes connected. When the atrocious deeds of humans are reckoned according to the community--we ARE our brother's keeper. Apart from cultural and skin differences we are united in humanity.

Such is the case when the latino girl saves her father's life. One wonders if this is a case of deus ex machina, (or mere magical realism) but it is rather a playful irony--at this moment we understand that blanks replaced bullets in the Persain's firearm and at once both daughters are rendered angels. Similarly, Don Cheadle, while the actual guardian angel of the city and of his mother goes unrecognized by either.

I'm still trying to reconcile the symbolic meaning behind the two burning cars, nonetheless, the filmmaker at the very least employs visual symbolism.

Metaphor, symbolism, what have you, is the power behind "Sideways" as well. I would enjoy any film with Paul Giamatti, but this film becomes more than merely another thirty-something film when Miles is connected with the wine itself--a new, fresh metaphor for humans indeed. Furthermore, his old college roomate as a character is only repulsive and shallow when he is foiled with Miles--they are two sides of the same coin--like Marlow and Kurtz of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

"Thought counts."

2005-09-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

--for those who stay up late at night leaving coffee stains on unfinished manuscripts...
(be kind as I did not make time to edit / spellcheck)

The above title references my favorite sentence by Annie Dillard. Others have noted that one could live a lifetime and not write a sentence as well as she, but I am merely noting content--not style.

Dillard's thoughts are wrapped in blankets of wisdom--evidence she has done her homework. While she may not be remembered as an academic philosophe, she should be hailed as one of the great intellects of our age. Her ideas are presented with such lucidity she makes complex concepts seem relatively simple. What is important about Dillard, however, is not her contribution, but her technique (ok, maybe that's confusing) which embraces an audience skeptical to her subject matter. This is the case especially in Living By Fiction.

Here, she argues that contemporary modernist (i. e. post-modern) fiction requires responsible readers willing to look at a work's structure, device, technique as an end in itself. She argues for more serious criticism from such readers--yet, at least her audience is an educated, curious reader familiar with her pious Emersonian philosophical works; at best it is those who have read both modernist and post-modernist works and have well-formed judgements on both. She combats the reader whose final comment on post-modernist writers is, "So what, it's still meaningless art. Where's the story? the characterization." Leaving her answers to these questions aside (which are intelligent and convincing), Living By Fiction is not so much a work of literary criticism, but an argument for the purpose, significance, and place of art itself.

Art mirrors thought (not Nature)--and literature does this better than any of the arts. This is not to create a hierarchy within the arts (which even in 1982 when Living was published was passe)--it is merely to solidify a place and purpose for a branch of the humanities that seems to have fallen into disarray as a result of the l'art pour l'art movement. The artist has turned inward, not psychologically, but into art itself--into the techniques that present data. Thus, experiencing art is experiencing and learning about how the mind creates and organizes its passions, impressions, and memories. Here, there is a place for Mondrian, Duchamp, Cezanne and the like. For those who tuned out the third section of their Humanities core class--Dillard reminds us that art begins when social criticism, psychological realism, and religious dogma ends.

In this sense, real, true artists are not those of the past where a learned technique such as portaiture, landscape, or realism, but those who have mastered new techniques. "Anyone can learn how to paint like Michelangelo with enough time," one could argue. This is not to say that random techniques are applied in post-modernist art--quite the opposite--in fact, much of modernist contemporary fiction employs complex structures that stretch the reader's intellectual membrane to new configurations.

Dillard builds up to her point that science and art are not all that dissimilar. That is, pragmatists have been arguing against the legitamacy of the arts for centuries. With science there may be, in fact, more doubt that the atom or the theoretical endless "universe" even exists. With literature, we can agree, at least that there is a text that is trying to say something and that something is usually comprehendible to those who are trained to understand.

