I encounter funny things.
Heard on NPR
The program I do not recall
"I'll gut you
And fill your insides
With peppermint"
(Not broken up so,
Of course,
But this is a poem
And I have to do such things
Do I not?)
Seen in a stall
In the men's room
On the first floor of a library
"Poop every poop
Like it's your last poop"
(Again, not broken up so
But the caesura that seems to fall
Naturally
In English prosody
Falls there
And it is as good a place as any
To break a line)
Seen on a social media feed
(And with my apologies to the person
Whose feed I am quoting)
"Little strokes fell great oaks"
And then as now
I point out the phallic reference of a comment
Talking about stroking big hard wood
And then I looked in a mirror...
Friday, January 10, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
20140109.0658
Four years ago today, the second-best thing* that has yet happened in my life happened: I got married to my beautiful, cheerful, intelligent, kind-hearted, graceful, wonderful, wise wife. I have not always marked my anniversary in this space--indeed, I have done so only once, and that briefly--and the day has not always been filled with the most joy and happiness. Last year's anniversary got swallowed up by other concerns. The year before, we spent more or less quietly (and I am hardly displeased about it), and, Lord willing, this year will be another spent more or less quietly. Both of us have to work (such is life), but after work is done, the evening is ours to enjoy; as we are an increasingly old married couple (and because we have to work tomorrow), that enjoyment will likely be quite sedate, which suits us just fine.
Marriage has been remarkably good to me. Had I not met the woman who is now my wife, or had I met her but not allowed myself to fall in love and begin a relationship with her, I may well have finished my course of study more quickly than I did, although I would not have written my dissertation on the topic I did because I would not have had access to the resources I had. I would probably be living alone, trying to cobble together some semblance of a living from two or three different jobs and enjoying what little free time I had even less than I give evidence of enjoying things now (I am aware of the tone of much of my writing here). And I would be failing, probably soon to return to my parents' home in defeat. Or I would have taken a job teaching in the Texas public school system (because I did have certification to teach until November 2010), and I would at this point be contemplating...other things entirely. (I have addressed the way teachers are thanked.)
Fortunately, because I met the most excellent person who is my wife, I had reason to move from Hub City to The City, to live in the Best of the Boroughs, to study as I have studied (both in the liberal arts and the martial), to have met people who have enriched my life, to have found faith again, to have traveled abroad, to have fought in the trenches of a particularly dismal front in higher education, and to now be in a position from which I have some chance of making a good life for myself and my family. Because I met her, I have the family I have, a family that makes being a family man worth being and one into which I am not afraid to bring new lives in the next months and, perhaps, the years to follow.
Thank you, beloved Sonya, for four surpassingly good years. I look forward to ten times as many more with you, and I love you very, very much.
*I think I am justified in putting learning of my forthcoming child ahead of the wedding.
Marriage has been remarkably good to me. Had I not met the woman who is now my wife, or had I met her but not allowed myself to fall in love and begin a relationship with her, I may well have finished my course of study more quickly than I did, although I would not have written my dissertation on the topic I did because I would not have had access to the resources I had. I would probably be living alone, trying to cobble together some semblance of a living from two or three different jobs and enjoying what little free time I had even less than I give evidence of enjoying things now (I am aware of the tone of much of my writing here). And I would be failing, probably soon to return to my parents' home in defeat. Or I would have taken a job teaching in the Texas public school system (because I did have certification to teach until November 2010), and I would at this point be contemplating...other things entirely. (I have addressed the way teachers are thanked.)
Fortunately, because I met the most excellent person who is my wife, I had reason to move from Hub City to The City, to live in the Best of the Boroughs, to study as I have studied (both in the liberal arts and the martial), to have met people who have enriched my life, to have found faith again, to have traveled abroad, to have fought in the trenches of a particularly dismal front in higher education, and to now be in a position from which I have some chance of making a good life for myself and my family. Because I met her, I have the family I have, a family that makes being a family man worth being and one into which I am not afraid to bring new lives in the next months and, perhaps, the years to follow.
Thank you, beloved Sonya, for four surpassingly good years. I look forward to ten times as many more with you, and I love you very, very much.
*I think I am justified in putting learning of my forthcoming child ahead of the wedding.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
20140108.0736
During my morning reading, I ran across a piece linked to a social media feed by an old colleague, Robert Bly's "Gratitude to Old Teachers" (which, since it is hosted on the Library of Congress website, I think I may use as part of public discourse). The poem is presented as a paean or encomium to educators, expressing thanks to those whose work contributed to the collective narrator's ability to pass into the previously unknown. The imagery of the poem seems to argue against that presentation, however, presenting personal advancement as a result of a negative view of education.
