A New Word

Today while reading Carlyle's "The French Revolution: A History" (NOT a typical ouvre), I came across a brilliant word with which I was not yet familiar. I blame my stubborn apolitical tendencies.

The word is "Poltroonery." Basically, it means cowardice, but it sounds so much more like "chicken" - *grins from ear to ear.*

Poltroonery, so newly re-named for me, has long been one of the weaknesses I despise most in humanity, and in myself. By fear we allow ignorance (a form of slavery), oppression, misfortune, misconception, and we allow our own souls to fester inside of us. Only by a profound courage - to accept truth, to shoulder responsibility, and to face the world unashamed - do we, as a species, move forward.

A Real Vote

Each semester someone in the English Department hosts a penny-poll, and this semester it's Donne vs. Shakespeare - the E.M.E. smack-down.

I sincerely believe that Donne will win for one simple reason. So many people don't like Shakspar because they know just enough about him to have been intimidated.

Donne was profound and funny. He thought in words and ideas so entwined together that they resembled the threads in some nautical rope, and from each twist sprouted some new metaphor which may or may not totally redefine the subject. His poetry embodied linguistic and theological complexity, and his ideas warrant nearly as much concentration as Ulysses.

Shekespear was crass and commercial. He wrote fast-talking but believable characters, and mocked his own cast, his critics, colleagues, and occasionally himself. He killed mercilessly and resurrected without a blink. He hosted fairies, demons, witches, bastards, cuckolds, royalty, and soldiers, and even the funny ones weren't safe. For an E.M.E., he was awfully modern.

How would you vote?

Thornton

My heart is still pounding away from the last two scenes of the BBC North & South. Pounding away, I tell you!

I recall a scene from earlier in the movie where Mr. Thornton has fallen asleep at his desk and his mother covers his shoulders with her shawl, and I remember thinking that he works too hard, and he wouldn't have time to keep a wife and childer happy. He might say that he works for their benefit, as his employees do, but if his employees don't work, they starve. If he doesn't work, his wife and sister wear their own cotton instead of imported silk.

And then I realized that Mr. Thornton personifies a conceptual medium between Mr. Darcy of the Romantic era and Ebenezer Scrooge of the Victorians. It turns my head in fascinating circles to imagine Scrooge as a romantic lead. I think I might indulge in that turn.

Science Fiction

Those of you who read my other blog will have been regularly skipping my series of entries entitled "Foray into Science Fiction Fandom" in which I comment on or explain various directions of science fiction for those with more inhibited ideas about the limits of the genre and its cultural setting. The point of that entry series is to map out traditional areas of more imaginative pop-culture.

I don't have air channels, cable or satelite television in my home. My family uses websites like Hulu and Fancast, Netflix, and our local library to appropriate serial programming. This week I was asked to house- and cat-sit for someone with satelite television and I learned something rather saddening. The Sci-Fi channel (pronounced "skiffy" for those who like pseudo-affectionate nicknames) has changed its name to "SyFy." Long-time fans seem to be upset by this. I understand why, and it's a cultural phenomenon that deserves scrutiny.

Colin Ferguson, who plays Jack Carter in the Sci-Fi Original show "Eureka," noted in an interview at a fan conference that science-fiction fans comprise a highly discerning audience. We are highly critical but also dedicated and obsessively loyal to programming we deem valuable. Science Fiction fans respond well to that observation, because it appeals to our aspirations for ourselves. Science-Fiction fans generally consider themselves intelligent, independent, observant, and creative. Science-Fiction fans read. I would bet that we also spend slightly more time on the internet.

Unfortunately, with intellectual independence, science-fiction fans are also very diverse. There are shades of science-fiction fandom from black to white, and in every color family, primary and secondary. Diversity, when coupled with the penchant for intelligent criticism, does NOT make a stable or predictable audience, which can dry up our cash-cow teets. Essentially, any program aimed toward that audience will likely only appeal to a fraction of the demographic, one or two color families, and only of a specific shade or depth. We're hard to please.

Sci-Fi's switch to the SyFy label is aimed at widening the demographic. The executives wish to catch the attention of the mainstream, of people who ARE swayed by outdated stereotypes and the simplest of advertising, who are more easily satisfied. Years ago they began including programming which defied their long-standing finicky audience, such as WWE on Monday nights, "reality" programming, and info-mercials. They began trucking in derivative programming (trite and badly-dialogued repetitions of older, successful franchises), rather than original ideas.