One last comment. While I usually object to writers who try to tie in the meaning of life in to their argument about fiction or Kant or Bergman--having not the skill nor wit to pull it off--Dillard has license to do so based on the fact that all of her writing takes this turn, or perhaps her writing never ceases to contemplate this mystery. At this point in the book we know where she is going because we have been there with her. She searches for a governing principle by which we can live by that is not reductive, dogmatic, and exclusive.

...the purpose of people on earth is to counteract the tide of entropy described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics [note: she does not reduce the argument to the Bible and The Fall]. Physical things are falling apart at a terrific rate; people on the other hand, put things together....the universe as it were needs somebody or something to keep it from falling apart....Thoughts count. A completed novel in a trunk in the attic is an order added to the sum of the universe's order.

This is why we create.

The New Event, or, Am I Going Through a Mid-Life Crisis?

2005-09-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

What if the whole lot of us Geneva alumni went back and invaded the Shoolhouse / Pearce for a weekend? It could be a spontaneous perrenial event. A commitment to the future of America: to take these young minds away from what seems to be so important: crushes on redheads, term papers, predestination, &, and show them what is truly honorable in art, literature, film, and, of course, alcohol. For the recipeints it would be a taste of, say, some real worldly wisom. It is a way to go back in time and tell yourself what you needed to hear years ago: "Put down that book, pseudo-nerd, we're going to Kathy's." Or, "Are you freaking serious with that Stephen King shit?" "And you! quit sleeping on the couch!" (Ok, those last two Roland and Nate will appreciate.)

Ok, so this is starting to sound like some bad frat boy movie where "the brothers" return for their annual weekend of "let's crap on everybody below us so we can feel powerful," but I see our escapade as more like communal responsibility with salvific overtones. It's mankind's basest religious desire to hear from, have a visitation from, the deity who is all-knowing. Among the late-night games of poker, ping-pong and flip cup there would also be education. We could write their term papers, give them the answers to the tests, and tell them what to say when Niekirk calls on them. There could also be Reunion Night at the fire pit (no undergrads invited) except this time there would be no guilt about smoking on campus. Finally, the weekend would end with us kicking the crap out of Memorial in the Pearce v. Memorial football game and celebrating with a kegger dance party at Pearce (without having to pay the 5.00 citations for dancing on campus). (Ok, so I may need to recruit some Memorial alumni to help with the football game, but that's all they're invited for, unless we can get ahold of Weimer, Ben Good, etc.)

And what of The Girls of The Dorm Whose Name I am Forgetting? well, they (Beth, Sarah, Tina, Frankie, Heather, &) would have their own events doing what girls do (What do girls do?). Of course this plan will inevitably need the help and support of Carly as well: whose expertise (and integrity) in planning Student Activities will certainly ensure its success. Jeremy, Dave, etc. could be the weekend entertainment, you get my drift.

In any case, I've run out of creative juices for the moment. Anything that I'm missing?

The Latest AEddition(s)

2005-09-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Of course, an apology is in order for the sparse entries, but I finally landed a day job after the school I was teaching at closed suddenly because God did not drop enough funds from the sky.

God has dropped a blessing in another form, however, and the stork should be stopping by circa de April 11, 2006.

That's right, Lisa is pregnant (9 wks). Amongst other things this news is utterly humbling. One is nearly powerless in assisting in the growing process of a human child. Just as one is powerless in breathing, digestion, or making sure hair continues to grow on one's head. This reality above all else (the miracle of life and the mystery of Nature) transforms a cynical humbug into a God-fearing begger.

In other news, here is a brief list of reading that I've completed lately (at work the phones are not ringing):

D. H. Lawrence. “Democracy.” IN Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and
Other Essays.

---, “On Human Destiny.”

Walter Benjamin. “The Storyteller.” In Illuminations.

---, “The Flaneur.” IN Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol. 4 (1938-1940) 19-39.

George Lukacs. The Lukacs Reader. 187-209. “The Ideology of Modernism.”
(Dedicated to Iris Murdoch.)

Raymond Williams. “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of
Modernism.” IN The Politics of Modernism. 37-47.