The identified milieu of the poem is "the frozen lake," a body of water rendered to stillness and solidity by long cold. The narrator seeks to walk across it, working to go out onto a solidity new in the world--this lake is presumably not frozen in all weather--and is tentative in doing so because it is only newly frozen; it "once could take no human weight." Now, however, it is frozen and seemingly supported by teachers under the surface of the ice. The implication made is that the teachers extend as far as the ice does, "ahead of us for a mile," forming nuclei around which ice crystals can form and join together to provide a stable, if slippery and temporary, walking surface.
The imagery of the frozen lake that was "Water that once could take no human weight" during the collective narrator's school days, one being crossed amid stillness, seems to reflect a view that 1) learning is a one-time thing and that once it is achieved, 2) knowledge is static. As the narrator moves out, the knowledge represented by the water does not move, nor does the rest of the environment, the context in which the knowledge exists. An educational viewpoint that supports such an idea--that knowledge is a one-shot, static phenomenon--is clearly erroneous; knowledge, even basic knowledge, changes depending on the place and time. What is taught is not necessarily what is "right"; it is at best the best understanding of what is right (and not all teaching is at its best, admittedly), and the best understanding changes with the passing years.
More disturbing is the underfloor of the frozen lake surface: old teachers. Their being under the surface of the lake requires either that they can breathe water or that they are dead--and no evidence in the poem supports their having gills. Also, for them to be visible under the ice as the collective narrator claims they are requires that they be quite close to the surface--likely frozen in the ice itself. For the vision depicted in the poem to work, then, almost necessitates that teachers be frozen to death, a death particularly horrible to contemplate or to depict; certainly they must be dead and entombed in the ice. The collective narrator needs the teachers to be living in the world no more; the advancement depends on death--and indeed mass death, if the teachers are coterminous with the ice that extends a mile ahead. How many bodies must underlie the ice? How many layers of bodies are needed to provide a stable walking surface, even in such cold as has typified early January 2014?
If what Bly expresses in the poem is the gratitude of the title, it cannot be wondered at that so many teachers burn out, that so many of them are at "both on autopilot and survival mode" as Strauss reports in her 31 December 2013 Washington Post piece "'I would love to teach, but....'" If what Bly expresses is gratitude, censure must be all the more feared, for the gratitude is hardly to be sought.
The identified milieu of the poem is "the frozen lake," a body of water rendered to stillness and solidity by long cold. The narrator seeks to walk across it, working to go out onto a solidity new in the world--this lake is presumably not frozen in all weather--and is tentative in doing so because it is only newly frozen; it "once could take no human weight." Now, however, it is frozen and seemingly supported by teachers under the surface of the ice. The implication made is that the teachers extend as far as the ice does, "ahead of us for a mile," forming nuclei around which ice crystals can form and join together to provide a stable, if slippery and temporary, walking surface.
The imagery of the frozen lake that was "Water that once could take no human weight" during the collective narrator's school days, one being crossed amid stillness, seems to reflect a view that 1) learning is a one-time thing and that once it is achieved, 2) knowledge is static. As the narrator moves out, the knowledge represented by the water does not move, nor does the rest of the environment, the context in which the knowledge exists. An educational viewpoint that supports such an idea--that knowledge is a one-shot, static phenomenon--is clearly erroneous; knowledge, even basic knowledge, changes depending on the place and time. What is taught is not necessarily what is "right"; it is at best the best understanding of what is right (and not all teaching is at its best, admittedly), and the best understanding changes with the passing years.
More disturbing is the underfloor of the frozen lake surface: old teachers. Their being under the surface of the lake requires either that they can breathe water or that they are dead--and no evidence in the poem supports their having gills. Also, for them to be visible under the ice as the collective narrator claims they are requires that they be quite close to the surface--likely frozen in the ice itself. For the vision depicted in the poem to work, then, almost necessitates that teachers be frozen to death, a death particularly horrible to contemplate or to depict; certainly they must be dead and entombed in the ice. The collective narrator needs the teachers to be living in the world no more; the advancement depends on death--and indeed mass death, if the teachers are coterminous with the ice that extends a mile ahead. How many bodies must underlie the ice? How many layers of bodies are needed to provide a stable walking surface, even in such cold as has typified early January 2014?
