some ponderings regarding "a portrait"

- "It seemed strange to him at times that wisdom and understanding and knowledge were so distinct in their nature that each should be prayed for apart from the others." (Joyce, James. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Time Inc: New York, 1964. 163) Man, I wish I'd read this sentence in time with my thesis... I was wondering about the distinction myself. Thank you, Joyce, for proposing a similar dilemma.

- "His destiny was to be elusive of social and religious orders. The wisdom of the priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world." (Joyce 178) The idea of "his own wisdom"... very interesting concept, that for all of us, there is a personalized wisdom to seek out there (or in here *knocks skull*)

- "Words. Was it their colors? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue... No, it was not their colors: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and color? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language manycolored and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?" (183)

I love this sentence! especially from "he drew" onwards.

- "Now, as never before, his name seemed to him a prophecy... he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? ... a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?" (186) Joyce sure knows how to write those epiphany moments.

This evening I was thinking about how difficult it is to keep the big picture in mind. So much of our daily lives--going to the can, eating oatmeal, running to get to the bus stop on time to get to where we're going, fumbling a cellphone in order not to miss a phone call from a family member or friend, staying up too late because you're trying to read and understand and gain knowledge about the current events and workings of the world--if you had the *big picture* in mind all the time, it would be incredibly difficult to do these things. At least, for me. When I proposed this to Corey, he told me that when I ask him what he's thinking (as girlfriends tend to do to boyfriends, after long periods of silence in bed together), when he says "nothing," he really means "everything," or the universe (i.e. the workings of it). I told him that I found this hard to believe, "or maybe I'm just too wordly." I dunno. Maybe I am.

It's all about balance, I guess. I'm such an incredibly emotional roller-coaster person anyway... so much about my day-to-day life, hour-to-hour even, is about me trying (sometimes struggling) to master my emotional energies; to maintain (as my counselor at Reed once put it) a middle ground, as opposed to crazy highs and lows. Maybe that's what I need to focus on, the "worldly" concerns of my own emotional-mental life. The rest of it just seems so big... thinking about this feels like a balloon inside my skull that is getting blown up and starts pushing up against the side of my cranium, threatening to pop.

I really like something Jess said to me once, though. She said that in all her traveling and all her experience (ha! that word, again), she felt that her own personal "self" was the greatest and most important project to work on. We can't save the world or even sometimes solve the current problem we're grappling with, but as human beings, we are all always works in progress, you know? I like this idea because it takes away the fear of being too self-absorbed... instead, maybe micro over macro?



anyway. I'm mailing my ballot tomorrow, and then, as my sister oh so sagely put it, "the fate of the world is in other people's hands." The fate of my own emotional and mental state, however... !

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." (281)

"reality of experience!" Whatever *that* means....... another plane ticket bought to go here, to go there? Let me know if you find out, Stephen......

monkey

I turned in my thesis around noon-thirty last Friday. Much Renn Fayre ridiculousness ensued.


At Thesis Parade, at which I was congratulated via being showered by champagne. I was also frequently asked by people with brows furrowed by concern how I was doing. I hadn't slept in two days, hence the pale, waifish complexion.

Standing in line at The Feast on Saturday afternoon.


Eating delicious meat, smoked by men who also took a picture of Corey's Epic Mushroom shirt, fellow mushroom hunters and lovers themselves.





Now it's a matter of finishing three papers, editing the typos and getting the thesis printed and bound. Then it'll be the end of thesis-tagged posts. Some days I feel like my thesis turned out particularly well, other days I feel like there are definitely some parts I wish I had more time to work on and flesh out. I think this is best exemplified by the nightmare I had two days before my orals, in which the corpse from "A Rose For Emily" came back to life and was chasing me. Oh, well. What work is ever truly finished, anyway? I don't know what I'm going to have anxiety-related dreams about once I graduate (as in "oh no my paper was acutally due today!" horror). Everyone has assured me that I will think of something.