Oswald Spengler. “Introduction” to The Decline of the West. 3-40.

Clive Bell. “How to Make a Civilisation.” Civilisation.

I am ashamed to say that this was my first aquaintence with D H Lawrence, but what a find. Lawrence is perhaps one of the most sane writers I have ever read. His critique of democracy
starts with a critique of idealism in general: there are no ideals and thinking thusly is evil. (All men are created equal is his beginning point for a discussion of idealism.) What I love about Lawrence is his conscious ability to make a seeming paradox become true. For instance, he will critique a value or system of thought based on its own internal rules. He says that indeed the ideal world and universe were created out of the Logos (the ideal idea) since mankind formed this ideal himself. Just as a craftsman worships his creation after making it, so mankind has worshiped the ideal God formed out of his own consciousness. Thus what is worshipped is not the ideal but a material reality stemming from the mind of the earthly craftsman. All the while I get the sense that Lawrence is not some blaspheming anti-Christian, but that he agrees with the Judeo-Christian worldview, but is not willing to succomb to its folklike obedience to the power structure setup by those in authority.

Speaking of Marx, Williams, Benjamin, and Lukacs are brilliant and subtle critiques of society from a materialist (i.e. Marxist) point of view--if you're interested.

Recent Reading

2005-08-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

Recently Lisa had to crash the computer in order to save it. Apparently we caught a virus which led to total paralysis. Among the things lost was my list of books I've read over the past several years. So posting this is not a matter of pride, but of security--the internet will outlast this hard drive for sure.

July:
The French Lieutenant’s Woman. John Fowles
Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf
A Room of One’s Own. Woolf, again.
The Crying of Lot 49. Thomas Pynchon
Daisy Miller. Henry James
An American Childhood. Annie Dillard

Dillard is the only recreational reading I've done lately--the rest are for the Masters Exam in Nov.

Currently reading:
Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte
Phaedo. Plato

Previous Queries and New Apologies

2005-07-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

"Forgive me, for it has been ___?___ months since my last confession."

What shall be my penance?

I suppose I could start with an explanation: Lisa and I recently got wired to the web in our new home of which I spend not a few hours each day grooming, cleaning, patching, demolishing in order to be comfortable sooner. Today I cut down trees with my new chainsaw.

Another way to get back in the swing of things is to answer 1) Matt and 2) Jo regarding
1) l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poets, and 2) Whitman.

1) There are admirers of these poets amidst Duquesne's walls. In fact, there is a general appreciation of most all artforms by most all profs and colleagues. This agreeable intellectual gesture avoids offending those who appreciate these forms, and, secondly, I believe, showing favor for a work, movement, etc. shows a very shallow knowledge and experience with it. I was never in a lecture where we discussed Language Poets, maybe Howe, but I was introduced to Ciaron Carson's "First Language," as I've mentioned before: an Irish virtuoso. Ok, I've nodded without evidence or depth of reason. Here are a few lines from the second poem in the volume, "Second Language," where the speaker ponders and progresses through early consciousness of language and the world:

Things are kinks that came in tubes; like glue or paint
extruded, that became
A hieroglyphic alphabet. Incestuous in pyramids, Egyptians
were becalmed.

I climbed into it, delved its passageways, its sepulchral
interior, its things of kings
Embalmed; sacophagi, whose perfume I exhumed in chancy
versions of the I-Ching.

A chink of dawn was revelated by the window. Far-off cocks
crowed crowingly
And I woke up, verbed and tensed with speaking English; I
lisped the words so knowingly.

2) Perhaps I am bitterly mistaken, but these lines have a Whitman-esque quality to them (Not a good segue, I know). I have yet to go through a Whitman storm being that he is so long-winded, but I certainly do not disapprove of his work or its immeasurable influence (especially in form--which, is poetry's raison d'etre). My pallete seems more suited to terse work that lends itself toward an open reading--that is, works which allow for more freeplay between reader and text, image and word, works more conscious of the interpretive role of the reader. I'm most interested in how poets (consciously or unconsciously) employ, exploit language in order to make a word or poem say several things at once without losing a coherent reading. The modernists seem most interested in pointing out language's operating systems, its rules and regulations are laid bare for all to see, and what results is anxiety and exhileration. Most of my directed study in poetics has been in Dickinson (NOT considered a moderninst in traditional sense) and Yeats, but I am still far from articulating my ideas: more study will allow that.