If what Bly expresses in the poem is the gratitude of the title, it cannot be wondered at that so many teachers burn out, that so many of them are at "both on autopilot and survival mode" as Strauss reports in her 31 December 2013 Washington Post piece "'I would love to teach, but....'" If what Bly expresses is gratitude, censure must be all the more feared, for the gratitude is hardly to be sought.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
20140107.0811
A number of my colleagues are posting the following image as their profile pictures on one of the more prominent social media networks:
It is a sketch of a proposed statue to be erected on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds by a New York Satanic church in response to an Oklahoma policy or law that allows for privately-funded religious displays on public lands, as noted here and here. The law, which has also prompted some Hindus to petition for a display of their own (noted here), has faced challenges from the ACLU, oddly enough led by a Baptist minister. The ACLU objection is the expected one about violation of the establishment clause via the selective acceptance of the submitted statues (as seems to be happening with the "temporary ban" on displays other than the already-accepted Ten Commandments piece), while the minister's objection derives from the idea that a secularized display of religious iconography trivializes the faith it represents.*
I cannot say that I do not find the joke funny--and I know that my friends mean it as a joke. I am also not about to go off on some rant about the way that even displaying the image allows the influence of the Fallen; the image has only so much power as is invested in it by those who observe it, and the powers that are in the world can appear as they choose (is it not an article of Christian faith that the Most High assumed a lowly form to save Creation?), so I am not worried about the image corrupting me. Nor am I worried that by looking upon it or even reporting on it here I will incur the wrath of the Almighty; if I have merited divine censure, I did so before I began to write this morning, but I choose to believe along with the Good Doctor that God has a sense of humor (yes, I am aware that Asimov moved away from religion, but I am also aware that he expressed the hope that "God loves an honest atheist").** The god I worship may well be looking upon the whole affair with bemusement; I do not presume to account for the particulars of the Wielder's reactions, but I hope God chuckles at human folly, or something similar.
Some things need to be satirized. They need to be held up to ridicule so that, if the people who do them will not change their ways, others will look and see that something is to be avoided. But I do not think that is what will happen in this circumstance. I think instead that the satire--and I cannot help but regard the New York Satanists involved as setting out to satirize (along with the Pastafarians I have heard are working to get involved), even if I think the Hindus (and, yes, even many of the Christians) are sincere--will fall on deaf ears in most of Oklahoma and will work only to a passing disdain among those in the rest of the United States, while the rest of the world will shake its collective head sadly at the infighting insofar as it notices at all what happens where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. The minds of none will be changed, for the minds of none (or so close to none as matters not) are open to being changed. We are all of us arrogantly convinced of our own rightness and righteousness--including me--and of the wrongness of those who do not agree with us; we view the other as willfully and irredeemably stupid or willfully and irredeemably sinful, and neither attitude fosters the understanding that is the only way to make things better.
But if I am going to be on one side of this, I will be with the one that is willing to laugh at things. It is a better sound than angry shouting.
*I am aware that my use of Christian News may strike some as odd. Consider, though, that if even a purportedly Christian organization is reporting that a prominent Christian leader is against an ostensibly Christian display,† it cannot be quite so much a "godless liberal media" campaign to strip religion from public life in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.
**Both can be found in Asimov Laughs Again. I am not going to hunt up page numbers at the moment--seriously, this time.
†Ostensibly because Christ was more about the spirit than the letter of the Law; even though Christ remarks that the law will remain in place, He points out in the same passages several insufficiencies in it (Matthew 5). Righteousness does not come so much from adherence to the Law but to the love that undergirds it. And ostentatious displays evidently annoy Christ, anyway (Matthew 6).
 |
| Source: Satanic Temple / AP (http://nation.time.com/2014/01/07/satanists-unveil-statue-for-oklahoma-capitol/), used for purposes of reporting/commentary consistent with Fair Use doctrine; no challenge to IP rights is intended |
I cannot say that I do not find the joke funny--and I know that my friends mean it as a joke. I am also not about to go off on some rant about the way that even displaying the image allows the influence of the Fallen; the image has only so much power as is invested in it by those who observe it, and the powers that are in the world can appear as they choose (is it not an article of Christian faith that the Most High assumed a lowly form to save Creation?), so I am not worried about the image corrupting me. Nor am I worried that by looking upon it or even reporting on it here I will incur the wrath of the Almighty; if I have merited divine censure, I did so before I began to write this morning, but I choose to believe along with the Good Doctor that God has a sense of humor (yes, I am aware that Asimov moved away from religion, but I am also aware that he expressed the hope that "God loves an honest atheist").** The god I worship may well be looking upon the whole affair with bemusement; I do not presume to account for the particulars of the Wielder's reactions, but I hope God chuckles at human folly, or something similar.
