I cannot write, I cannot read, I cannot think.

I feel outside myself.  I feel not of myself.  I feel separated from everything around myself.  I don't know what's wrong, only that something is. 

Spadework is a dud! Why Findley, why?

Timothy Findley`s `Spadework`` is by far Findley`s weakest novel.  It was awful.  So bad, in fact, that it was nearly unreadable.

Now, I generally like Findley.  I loved Last of the Crazy People, Pilgrim, The Piano Man`s Daughter, Not Wanted on the Voyage, Headhunter, and The Wars.  I thought that his diction was precise and his imagery and symbolism were poignant and profound.  I thought that the way he approached his subjects and themes in these other novels was breathtaking, but unfortunately Spadework had none of these sorely wanted attributes.

Even the central symbol of the novel, the cutting of the telephone line by Luke the gardener, lacked a crucial buildup and could have been made to feel much more significant through a more generous application of figurative language and imagery.  This was the moment where communication was disabled, when understanding between the characters was interrupted and disbanded.  And yet, I didn`t care.

Keith Garebian gives a fair review in the Quill and Quire, but I think it`s important to note the brilliance of his other novels in comparison with this dud.  That comparison alone makes Spadework atrocious, and something to be avoided and rejected.

Furthermore, the fact that Griffin is lured into a homosexual relationship, and then is essentially driven back to ``decency`` by the wife of his seducer is something that is almost offensive.  It almost seems like Findley is advocating homophobia the way Griffin is ``cured`` of his homosexual identity so easily. If there was even some dark hint in the novel that this `cure`` was not a solution to the problem but merely another covering up of identity I would be so much more comfortable with this choice of ending, but the fact that everyone lives happily ever after makes me question why Findley, who I thought was a homosexual man himself, would choose to do this!  To me, it just doesn`t make sense.

Even the `pithy diologue`` was, for me at least, terribly forced and lacking sincerity.  For a novel about the world of theatre, I would have expected a more theatrical style especially where diologue was concerned.

So for these, and other examples of mediocrity, I suggest you stay away from Spadework.  I wish I had.

Living versus Reading

I had a really ugly day today.  Oftentimes my personal appearance is not something I obsess about, and I would rather spent my few minutes in the morning reading my book over a nice cup of tea than frantically trying to make my body a canvas on which I try to inscribe significance.  But today... Today!  My god, today I was competing with  South Park's Ms. Crabtree for haggardness.

It made me realize that there's a line between obsessing over appearance and being lost so completely in my own interiority that the reality of myself disappears, and today was it. 

I am not naturally a feminine creature, but sometimes I wish I was.  When other young girls were giggling amongst themselves and grooming each other to be all of the stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, I was sitting alone in my closet to escape the noise and chaos of my household  and reading Little Women or the Little House books.  I escaped myself and the squalor of the reality around me through these books, and even now I suspect I do the same thing.

My parents were not well off.  My father made as much money as I make now, but he had five other people to support.  We always had enough to eat, but sometimes the quality of the meals were less than desirable (for example we would have nothing but spaghetti or kraft dinner for a week straight).  And as for clothing... well, I was given hand-me-downs from several generations ago.

I think the following school photograph can capture the phenomenological experience I am trying to tell far better than words ever could. I'm the one in red and white in the front row.

I realize that this difference in me, this alienation I felt from my earliest years, was what halted my "natural development" as a girl.  Because I didn't have young girl friends, I missed out on all of that female knowledge which was passed along amongst themselves.  I didn't learn about makeup and hair tricks.  I didn't learn how to walk in high heels, or how to combine colours.  I didn't learn how to cook or clean, or how to manage finances.  I missed out in learning life because I fell in love with Beth and Jo and Laura Ingalls.

Would it have been better if I had never met these characters?  Would I have gained more practical knowledge and be happier now if I had learned less literature?  Would my relationships work out better?

Or would I simply find another excuse for my failure?

Remains of the Day

I've just finished reading Remains of the Day.  It took me some time to begin to really enjoy it, because it begins slowly.  It's a narrative that slowly unfurls and it's not until the final page that the novel, its themes and significance, is fully experienced.   This novel is comparable to Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" in the simplicity of its realism.

 The most striking thing about this novel, I found, was the subtlety of the language.  The story is told through the first person reminiscence of an old english butler who is desperately clinging to the Old Order.  He is certainly a modernist hero living in the fragmented post-modern world, with a terrible nostalgia for the unity of his former days.  He is remembering the past as he journeys across the country to meet with a former colleague in an attempt to rectify some of the staffing problems he is currently experiencing, and the more the man remembers, the most tiny or vague detail confessed, the closer we come to an understanding of the character's complexities.