I apologize for my the sparse nature of this blog. Can't wait to here y'all's comments.

A Few Favorite Poetry Lines

2005-06-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry matt, here's what I never wrote.

Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeats "The Circus Animals' Desertion"

In Yeats' later years after his many phases he descends from his ladder (which for me represents his endless search for mystical, mythic truth/meaning, blah, blah); he finds himself left with the trash of his own existence (which is redeemed in the act of creating).

I cannot omit a section from Yeats' "The Second Coming" with all of its contemporary significance:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The reigning champion of sunset images for my money is Dickinson ("How the Old Mountains Drip With Sunset"):

Now it is Night in Nest and Kennel
And Where was the Wood
Just a Dome of Abyss is *Bowing
Into Solitude

*ED also used "Nodding" here

As the poet was left breathless at the sight of the sunset, so too I gasp, puzzled by her creation. The poem ends...

These are the visions *flitted Guido;
Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped *the pencil,
*Powerless to unfold.

*baffled
*his
*Paralyzed with Gold

Life Aquatic: a response

2005-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

Culture (subconsciously) worships then destroys. These were the words of a "desperate housewife" who was interviewed on network TV (herself being the example). I recalled that this concept was one of Picasso's general principles when creating art. (creation-->destuction). Recently I've become aware that I practice this as well against the bourgesie culture, the bible, modernist poetics, my academic aspirations, my closest relationship.

I would like to explore whether culture itself has awakened to its own consiousness in our contemporary milieu. Perhaps I am more post-modern than I would like to believe (if p-mism is a tearing down of the icons and revealing their weaknesses--eg. Christianity, the University, or Michael Jackson).

Films like "The Life Aquatic" seem to practice such a concept--Director's ask, how can we break our viewers' preconceived notions of beauty, heroism, etc.? Yet what they are tearing down was itself a tearing down of previous beliefs. This process is endless when looked at in retrospect. When we speak of the beginning of philosophy in the west we refer to Plato, yet this was a reaction against a certain philosphy which preceeded it, right?

The main character (played by Bill Murray) is not the archetypal anti-hero Captain Ahab (upon which he is based), but an anti-Ahabian character twice removed. He is out to catch what he calls the Jaguar-Shark who devoured his friend on a previous mission. His madness is pathetic and his folly is considered wise by his followers; he is past his prime and has resorted to smoking marijuana as an escape from reality. One character (Owen Wilson) stands alone in questioning the motives of his illigetimate father. This becomes a Freudian game once Wilson overhears that Murray has chosen a mistress and the crew should stay away. Wilson "marries" the mistress despite the warning.

I have always considered postmodernism in America beginning with the Vietnam War when angry protestors questioned their father's motives to marry with the Eastern queen. Perhaps this is because when I woke up and discovered this concept it fell within a contemporary (postmodern) literature course.

Over the past several years I have been awaking to the nightmare that my fathers are mad (this is a personal statement referring to people and ideas, not institutions). Similarly, film makers have realized that people delight in poking fun of the status quo and making ugly what was once beautiful. My only complaint is that they are second and third generation destroyers. What will be left when there is nothing left to dissolve? Similarly, what will I have left after I have destroyed what was once so dear?

I suppose I will create myself anew which will most likely look alot like what I attempted to avoid.

I'm at a loss for a line from Oedipus...something about the irony of blindness.

Blake's Holy Thursday

2005-04-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've been told I need to learn and adhere to blog etiquette, so I will not be continuing conversations from pervious days on other persons' blogs of which I am guilty of on matt's blog ("Comments" 3-21-05). Oh what the hell, I can't even try to follow the rules.