Here is a list of books I want to read:
The Botany of Desire (Michael Pollan) (in the middle of this right now. Very interesting. One of the earlier books by the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma)
The Mapmaker's Wife (Robert Whitaker) (recommended to me by my mom. A based-on-history novel about Ecuador. Ecaudor! Must read so many books between now and later about Ecuador!)
Mycelium Running (Paul Stamets) (highly recommended by Corey. The subtitle basically says it all: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Mushrooms! Must read so many books between now and later about mushrooms!)

I might as well start with those and move on from there. Now if only I could summon up the willpower and energy to get those papers finished and officially bring my Reed career to a close......

Thank god I checked my e-mail to see that my next thesis meeting is scheduled for TUESDAY at 9:30, as opposed to forty-five minutes from now. Thank god, thank god.

It's not that I need to work harder on my thesis; it's just that I need to work on it more. Probably faster would be more accurate. I am consistently underestimating the amount of time it takes me to complete sections.

My biggest accomplishment yesterday was making two CDs for my sister. One is a surprise, the other is Senior Year!-themed (it's called "I'm Going To Make It Through This Year If It Kills Me"). There's something about making themed CDs for people that makes me feel very accomplished. It's like trying to tell a story through songs. I know it would be faster and more efficent to just e-mail mp3s, but where's the beauty and and joy of creation in that?

It was also a very weird and sad day yesterday. I heard the news that a professor I had lost her baby. As with the case of the freshman heroin overdose death, I was more upset than I expected to be. Someone sent out an e-mail to the rest of the class, suggesting that we compile different pieces of paper, letters, drawings, poetry, and so on, and send it to her. Part of me thinks this is a great way to show how much we care about and are thinking of her; another part of me feels that anything we have to say could only be trite, or worse, upsetting. I feel like that's an inevitable consequence of the situation, that nothing anyone can say or do will provide significant comfort or respite from the terrible grief.

I flipped through my poetry anthologies, trying to find something that could possibly be comforting. I (re)found some poems I really liked, the kind that I've muttered under my breath and have quoted to friends without knowing I'm doing so. I'm not going to use them for this particular situation because I don't consider them appropriate, but I will post them here to share. Er, hopefully posting them here isn't a violation of copyright. I'll even cite my source (always incorrectly--never learned proper MLA format. Literature major what?): Staying Alive. ed. Neil Astley. Bloodaxe Books : New York, 2003. pg. 375, 382, 396.

'DEATH DOES NOT COME FROM OUTSIDE...'
Death does not come from outside. Death is within.
Born-grows together with us.
Goes with us to kindergarten and school.
Learns with us to read and count.
Goes sledging with us, and to the pictures.
Seeks with us the menaing of life.
Tries to make sense with us of Einstein and Wiener.
Makes with us our first sexual contacts.
Marries, bears children, quarrels, makes up.
Separates, or perhaps not, with us.
Goes to work, goes to the doctor, goes camping,
ot the convalescent home and the sanatorium. Grows old,
sees children married, retired,
looks after grandchildren, grows ill, dies
with us. Let us not fear, then. Our death
will not outlive us.
Jann Kaplinski
translated from the Estonian by Hildi Hawkins

DEATH'S SECRET
It is not true
that death begins after life.
When life stops
death also stops.
Gosta Agren
translated from the Finland Swedish by David McDuff

INSCRIPTION
When I die I will return to seek
The moments I did not live by the sea
Sophia de mello Breyner
translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith

Oh, so many good poems! I had to force myself to put the book down before I pulled a "Limited Inc" (oh snap, Derrida in-joke! LOL ACADEMIA).

"just show me a moment that is mine, its beauty blinding and unsurpassed..."

"... that makes me forget every moment that went by that left me so half-hearted 'cause I felt is so half-assed." (Ani DiFranco's "Half-Assed", from her 2006 Reprieve album.)