As I write this entry, I am also watching the film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.  It's decent, as far as Hollywood goes, but what's lacking is the subtlety and the smallness of the novel.  Things are exaggerated in the film, and the moral ambiguities become instead a very strong political statement verging on propaganda.  Also, the importance of the butler's solipsism is turned outwards through dialogue.  Now, I get that this is the convention of film, but the medium of the written word is so NECESSARY in this case, and I wish that the key  ideas could have been conveyed in some other, unconventional way.  I am, however, enjoying the chemistry of Ms Thompson and Mr Hopkins and how that relationship is developing.  Heh.

At any rate, the book was absolutely amazing, and I highly recommend it.  If you find yourself having difficulty getting engaged with the text, put it down for awhile but don't give up on it!  It's amazing once you get past the first hundred pages or so.

I am the wandering Ancient Mariner

I feel very much like the ancient mariner right now.  I am a babbling madman, forced to tell my story to those who will listen.  And my inevitable recitation, like his story, is one of love and of crime.  Although in this instance, the crime was mostly averted.

I worked with him nearly a year ago without even knowing I was attracted to him.  Until that night, I had no idea I wanted him.  Until that moment of awakening, my partner was my sole attraction, and I had never thought of anyone else.  But on that night he sat near me, and I felt the heat of him, radiating from his body and from his gaze.

He told me.  I knew.  And in knowing I accepted the consequences of what was to be.

And yet, that night, I was able to resist him.  That night, I touched his thigh and held his hand, and then left him alone, rejecting his pleas of a midnight discussion over the situation we were beginning to find ourselves in.  And I returned to my partner unscathed.

But I love him.  And that is my madness.

Call him Moron

I had another run in with Moron today at work.  My god, this man pisses me off.  One of my students swore at him today in the halls, because he's an asshole.  Now, of course, I can't let this be all right, because our organization would absolutely fail if we didn't maintain an air of professionalism and respect.  So now I have to deal with the unpleasant task of sitting this kid down and scaring him into not ever doing that again.

What puzzles me about this situation is the fact that this kid is generally a very kind and respectful kid.  His grades are in the mid eighties, and he's never been anything except polite to me.  So what did Moron do to make this kid blow his top?  Moron has been sworn at multiple times by multiple kids in the past.  I have never been sworn at directly by any kid, and I have some pretty "mean and scary" kids in my group.  So obviously it's something that Moron is doing to provoke it, and instead of leading this idiot out of the office in search of another job, he asked me, "How do you think we should handle this situation?" (I was particularly pissed off by the "WE" in this sentence.  Christ, why can't YOU deal with it when it happened, instead of getting me to do the dirty work after the fact?!)

Oh, and to make all of this even more ironically hilarious, the dude's degree is in conflict resolution.  People like this should just stop existing.

Life is not a novel?

"Life isn’t  a novel!” he told me in frustration.

But what if I want it to be?  The other,  he who was my almost lover,  he who called me at 2:00 in the morning citing Nietzsche as a reason to follow him into the night, he who I ultimately denied in favour of this long term warden I sit with now,  believed that narrative was the most important aspect of life.  He, too, as I have often contemplated, rejected any inherent meaning in life and instead chose to enjoy and celebrate the creation of meaning through hedonism and excitement. 

This is what I long to do.

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson may be my new favourite author.  I was first introduced to her by an internet friend of mine. He and I have been communicating off and on now for almost seven years.  He's an intellectual to whom I turn whenever I am experiencing a philosophical crisis, and he often has an answer to the questions I ask of him.  At any rate, he told me this photograph of mine reminded him of a character from Jeanette Winterson's "The Passion".

This intrigued me, because I had never heard of Winterson before.  I immediately began to scour the shelves of used bookstores for her, and came across several titles, but never The Passion.  I picked up "Written on the Body" and opened it to the first page.  I read the opening sentence:

Why is the measure of love loss?

I was immediately captivated and read the book that night.  It was very much about story-telling and raising the beloved to unreal heights once the lover has absented him/herself from that love.  The gender of the narrator is kept ambiguous throughout, so on top of the string of narratives found in the book, the reader is forced to layer another narrative on top of everything in order to experience the story.

I'm definitely a fan, and I'm looking forward to reading more of her texts.

(Un)Reality

Literature is my passion.  It is in me and of me.  It is a place of refuge and deferral, a place where both existence and time comes under my control for a brief instant. It is place in which the horrors and the pleasures are housed together.  And it is a place where what is not said becomes more important than what is and has been. 

Does Literature have any practical use?  I'm not sure.  I'm not sure what is meant by "practical" or "applicable".  Or rather, I suppose what I mean is that I question the nature the world to which these things are being applied.  Literature may have no tangible application to the physical world.  You cannot physically alter the physical world in which we dwell through the application of those qualities found in literature.  But ideas have incredible power to dramatically alter the social and psychological landscape of man.  Literature is applied to unseen processes, to the Unreal.  But to understand the Real in which we physically dwell, we must first understand from whence our perception of it comes, and the only way to explore that perception is to acknowledge that perhaps the Real exists because the Unreal, the construction of narrative we put over it and in it before we can first experience it, gives it Form.  And if Literature can guide us to the Unreal through hinting at its nature through figurative language and divulging its existence through the inability to name and classify it but to only compare it, then is not that a practical application?