(So I never know whether matt is kidding when he says he doesn't know something--perhaps I am saying the obvious, but here goes.)

Blake has two parallel poems (various similar versions) named "Holy Thursday" in "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" (1789).

Apparently, in England, Maunday Thursday was the day when the church felt guilty enough to clean up the streets and get the heathen homeless children into costume to impress the diocese that they had done a good deed for Holy season. (Wow, was that one terrible sentence.) The first poem (in the Innocence section) begins,

"'Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:"

Sounds nice enough, especially after they perform their song raising their innocent hands to heaven:

"O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!"

Yet their innocence is contrived and hypocrisy abounds among the congregation as evident in Blake's accompanying poem by the same title (in Experience, of course):

"Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land, -
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!"

By calling attention to England's orphans during a time when people want to feel ok about their spiritual condition and their community service, Blake undermines the spiritual with the real (political). Blake is all about these contraries (eg. innocence and experience, black and white, etc.): “Without contraries there is no progression,” he says.

Well, I think I need to work on my "tone" (for better etiquette) since my recent blogs have sounded too preachy and overly assertive.

So does anyone have any good papers on Coleridge or Blake lying around--say, 10-15 pages?

On keeping friends, blotiquette, and reading

2005-04-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since my last confession, I mean post.

Previous concerns (I'm saying screw blog etiquette and I'm answering questions from previous posts): yes, Holy Thursday is one of Blake's more famous poems. It's one at least that the professors keep returning to. All of Blake's works are worth a (re)reading. He single-handedly created his own mythology which the best critics have yet to resolve. Plus, anyone who believes in eminent utopia and nude picnics is worth a closer look.

So, yesterday I had to sit down with the librarian at school and decide what works we'll be forcing the students to read next year (ha, ha, ha). We have to create a system by which they must read a certain number of books (independently, mind you) each quarter. So we ask ourselves, "If I were attempting to do the least amount of work to complete the assignment, which books would I read?" This is a shame. A crying shame--in fact, I have shed not a few tears thinking I once was this kind of person--until I thought I had discovered something noone else had considered--books. Yes, my first book was Jimmy Buffet's Tales From Margaritaville, but I moved on to Grisham and a biography of Jimi Hendrix by the end of that revelatory summer.

I return to a reoccuring problem: how to interest the students in books?

Ok, so the librarian's are yelling over the speaker phone that we must get out, but for more on the redemptive purpose of reading (an essay) see my brother's new blog:

aprioriblues.blogspot.com

See 3/14 below

2005-03-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

today's post is below under 3-14-05. Someday I'll get it straight.

Forthcoming posts

2005-03-15T12:16:00.000-08:00

Is it enough to say that I have posts forthcoming? Does that help the anxiety of wishing I had more time to collect thoughts, share ideas, etc.?

I suppose so, since a friend (Roland) recently said he had some posts that he was working on, I too must claim this to keep the peace. I am "guilty" of the thinking the following: poor wording, no resolution, not deep enough, so it goes into the cancel section of my mind. Furthermore, I know nothing of politics, music, and film to share with my well-informed friends--I have only a curious spirit.

This curiosity brought me to blogging as a way to keep in touch with friends, steal their ideas, and take their reccomendations for good reading, art, etc.

Recently this has come in the form of Annie Dillard (For the Time Being). Being the prude that I am, I have procrastinated Dillard for some time thinking that she was something she is not, but it was well worth it--I wasn't ready. Her voice, her curiosity, her way of allowing things to just "be" and not try to always force closure on her arguments--I am mystified. She relates the world in a catalogue of seemingly unrelated stories (new and old) and allows language to mirror nature.

Now there's a thought--Dillard's language sounds like nature. I think she would like to hear that. I am glad that I can drive to the sound of her words--this book is on tape in my car.

Faerieland: by request

2005-03-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

Actually this was a post I've been holding on to, but just can't seem to get enough time to edit it properly...so here goes.