Some things need to be satirized. They need to be held up to ridicule so that, if the people who do them will not change their ways, others will look and see that something is to be avoided. But I do not think that is what will happen in this circumstance. I think instead that the satire--and I cannot help but regard the New York Satanists involved as setting out to satirize (along with the Pastafarians I have heard are working to get involved), even if I think the Hindus (and, yes, even many of the Christians) are sincere--will fall on deaf ears in most of Oklahoma and will work only to a passing disdain among those in the rest of the United States, while the rest of the world will shake its collective head sadly at the infighting insofar as it notices at all what happens where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. The minds of none will be changed, for the minds of none (or so close to none as matters not) are open to being changed. We are all of us arrogantly convinced of our own rightness and righteousness--including me--and of the wrongness of those who do not agree with us; we view the other as willfully and irredeemably stupid or willfully and irredeemably sinful, and neither attitude fosters the understanding that is the only way to make things better.
But if I am going to be on one side of this, I will be with the one that is willing to laugh at things. It is a better sound than angry shouting.
*I am aware that my use of Christian News may strike some as odd. Consider, though, that if even a purportedly Christian organization is reporting that a prominent Christian leader is against an ostensibly Christian display,† it cannot be quite so much a "godless liberal media" campaign to strip religion from public life in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.
**Both can be found in Asimov Laughs Again. I am not going to hunt up page numbers at the moment--seriously, this time.
†Ostensibly because Christ was more about the spirit than the letter of the Law; even though Christ remarks that the law will remain in place, He points out in the same passages several insufficiencies in it (Matthew 5). Righteousness does not come so much from adherence to the Law but to the love that undergirds it. And ostentatious displays evidently annoy Christ, anyway (Matthew 6).
Monday, January 6, 2014
20140106.0717
Today does not mark the beginning of classes, but it does mark the beginning of work for me. Buildings and offices are opening again, and meetings have already been scheduled. So I will be trudging in despite the biting cold, and I will do what I can to set up for the coming term in the time I have to do it. (I am further ahead than I usually am on this, but not so far ahead as I ought to be. As ever, I should have gotten more done than I did. I do not want to be only a day or two ahead of my students as I go through the term; they deserve more and I deserve better performance.)
Although I do in part lament the end of the quiet and peace I have had for much of the past month, I am not displeased to be getting back to work. I appreciate having some imposed structure to guide and shape my time (and, in truth, I need to have something about which to complain--as I think most do). And I do look forward every term to working with new sets of minds; I hope each time that I go into a new set of classes that I will once again have the kind of teaching experience I had in my early work, that the uncovering of knowledge and development of understanding will be fresh and rapid, exhilarating in its breadth and depth.
It has been so too rarely for me. Some of the lack has been because of external forces for which none are to blame but with which we all contended poorly. Some has come from budgetary and administrative conditions, for which there are people to blame, as I have suggested from time to time and as I know but do not report. Some has come from student resistance; to some, I know that I embody the oppressive forces that have trodden them down and their forebears across generations, and to others, I am part of "the help" that refuses to be ordered about despite taking the salary offered. And I know that there are ways, many ways, in which I can improve upon my performance in the classroom; I could be more sympathetic to my pupils, more lenient, more giving. Or so I have been told, and not only by students variously disgruntled.
Whatever the reason, though, my teaching experience has not been as I would have it as often as I would have it be so. (Parse the sentence; it makes sense.) As I prepare for the new term throughout this week, while offices are open and between the meetings already scheduled, I do so in the hope that this time will be one of the better ones. I do so in the hope that I will not come out of it as battered as I have been by earlier semesters, and that the students and I will be better for it.
Although I do in part lament the end of the quiet and peace I have had for much of the past month, I am not displeased to be getting back to work. I appreciate having some imposed structure to guide and shape my time (and, in truth, I need to have something about which to complain--as I think most do). And I do look forward every term to working with new sets of minds; I hope each time that I go into a new set of classes that I will once again have the kind of teaching experience I had in my early work, that the uncovering of knowledge and development of understanding will be fresh and rapid, exhilarating in its breadth and depth.
It has been so too rarely for me. Some of the lack has been because of external forces for which none are to blame but with which we all contended poorly. Some has come from budgetary and administrative conditions, for which there are people to blame, as I have suggested from time to time and as I know but do not report. Some has come from student resistance; to some, I know that I embody the oppressive forces that have trodden them down and their forebears across generations, and to others, I am part of "the help" that refuses to be ordered about despite taking the salary offered. And I know that there are ways, many ways, in which I can improve upon my performance in the classroom; I could be more sympathetic to my pupils, more lenient, more giving. Or so I have been told, and not only by students variously disgruntled.