I was fortunate enough to experience such a moment this morning, near the end of yet another grueling thesis meeting, which I showed up to with the usual pit of fear and terror in my stomach. I cannot express how both utterly draining and gratifying it is, having a professor you not only incredibly respect, but consider a good friend, go over your work, line by line by line, and not let you get away with anything. All those papers you wrote in the past, with the lazy throwaway sentences where you didn't exactly know what you were trying to say, but figured it sounded intelligent? You will get called on that, each and every single time. Nothing is allowed to slip; everything is up for scrutiny and criticism and questioning. "What did you mean by this? This sentence isn't clear. This word isn't well-chosen. What are you trying to argue? This isn't well-written. This doesn't make sense."

However, at the end of the hour and a half-long session, one that focused solely on the 10-pg introduction, he stands up and brushes his hands against his pants and murmurs in a wondrous tone of voice, "Si, nos va a quedar muy lindo esto."

And suddenly it all seems worth it and you feel like you're on top of the world again and as heart-breaking and soul-crushing and esteem-squishing and weepy state-inducing as the entire thesis writing process is, you can suddenly see the light at the end of the tunnel, because your adviser consents that your work is going to "quedar muy lindo." And you kind of understand what he meant during your conversation about the kid who died last night, in which he said that the only true pleasure from life is not from the exhibitionist escapism of drugs and politics and media, but the kind that results from the well-earned satisfaction that only comes from the knowledge of a job genuinely well done.

"Es bleibt wie etwas Unerforschliches und Geheimnisreiches in der Dunkelheit zurück"

A freshman at my school passed away last night, and everyone has been in a weird mood about it all day. I keep getting e-mails in my inbox from the president, dean of faculty, student body president. There are suggestions to have a book where people can write about their memories about the student in question or how they were affected by the experience. All throughout the day, I am disconcertingly and consistently thinking about how appropriately this all relates to the theme in my thesis about death as an appropriate moment to try to make "sense" of an experience, to find out the meaning of something, to make an effort to try to understand.

My entire thesis is essentially based on the implications of the final passage from Onetti's "Un Sueño Realizado" (A Dream Come True). The story is essentially a subtle retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale-- I'm too tired to explain why right now in a proper or coherent manner that does the story justice, but here's some bare bones plot summary, in order to provide some context for the final passage: a woman comes to a retired theatre director (the story's narrator) and asks him to stage a production a dream she once had. The dream is simple: a car goes by, a man crosses a street and drinks a beer poured by a girl with a pitcher, recrosses the street and pats the woman on the head, who has been lying on the sidewalk this entire time, as if she were a little girl. Her explanation for why she wants to stage the dream, as explained by Blanes (the actor) to the director, is not because the dream possesses some kind of deeper meaning for her, but simply "because while she was sleeping and dreaming about all of that, she was happy--but happy isn't the word, something else. So she wants to see it over again." The dream is reproduced onstage successfully; however, the moment in which Blanes pats the woman on the head is when they discover the woman is dead. Punched in the ribs by a raging Blanes, the director closes the story with the following 'realization':

"I was left by myself, doubled over by the blow, and while Blanes went back and forth on the stage, drunk, half-crazy, and the girl with the pitcher of beer and the man with the car bent over the dead woman, I understood what it was all about, what the woman had been searching for, what Blanes had drunkenly been trying to find out the night before on stage and seemed to be searching for even now, walking back and forth with the haste of a madman: I understood it all clearly, as if it were one of those things that one learns once and for all as a child, something that words can never explain."

That's my thesis, right there. Fairy tales. Stories. Death. Truth. Understanding. Ritual. Meaning. Knowledge. And at the end of it all, what Wilhelm Grimm called the Unerforschtes, the unexplorable that is at the origin and center of every story, significantly and emphatically different from the unexplored: "like something unexplored and mysterious that remained hidden in the darkness."

"But there's that danger in her eyes that tells such desperate lies, and all you want to do is believe her"

I'm having an incredibly hard time focusing for the final push to finish the first draft of my thesis. In some ways this is to be expected: after such a rigorous spring break, it isn't surprising that I spent most of this week feeling burnt out and exhausted. So I thought a "writing" excursion, any kind of writing, would be a good way to get my brain gears turning on the right track again.