May I propose that our culture has lost its ancient sense of superstition with its fascination with technology. Except, of course, if our superstitions are founded upon a technological imagination. It is not preposterous for a well-respected person to believe there is life somewhere besides earth: just turn on the Sci-Fi channel and you may be blessed by a number of different films, shows dedicated to this possibility. Just recently I was watching one with Val Kilmer wherein he must do something heroic on Mars to get the girl.

So lately I've been teaching myself about the lovely "Longaevi" or Long-livers (no, their livers are not long). These are the those whom the ancient and modern Celts call the "good people," the "people of the wood," "fairies" and whom fantasy writers have taken a liking (we have to remember that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein were first and foremost professors of Medieval English literature--they are not what you would call "original"--and that is, of course, what makes them great).

Apparently there is no question, for some, whether these folks actually exist. Just like for some demons are real and, though unseen, they invade our comfortable world. Many a college professor's career was put into question after s/he "came out" dedicating their research to these superstitions. Just ask W. B. Yeats who spent much of his early career gathering faerie stories from Irish folks and collecting them into lovely anthologies.

So while a good college roomate adored artwork of the faerie, I feel obligated to set the record straight: these are not little people with wings (I do not know enough of the pixies)--this was a modern invention (kinda). They are usually human-size folks who are not governed by the rules of this world--they are overly passionate, violent, they love to hunt with hawks, clothe themselves in wonderful garmets, create beautiful gardens, etc.

Some famous examples occur in canonical literature such as: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Lanval, Sir Orfeo, Spenser's Faerie Queene, etc. Or take Shakespeare's Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream.

They can be fierce (even green) persons and beautiful at the same time. In fact, these two--beauty and horror--seem inseparable at times. They dwell in the space between this world and the next: just before you fall asleep at night, in-between night and morning, or in the cleft of a two large rocks.

What is necessary to be warned of is what role the faerie play in y(our) lives. Oftentimes they are ministers of a certain test. They invade our comfortable worlds in quite disheartening ways and remind us that they too share this earth. When you lose your phone or keys--yep, faeries. When you are cutting down a tree (they love trees, horses) and your ladder all of a sudden slips out from under you. You get the idea--this is the "aventour" (adventure)--a moment when you are to consider the frailty of your existence alongside a much deeper, more passionate, playful, skilled race.

I use frivolous examples since we are not religious/superstitious/spiritual enough to see the significance of this other world. Or are we?

Let it snow, let it snow

2005-03-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

Snow is a wonderful thing when one's job is teaching English. Not only are there great poems to study, such as Emily Dickinson's "It sifts from Leaden Sieves," but one is periodically told to stay home until the world becomes a safer place. I am certainly glad the snow (if that is what her poem is "about") stilled this artisan.

IT sifts from leaden sieves,

It powders all the wood,

It fills with alabaster wool

The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face

Of mountain and of plain,—

Unbroken forehead from the east

Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,

It wraps it, rail by rail,

Till it is lost in fleeces;

It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—

The summer’s empty room,

Acres of seams where harvests were,

Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,

As ankles of a queen,—

Then stills its artisans like ghosts,

Denying they have been.

thoughts into breath into words

2005-02-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

Since I don't see where the blog's description appears in these glowing words, I suppose a statement of purpose is in order, so here goes:

This writing space is inspired by the marginalia found on medieval manuscripts. Tireless artists found refuge among the monotony of their scribbling in the spaces between the lines and in the margins of sacred and canonical texts. I hope this space will provide a similar venue for modern scribes.:.

Thus the blog is a place to scribble the thoughts of the day. William Carlos Williams wrote in his Autobiography (in better English) that he could not rest until he had drained his mind of the poetic moments he had experienced throughout the day. He was held breathless at the mere thought. While I do not expect any of us to be as profound as he, I know that good thinkers have friends who are good thinkers (among WCW's were Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, you get the idea).

Now onto the matter at hand.