Science-fiction fans have felt abandoned and debased, and possibly exploited, like a woman whose husband hired a prostitute. I worry that I've caught conformity, like some STD. Do they have a test for that? An antibiotic?

I predict that true science-fiction fans will simply divorce the channel, and share custody with valuable programming, much as they have learned to do with other stations. X-Files is a sci-fi stepchild. Doctor Who sprang infant-like from the b&w loins of sixties BBC and only hangs out with SyFy programming because they keep the freezer stocked with hot pockets, and they know William Shatner. HBO and Sci-Fi begat the bastard Stargate. Firefly is bi-racially part science-fiction and part western, but only a nodding aquaintance to the cable channel. Lost is so unrelated to the SyFy channel they could marry and it wouldn't bother the city-folk. Fringe, Moonlight, and many more have come and gone in the same situation, as have dozens of others which appeal to that elusive demographic simply because they are brilliant with that sparkle of creativity - that fifth C of a diamond in the rough.

As an unshakable fan of science-fiction and fantasy past, present, and future, I accept my place as an arm of popular culture but will remain loyal to my own tastes, such as they are.

Alarming Statistic

More than 50% of the adult women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are single (either never been married, divorced, or widowed). If marriage is indeed an eternal principle, and an ordinance that can only be performed during mortality, then some spiritual being is winning a battle and I'm thinking it probably isn't Cupid or Aphrodite.

If one considers dating from a Marxist or economic perspective, our supply of commodified women far exceeds the demand, which reduces itself constantly by external and internal forces. The market for single LDS women resembles that of menhirs (or anvils, for a more modern equivalent). Each buyer (man) only requires one (or one at a time, anyway, and although the lifespan of the product is sporadic and certainly not guaranteeable, I doubt the majority of buyers ever require a second), and the population of men who abstain from this "menhirism" for any one of several reasons (homosexuality, reduced sex drive, lack of faith, cowardice, laziness) grows.

Beyond the growing population who denounce participation in the demand, a large percentage of the consumer population are certainly involved in the market. Most single men of my aquaintance are constantly shopping or browsing. They adopt menhirs for a temporary duration, but are often somehow frustrated or unsatisfied (a quirk of the market being the ability of the product to reject the purchaser).

A menhir once properly contracted and owned becomes property in perpetuity (subject to contract laws), and although break-downs occur, they will eventually be replaced with more permanent models (not subject to erosion or damage). Owners who have replaced irreparably non-functioning models with other non-permanent models will eventually find all units contractually replaced, and become owners of multiple units in perpetuity.

On a micro-scale, though, the introductory statistic proves that there are large numbers of unsold models on the market, as well as those that have been used, abused, or leased. These units are left to sell themselves as best they can while newer batches are in production. The market is flooded, and production has never been cost-effective. It becomes less so on a constant slope.

One solution might be to create a new market for the functional parts of the unsold models. Although a menhir's refusal to fulfil its primary function when given a viable opportunity is counter-productive and offensive to the original designer (think "convent"), when the menhir has no opportunity for primary fulfillment, it might be given some secondary fulfillment.
Although they must, on the whole, be defective, each unit must have acceptable parts which can go to increase the marketability of more viable models (hair, skin, teeth, pancreas, etc). Another solution might be to turn functioning models into pop-art (my favorite solution). Although the units themselves cannot fulfil their intended function, they might still be means for artistic or sensory expression. Russian artists have long explored the relationship between utility and art.

A third solution resembles a landfill more than anything. These unsold models can herd together, and be left to their own objectives, turning away from the market entirely and into what must externally resemble a convent in the same way that the United Order resembles socialism.

Unfortunately, morality dictates that unsold models should always be considered as still marginally marketable to a less-discerning buyer-crowd, which renders large portions of these solutions outside the realm of practicality.

Enough of this for now.

Tolkien and Tragedy

Tolkien lived as a scholar, spending most 1940s Tuesdays in a pub affectionately nicknamed the "Bird and Baby" (among others) near the colleges of Oxford. Now, tourists clog every inch AND the narrow passages between mismatching rooms and uneven tables. The only thing more difficult than getting a drink there is hearing one's self think. I found it impossible to imagine any conversation at all, let alone the ones which sparked the Inklings' genius masterpieces. I believe they did most of their conversing at Lewis's rooms in Magdalen College, though.