Whatever the reason, though, my teaching experience has not been as I would have it as often as I would have it be so. (Parse the sentence; it makes sense.) As I prepare for the new term throughout this week, while offices are open and between the meetings already scheduled, I do so in the hope that this time will be one of the better ones. I do so in the hope that I will not come out of it as battered as I have been by earlier semesters, and that the students and I will be better for it.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
20140105.0818
A blanket of snow shrouds Sherwood Cottage and the houses and streets surrounding it, setting into stark relief against its stunning background the few blades of grass that poke up from it and the walls of houses protected by their eaves. There is a peaceful quiet greater than that typical of mornings in this place; the snow serves to silence much, both in itself and in it prompting the dwellers of the wind-swept plains to remain in their own homes, where their sounds do not reach my ears. And I relish it.
In the outer silence, I am able to reach out within my home with all of my senses; I can sit and simply feel the house. I hear the susurration of the space heater in the bedroom where my wife still sleeps, the high electric whisper of current being forced through gas in my desk lamp and the magnetic oscillations my computer and its screen produce. I know that each cat does his own piece, with one even now padding softly towards the bedroom and another contemplating mischief; the third is on the floor where the heater discharges, waiting for the warmth to return.
I feel more than hear the house breathing. My wife and I have done much to insulate the old windows, but air still moves even if the wall furnace is not blowing. The doors, I think, which must remain passable--I have to be able to get out with a shovel somehow--are its bronchia, its spiracles. There is the sense that this place, though an older house and abused by its former tenants, is yet alive, still struggling on more through resignation to continuance than through defiance or in response to love. (And I think again of Bedfordside Garden, in which my wife and I were the first tenants, and which flourished because of love.)
And this place has been abused; the marks of it are more plain than bruises, for bruises fade with the body's ability to heal, and a house cannot make itself whole again. Its wounds have been patched in part, and its blemishes covered over, but they still remain. I can see that college students who did not know how to hold a house have lived here; I can see it in the results of inattention to fixtures and the one strange stain in the carpet that remains, and in the dorm-room-drab paint that is on the walls that are painted (over many layers of other colors that show where the paint has peeled away). I can see it, too, in the burns and bullet holes on the accompanying garage, and I wonder what else I will find.
Sherwood Cottage has been good to me and mine, and I thank the house for it. It has served as a refuge from the frenetic furor of The City, permitting space in which to heal myself from what I did to myself therein, and I appreciate it. It will serve as the first home for my beloved child yet to come, and I cannot help but be grateful. But it is a place I know I will not be in long, and so although I do extend myself outward to feel what is here, to find the limits of this space amid the snowy world surrounding it, I will not extend deeply into it. I respect it and I maintain it, and I work in my small and inexpert way to improve it, but this is not my forever home; my time here is limited, and so I am not settling here.
For now, though, I know its limits, I know mine, and I will work within them in the snow-made quiet.
In the outer silence, I am able to reach out within my home with all of my senses; I can sit and simply feel the house. I hear the susurration of the space heater in the bedroom where my wife still sleeps, the high electric whisper of current being forced through gas in my desk lamp and the magnetic oscillations my computer and its screen produce. I know that each cat does his own piece, with one even now padding softly towards the bedroom and another contemplating mischief; the third is on the floor where the heater discharges, waiting for the warmth to return.
I feel more than hear the house breathing. My wife and I have done much to insulate the old windows, but air still moves even if the wall furnace is not blowing. The doors, I think, which must remain passable--I have to be able to get out with a shovel somehow--are its bronchia, its spiracles. There is the sense that this place, though an older house and abused by its former tenants, is yet alive, still struggling on more through resignation to continuance than through defiance or in response to love. (And I think again of Bedfordside Garden, in which my wife and I were the first tenants, and which flourished because of love.)
And this place has been abused; the marks of it are more plain than bruises, for bruises fade with the body's ability to heal, and a house cannot make itself whole again. Its wounds have been patched in part, and its blemishes covered over, but they still remain. I can see that college students who did not know how to hold a house have lived here; I can see it in the results of inattention to fixtures and the one strange stain in the carpet that remains, and in the dorm-room-drab paint that is on the walls that are painted (over many layers of other colors that show where the paint has peeled away). I can see it, too, in the burns and bullet holes on the accompanying garage, and I wonder what else I will find.