It's lonely in the house today. My housemates are all either acting in or watching a production of "The Vagina Monologues." My sister is in the hospital, getting operated on for an erupted cyst. I know it's a fairly routine procedure and I shouldn't be using it as an excuse to be too distracted/distraught to work... and yet, here I am.

Last night Corey and I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert. BRUUUUCE! I remember hearing those calls on his live albums and wondering at first why the audience was booing. In contrast to the Justice concert we went to on Wednesday (we've had a surprisingly and undeservingly busy social-outing week, considering my FIRST DRAFT IS DUE MONDAY), we were the youngest people there, as opposed to clumped among the oldest. Our seats were behind the stage but it didn't end up mattering, as I think we got a better view than the people sitting in front, who were further away. Upon seeing the Boss arrive on stage I was surprised how he was less chunkier than I expected--I guess the camera really does add ten pounds!

I didn't really get into the concert until the band kicked into the third song, "Lonesome Day." Suddenly I was bouncing on my feet, singing along and waving my arms, as corny and cheesy as everyone around me. Every song seemed to come attached with the memory of a certain moment in my life--listening to "The Rising" album over and over again after Patrick and I broke up; "Darkness on the Edge of Town" album jogging doggedly along the dark and cold winding country roads of England; "Dancing in the Dark"--how is this song *not* about everyone's high school experience? He played three of my favorite songs, "Candy's Room", "She's the One" (the ONE song I wanted to hear live!) and "For You" (Elizabeth Wurtzel, if you could have been there!) All about damaged, elusive women, I note with interest.

Bruce Springsteen reminds me of the movies or bands you liked when you were a really young or impressionable kid, like "Return of the Jedi": you know inherently that the Ewoks are corny, that the dialogue is cheesy, but goddamn does it still get to you, the way Luke is has come into his own dressed in black and stomping around, and the way the camera pans to the night sky after Darth Vader's funeral (Old version only! Not the remastered travesty!). It gets you, and you can't explain why to anyone. I can't explain why "Candy's Room" gets me so much, or why the lyrics that serve as this entry's title seem to hold some kind of deeper and incredibly powerful, important significance to me, and even if I did, you wouldn't understand, because it wouldn't be comprehensible. It's like my thesis--God! Like everything!

Gadamer talks about this effect that art has on us in "The relevance of the beautiful"--things get us, and we can't explain why. It's unexplainable, it's ineffable, and we can't quite put our fingers on it. It is not a type of knowledge that results from positivism, objectivism, or logical thought processes, but rather a "different type of knowledge" (a phrase I am fond of frequently using in my thesis, though it desperately needs a more concrete definition!).

Gadamer gives the example of an organist improvising during a concert, a piece that was not transcribed and thus will never be heard again (I think of the bridge in "Yes Anastasia" that Tori never plays live, supposedly because it was improvised on the spot). Gadamer writes:

"Nevertheless, everyone says 'That was a brilliant interpretation or improvisation,' or on another occasion, 'That was rather dull today.' What do we mean when we say such things? Obviously we are referring back to the improvisation. Something 'stands' before us; it is like a work and not just an organist's finger exercise. Otherwise we should never pass judgment on its quality or lack of it. So it is the hermeneutic identity that establishes the unity of the work."

For Gadamer, this thing that "stands" before us that makes improvisation "art" as opposed to meaningless banging on the piano is tied to the idea of "hermeneutic identity," or the idea that we are all rooted in a tradition and history that leads to us understanding what is a work of art, and what is meaningless banging:

"To understand something, I must be able to identify it. For there was something there that I passed judgment upon and understood. I identify something as it was or as it is, and this identity alone constitutes the meaning of the work."

Is this all fairly obvious and self-explanatory? For Gadamer, meaning arises from our place in history and tradition. One of the things my thesis is arguing is that this can be authoritative and dangerous.