I'm Afraid of Americans

I got into a bit of an argument with a co-worker today in front of the kids.  We were mentoring a group of students through a discussion of politics, and one of my students was telling my co-worker (a man who is sexist, prejudiced, and afraid of some of the kids) that America was evil.  My co-worker - let us call him Moron - was getting extremely worked up by this.

"That's not true!" he exclaimed.  "America has done some really great things.  They have provided all sorts of help to people across the world!"  This was said with extreme condescension, as if these kids were ten or eleven years younger than they are.  This alone would have been enough to piss me off, but  his pro-American, PC attitude made my tongue lash out in defense of integrity.  And so the words jumbled together and outwards before I was able to retract them.

"Too bad they aren't able to take care of their own people.  *cough* Hurricane Katrina,"  I retorted.

I watched as his face first went blank, and then began to turn purple in fury.  I was able to save face, though, and not propagate Anti-American sentiments to my students by immediately clarifying, "But in this instance, too, it was the Government who acted badly, not the people.  So you can dislike the American Government and the things it does without hating the American people."

And with that, the onslaught of a thousand angry phone calls was averted.  

Language: Inspired by Faulkner

I'm reading William Faulkner's Light in August right now, and am not sure what to think.  Perhaps I should wait until I've read it in its entirety before posting what is and must be an uninformed opinion.  I know there are many who would disagree with that statement.  There is, in fact, an entire graduate class devoted to the study of fragmented literature (erm, I meant that literally, not as a way to describe the post modern!).  But I doubt that the meaning of the text can be deciphered through a partial reading.  What is said on one page may be contradicted when viewed in its entire context, reshaping the meaning of that one page, right?

At any rate, I'm reading this book more as a statement on/against? language and story-telling than as a critique of race and class and gender.  And although those things certainly exist in this narrative, it's the concept of story-telling and perception/perspective that keeps gripping my attention.  I know that's a reflection of my own obsession with the arbitrary nature of language and my constant struggle to come to terms with that love-hate relationship,  but Faulkner seems concerned with this concept as well.  The fact that all of these characters tell stories and interpret situations based on events they could not have witnessed seems to perpetuate falsehood until reality gobsmacks them across the face (is that the proper British colloquialism?) and it is too late to respond acceptably, or correctly (Hightower and the rumours surrounding him, the misunderstanding of Ms. Burden's note, the assumption of black ancestry in Christmas etc) .

And of course, this is not the only book where Faulkner's concern over language manifests itself.  There's The Sound and the Fury, where language is a tale told by a madman, signifying nothing.  And then there's the beautiful As I Lay Dying, where Addie describes words as "a shape to fill a lack," and her words, her dying wish, is a method of revenge.

Language is incapable of describing the essence of a thing.  Whenever a word is used as a signifier, instead of describing and understanding the signified more fully, one becomes further removed from the actual meaning of said object or concept, and a distancing effect takes place.  Unfortunately, in order to understand what is, one must use language in order to experience it. But the moment we utter the word we are creating a representation of the meaning.  The meaning of this experience, then, is found not in the words themselves, but, paradoxically, in language’s inability to express that meaning, in the space between each word.  Problems occur when meaning is sought through the physical presence of the words rather than through an exploration and analysis of the remaining substance of what they cannot express.

Individuality

Sometimes aspects of my job are enough to leave me shattered and distorted.  I help run an after school program for high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds, and there are times when the things I deal with on a daily basis force a hatred of the human species to flare out in an angry wave.  Sometimes I feel like all of the work I put into this program is fucking bullshit.  Especially when I'm met with red tape and incompetency at every step.

  But then I remember that the kids themselves are good kids.  They are smart, funny, and have so much love in them.  They come to our program centre radiating something that is more than the environment which produced them.  And even myself, I who came from a place full of poverty, sexual abuse and secrecy, I am not a carbon copy of that environment.  I am other than environmental factors.  We are other than the society which produce us.

What is that other thing which is responsible for individuality?  Where does goodness come from?

Logos (because in the beginning there is this)

The exhibitionist in me seems to require an audience, and yet the other blog I began a few months ago I have recently discarded because far too many people I know knew it.  And to be known by those who know me is so much more distasteful to me than to be known by those who know not what I am.  It's  much more exciting to be observed by strangers.  Don't you think?

And so I begin.  I'm not sure what the content of this blog will be.  Perhaps, in the modernist fashion, it will be merely a stream of consciousness.  And you, my post-modern reader, are free to critique it.