Sherwood Cottage has been good to me and mine, and I thank the house for it. It has served as a refuge from the frenetic furor of The City, permitting space in which to heal myself from what I did to myself therein, and I appreciate it. It will serve as the first home for my beloved child yet to come, and I cannot help but be grateful. But it is a place I know I will not be in long, and so although I do extend myself outward to feel what is here, to find the limits of this space amid the snowy world surrounding it, I will not extend deeply into it. I respect it and I maintain it, and I work in my small and inexpert way to improve it, but this is not my forever home; my time here is limited, and so I am not settling here.
For now, though, I know its limits, I know mine, and I will work within them in the snow-made quiet.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
20140104.0822
With the new year well begun, my mind turns to the scholarly activities I know await me. I am looking to attend three conferences this year: CCCC in Indianapolis, Indiana; the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the South Central Modern Language Association conference in Austin, Texas. (Others may pop up later.) The latter two are repeat trips for me; I try to make it to both Kalamazoo and SCMLA each year. They both produce excellent work, they both offer remarkably good networking activities, and they both provide wonderful experiences.
In support of my trip to the last, the South Central Modern Language Association conference, I am putting together another of my special sessions, albeit on a more "legitimate" topic than the last one I submitted. As I have noted, I am looking to fill a panel titled Them's Fightin' Words: Implicit and Explicit Combat Methodologies. One of my colleagues has already suggested a paper to me, but I can use two or three more, so those of you who might like to take a trip to Austin and have some academic inclinations--or who know others who might, so that you can forward this information to them--please note the panel description (which I repeat from the earlier post with some emendation):
In support of my trip to the last, the South Central Modern Language Association conference, I am putting together another of my special sessions, albeit on a more "legitimate" topic than the last one I submitted. As I have noted, I am looking to fill a panel titled Them's Fightin' Words: Implicit and Explicit Combat Methodologies. One of my colleagues has already suggested a paper to me, but I can use two or three more, so those of you who might like to take a trip to Austin and have some academic inclinations--or who know others who might, so that you can forward this information to them--please note the panel description (which I repeat from the earlier post with some emendation):
The will to fight is embedded in human nature and so in human languages and literatures. Many of the most widely-read works in any language have much to say about the ways in which people work to injure and destroy each other's properties and bodies. Even many texts which perhaps do not count as "literary" treat the matter; most systems of martial arts have guidebooks written by advanced and expert practitioners of those arts, and militaries throughout the world publish manuals to assist in training people better how to kill. Because so much effort is spent in describing and teaching fighting in the written word and other media, it seems appropriate to examine such depictions to uncover what they say about their writers, their readers, and the world in which they all exist. This panel [Them's Fightin' Words] seeks to examine overt, and explicate covert, textual discussions of how best to fight; abstracts of papers for possible inclusion in the session are welcome. They should be no more than 300 words and should be sent to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com before the end of the business day on 14 February 2014.Works in any textual or verbal medium are up for consideration: books, movies, covertly recorded training sessions with grand masters of esoteric physical disciplines, okuden, or whatever else uses words and/or sequenced images to try to teach ways to take apart things violently (or less so, as the case may be). There is much material dealing with teaching people how to enact harm, and so there is ample opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves, each other, and the cultures in which we are enmeshed through the study of that material. Your contribution to that study is most welcome.
Friday, January 3, 2014
20140103.0730
There is a sense that falling into a routine is somehow a bad thing, that it promotes laziness and a dissatisfaction with the way things are. In that sense, routines make for grinding boredom, and being bored is to be avoided in the mainstream culture of the United States (how else to account for the ubiquitous mini-game on smartphone and other device?). And I admit that I have felt some of that sense; I have looked at myself and been disgusted with the rut my steps have carved as I have gone about the daily circuits I have set for myself. I have thought that I should do something different, equating different with better in my mind, as if to change is necessarily to improve.
It is not, of course. The last time I complained aloud of being bored was in the summer of 2002. I was spending time at my parents' house in the Texas Hill Country (I am sure I will come up with a name for the place soon), and I had spent most of a week rereading Asimov's Robot, Empire, and Foundation novels. My mother chastised me for not going out into the town and seeing what it had to offer. (I wonder if she had forgotten in that moment that I had grown up in the town and knew well what it had to offer--including people around whom I am still uncomfortable more than a decade later.) In curmudgeonly indignation, I replied that the town bored me, and that I found escape from that grinding boredom in the books I was reading--and nowhere else that was readily available to me.