This biggest problem currently facing my thesis is I have yet to explain exactly what this "different type of knowledge" is. As of now I just vaguely make references to "ineffability," "dreams," and "forms." My adviser wisely advised me to avoid the word "aesthetic" because Gadamer's fond of it, and I'm arguing against (or presenting an alternative) to Gadamer. But all this is turning into putting off finishing the "A Rose For Emily" section at this point. I guess it's a good sign, though, if a review of a Bruce Springsteen concert can turn into Gadamer's discussing of the hermeneutic identity of a work.

whoa

that was a ridiculously long work session. definitely a record. it was worth it, because the result is 18 pages 1.5 spaced! and a lot of it's good writing too! more again tonight. and it's going to be for the scary books i've been avoiding, too. well, now is the time for sleep.

but briefly, here are some of the thoughts running through my head these days, which basically involve me sitting at the living room table literally all day, scrounging carrots, celery and chocolate, while impressing my housemates with my prodigious amounts of books:
- man, the life of an academic intelectual is hard. so monkish. so committed. you've just locked away all day in hermetic isolation, you and your brain and your books. thinking great thoughts, writing great things. yep.
- i wonder where my spring break went to. i know that it pretty much broke my brain
- this week is going to hurt (thought every day since march 14th)
- hey! I actually really like this topic! this is actually really interesting, and i am really a pretty good writer! man, I wish I'd worked on this more during the school year.
- man, i really wish i'd read blanchot earlier. like, in november when my advisor told me to. it would have made my life a tad easier.
- i wish i could go to the beach/bar/party/resteraunt with corey and his visiting cousin from new orleans, but i can't because i-have-to-work-on-my-thesis-i-havetowork-onmythesis ihavetoworkonmythesis ihahiiihjihtttthhhhshshshshssi
- SLEEP is for the weak! RARWR! (only last night; before then i was getting up at 11am every day and going to bed at midnight)
- i don't like how i've somehow regressed to the stage where the lakers not winning makes me annoyed
- i wish i could stop grinding my teeth; my jaw hurts
- I had no idea that there was a difference between a headache and a brainache, but there is!

obama-ed

I've guess I've officially become an Obama supporter, in the sense that I've gone so far to donate $10 to his campaign. How did this happen? I'm not really sure. I read a quote from him on a NYTimes blog that I liked: “I think it would be a problem if Senator Clinton’s voters disliked me or my voters disliked Senator Clinton [but] I don’t think that’s the case. I think our voters are passionate about bringing about change. My sister keeps asking me, a fervent Obama supporter herself (she went to a rally in Conneticut; you can see her photos here: (http://goodtimes.webshots.com/album/562385124SwFVbz) Part of me wonders if I'm just as much of a bandwagon jumper in politics as I am in sports (ver since the Lakers acquired Paul Gasoul and suddenly looked championship caliber again, my interest has suddenly resparked). I didn’t expect Obama to get this far, but since he has, he’s definitely looking better than Clinton. I’m suspicious and cynical about politicians in general, but as far as these things go, Clinton is definitely more of a politician than Obama, in the worst possible sense.

In other news, things are stressful. I vacillate thinking I’m totally screwed with my thesis and that I’m never going to finish it, verses being absolutely giddy and convinced that I’m a total genius. I am rarely in between, and quite frankly it’s getting exhausting! I’m working in the Catholic Charities immigration office this semester, which I’ve really enjoyed so far, but I had to flake out on going there this afternoon for the second week in a row just because I’m so far behind on thesis work that I’m absolutely panicked about meeting with my adviser with what I feel is very little to show him. Part of this comes from being mildly depressed for the past week and a half, whether from the always gray weather or having the flu or general ennui, I’m not sure. But anyway, I keep forgetting (and then relearning!) that the best way to conquer malaise or writer’s block is to simply get out and do things! I’m at my best, mentally and emotionally, when I’m buzzing around like a little bee, going with grim determination from one appointment or assignment to the next. When I don’t have clear deadlines or goals, I waver. I get bogged down and overwhelmed, like I’m walked through a swamp and my boots get so much mud attached to them I get stuck in a slurpy mess. Onwards and upwards, then.