The next day, it began to rain. Over the next two or three days, some fifty-one inches of rain fell on and around my hometown, and that much rain will flood most any place. In the Hill Country town of my youth, it caused flash flooding; my parents' house stands a lot away from and some twenty feet above a creek, and in the time it took to look from backyard to front yard and back, the creek rose such that we could see its foaming top from the house. We could see the waters raging through our part of town, backing up against the woodpile that my mother and I demolished in the vain hope of easing the flow (although I remain proud to have tossed about massive chunks of wood--Hill Country post oak cut no smaller than yard-long cylinders half a yard across--as though they were paper). We could see our kitchen become creek-front property as the living room became creek bed. And we could see what was left when the rains stopped and the flood waters finally flowed away: houses shifted from their foundations or swept away altogether, people's lives waterlogged and ruined, and the slow efforts to repair and restore things begun. (Nobody died in the flood, as I recall, and injuries were minor at most. Fortunately, for many backs were needed to bend beneath the work to follow.)
It was an exciting time, certainly. But it was not worth the price exacted for it. And if I over-assert my importance to think that my complaint triggered the weather and the upstream dam failure that created the flood, neither am I willing to take the chance that it did not. I will not need to have the lesson repeated; boredom is sometimes a good thing. If nothing else, it means things are not going wrong. Routines, therefore, are not so bad as they are sometimes thought to be. Not necessarily.
It is not, of course. The last time I complained aloud of being bored was in the summer of 2002. I was spending time at my parents' house in the Texas Hill Country (I am sure I will come up with a name for the place soon), and I had spent most of a week rereading Asimov's Robot, Empire, and Foundation novels. My mother chastised me for not going out into the town and seeing what it had to offer. (I wonder if she had forgotten in that moment that I had grown up in the town and knew well what it had to offer--including people around whom I am still uncomfortable more than a decade later.) In curmudgeonly indignation, I replied that the town bored me, and that I found escape from that grinding boredom in the books I was reading--and nowhere else that was readily available to me.
The next day, it began to rain. Over the next two or three days, some fifty-one inches of rain fell on and around my hometown, and that much rain will flood most any place. In the Hill Country town of my youth, it caused flash flooding; my parents' house stands a lot away from and some twenty feet above a creek, and in the time it took to look from backyard to front yard and back, the creek rose such that we could see its foaming top from the house. We could see the waters raging through our part of town, backing up against the woodpile that my mother and I demolished in the vain hope of easing the flow (although I remain proud to have tossed about massive chunks of wood--Hill Country post oak cut no smaller than yard-long cylinders half a yard across--as though they were paper). We could see our kitchen become creek-front property as the living room became creek bed. And we could see what was left when the rains stopped and the flood waters finally flowed away: houses shifted from their foundations or swept away altogether, people's lives waterlogged and ruined, and the slow efforts to repair and restore things begun. (Nobody died in the flood, as I recall, and injuries were minor at most. Fortunately, for many backs were needed to bend beneath the work to follow.)
It was an exciting time, certainly. But it was not worth the price exacted for it. And if I over-assert my importance to think that my complaint triggered the weather and the upstream dam failure that created the flood, neither am I willing to take the chance that it did not. I will not need to have the lesson repeated; boredom is sometimes a good thing. If nothing else, it means things are not going wrong. Routines, therefore, are not so bad as they are sometimes thought to be. Not necessarily.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
20140102.0650
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That language is dead
That culture is dead
That the children of today will become the dependent of tomorrow
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That money has become the sole determiner of worth
That culture is dead
That corporate practice is become the only practice worth noting
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That celebrity is all
That culture is dead
That the children of today seek only spotlight without substance
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That there is no hope
That culture is dead
That we are the ones who killed it
And it may be that there is no hope
That the damage seen as done
Has been done and is actually damage
And that there is no way now to change it
But that is no reason not to try.
If we cannot by our efforts change things
We can at least be less complicit in them
So I remain
Pen in hand instead of sword
Reenacting in a small way
The struggles of Æsir
Against Jötnar and Muspellsmegir
Perhaps I will be more like the sons of the strongly girdled
Than the one-eyed spearman or the red-haired hammerman
Perhaps others will be, as well
And through the online ether
That language is dead
That culture is dead
That the children of today will become the dependent of tomorrow
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That money has become the sole determiner of worth
That culture is dead
That corporate practice is become the only practice worth noting
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That celebrity is all
That culture is dead
That the children of today seek only spotlight without substance
The lamentation rings through the air
And through the online ether
That there is no hope
That culture is dead
That we are the ones who killed it
And it may be that there is no hope
That the damage seen as done
Has been done and is actually damage
And that there is no way now to change it
But that is no reason not to try.
If we cannot by our efforts change things
We can at least be less complicit in them
So I remain
Pen in hand instead of sword
Reenacting in a small way
The struggles of Æsir
Against Jötnar and Muspellsmegir
Perhaps I will be more like the sons of the strongly girdled
Than the one-eyed spearman or the red-haired hammerman
Perhaps others will be, as well
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
20140101.0900
It has been three years now since I have made a blog post on Hangover Day. While I had thought to wax rhapsodic about past New Year's experiences, I realized as I attempted to write several that I would be ill-served by doing so. There are enough such narratives about already, narratives better documented than any I might muster and doubtlessly far more entertaining that any I have yet experienced, holiday or otherwise. I need not add to them; I will write otherwise, instead.
My beloved wife and I traveled to the City of Thunder once again yesterday, passing over the wind-swept plains in haste to return to the offices of our perinatologist. Our child was weighed and measured, and found sufficient; the physician noted that all looks well with the life growing inside my wife. It is a comfort to know that things appear to proceed as they ought to for the baby.
In the above paragraph, I once again use one of the kennings of which I am fond and which I recall having discussed recently. The device, a poetic renaming of a thing based upon its qualities and cultural associations it has (so a form of metonymy, really), is one typical of Germanic poetries; Beowulf uses it abundantly, as do the Icelandic sagas, and I, as a student of such things, find that it creeps into my usage as well. It is not a roach that I seek to eliminate it but despair of ever doing so, but a gem unlooked-for that enriches whoever picks it up.
Such devices do move away from the literal, I know. They are bits of figurative language that require background knowledge and understanding to untangle, and so they are in some senses distractions from the thrust of what is being put across. For that reason, they are disfavored in technical writing and reporting. Yet they are a means through which features of culture are passed forward, and they are a means through which the use of language may be made beautiful. They allow writers and readers to exceed themselves, engaging more fully in the dialogue that the best writing is and thereby entering into the greater communion of the world.
If, then, I write of the City of Thunder as it sits as the chosen seat of the chosen rulers of the wind-swept plains of sweet-smelling wheat, then I write in a place not only where I write but that acknowledges the NBA, theoretically-representative federated government, and Rogers and Hammerstein, and I am connected thereby to the communities that understand and engage with such things. It is far more interesting than to simply state that my wife and I went to Oklahoma City, and this context of writing is one in which interest is rewarded.
Others look for the concision above other concerns, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am capable of writing in such a way, which I know from having done a fair bit of it and having taught others to do so (unlike Shaw and unfortunately many others, I do not think that teaching allows me to not know what I am doing). But this is not one of those circumstances. This is more hortatory and epideictic, and if I am to praise a thing that demands skill in the writing and the reading, I ought to show that skill, myself. Hence the several metonymies in the piece--and the many others that will follow after.
My beloved wife and I traveled to the City of Thunder once again yesterday, passing over the wind-swept plains in haste to return to the offices of our perinatologist. Our child was weighed and measured, and found sufficient; the physician noted that all looks well with the life growing inside my wife. It is a comfort to know that things appear to proceed as they ought to for the baby.
In the above paragraph, I once again use one of the kennings of which I am fond and which I recall having discussed recently. The device, a poetic renaming of a thing based upon its qualities and cultural associations it has (so a form of metonymy, really), is one typical of Germanic poetries; Beowulf uses it abundantly, as do the Icelandic sagas, and I, as a student of such things, find that it creeps into my usage as well. It is not a roach that I seek to eliminate it but despair of ever doing so, but a gem unlooked-for that enriches whoever picks it up.
Such devices do move away from the literal, I know. They are bits of figurative language that require background knowledge and understanding to untangle, and so they are in some senses distractions from the thrust of what is being put across. For that reason, they are disfavored in technical writing and reporting. Yet they are a means through which features of culture are passed forward, and they are a means through which the use of language may be made beautiful. They allow writers and readers to exceed themselves, engaging more fully in the dialogue that the best writing is and thereby entering into the greater communion of the world.
If, then, I write of the City of Thunder as it sits as the chosen seat of the chosen rulers of the wind-swept plains of sweet-smelling wheat, then I write in a place not only where I write but that acknowledges the NBA, theoretically-representative federated government, and Rogers and Hammerstein, and I am connected thereby to the communities that understand and engage with such things. It is far more interesting than to simply state that my wife and I went to Oklahoma City, and this context of writing is one in which interest is rewarded.
Others look for the concision above other concerns, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am capable of writing in such a way, which I know from having done a fair bit of it and having taught others to do so (unlike Shaw and unfortunately many others, I do not think that teaching allows me to not know what I am doing). But this is not one of those circumstances. This is more hortatory and epideictic, and if I am to praise a thing that demands skill in the writing and the reading, I ought to show that skill, myself. Hence the several metonymies in the piece--and the many others that will follow after.
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