Although J.R.R. Tolkien must have borrowed themes and moments from the ancient texts he studied, his own brilliance and characterization more than fill in the historical framework.
The story of Middle Earth makes me unutterably sad. From the bitter-sweet beginnings to the final severings I feel the need to weep, because above all it is a story of endings, of unendurable change. I imagine Tolkien himself must have felt such a sadness when he thought of the literature he could never resurrect, spending his life reading texts of a simpler time but living and reflecting on the World Wars which had ravaged his nation and changed the face of life itself.

This sense of tragedy emanates also from the Arthurian novels of T. H. White, who studied at Cambridge in the decade prior to WWII, though he was born in India. This feeling comes especially from the final book of the Arthurian sequence, often considered a bastard sequel, called The Book of Merlyn, which, according to Wikipedia, was published in the mid to late seventies.

Another fascinating writer who captured that scent of tragedy was Susan Cooper in her Dark is Rising sequence. She was born in England and lived her childhood during the war years. She was also Oxford educated, and carried two profoundly similar elements also expressed by White and Tolkien. All three story sequences contrast mortal lives with immortal (well, sometimes only the profoundly long-lived), and all three describe the passing of an era or period of conflict which cannot be reclaimed or undone. Cooper, though, as befits her age, saw it from a more cyclical perspective. She contrasted the hectic, ephemeral lives of Will's large family to the constant and returning conflict between good and evil into which Will is drawn.

Hope

T.H. White, who wrote The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlyn, Mistress Masham's Repose, and other Fantasy and Horror classics wrote in 1935 a short story called "The Troll." It's a short piece narrated by a boy who tells a story his father told him about a time in Lapland when his father saw through a keyhole a Troll eating his wife.
Later in this story the narrator says something I found fascinating. He writes:

"Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately, the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can’t help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be. And there, for my poor father sitting on his boulder above the snow, was stark happiness beating at the gates.”

This passage shows such a blended contrast between the intellect and emotion. The son, telling the story, has obviously realized intellectually that happiness is counter-productive to overall satisfaction, and yet emotionally he does not, or feels that he cannot fight it.

What does that say about the character? He obviously thinks quite a lot, and spends time dwelling on his feelings. He hasn't had much fortune in romance yet, but he has loved. He says that he loves beauty, so he has probably spent time cultivating taste and education. I think the teller of this story could be someone I might enjoyably debate with, if I could find some point of disagreement. I think he might also have a sense of humor, found in the clever irony of that last sentence.

Fascinating.

Mrs. Hell

One of my favorite fairy tales is called, in the original German, "Frau Holle." Now, "Frau Holle" translates literally into "Mrs. Holle" (since holle doesn't mean anything, although it may have at one time been related to the words for "frost" or "ice" or possibly "winter" in proto-Germanic or proto-Indo-European) but common usage changes Mrs. to Mother because Mother was probably the more common pronoun for an old woman whose marital status was uncertain.

While I was doing research as an undergraduate I found a little book of Grimm's Fairy Tales printed in the original German script which printed the name "Frau Hoelle," which translates into "Mrs. Hell" or "Mother Hell" as some would have it. My teacher kept giggling as I was reading aloud. Whatever. I'm good for a giggle.

The story itself is just an iteration of a common fairy-tale trope, but the fascinating thing is the character's descent into the fairy realm. The Irish would have that the fairy realm is merely another path - the crooked path riding the edge between Heaven and Hell. The Scottish fairy tales are closer to what I saw in Frau Hoelle, which is that the fairy folk are a test. They either require kindness despite fear or ugliness, or they tempt the righteous into thorny paths, as the saying goes.

The tale shows two sisters, the one obviously demonstrating the correct path and the other obviously not. They descend from the realm of their parents into the place of testing. Each meets with identical tests which the good sister passes and the bad sister fails by her own choice. Each comes under the employ of Mother Hell, which is the final test. It is Mother Hell herself who administers the final reward or judgment (a judgment with permanent consequences, naturally).

What fascinates me is the necessity of the descent for the testing, which has the ring of truth. Another aspect which fascinates me, but which does not seem to have a direct correspondence to my current doctrinal beliefs, is the judgment of hell. The character in the fairy tale is not remotely demonic. She is magic, certainly, and very strict. She is also quite unforgiving. It is the judgment of a taskmaster, or one who will either pay handsomely for a job well done, or send you to permanent coventry for being lazy. It seems to be more of a natural judgment, like the ant and the grasshopper are judged by the coming Winter.

I shall ponder.

Nothing Nietzche Couldn’t Teach Ya

I'm knee deep in the first fun non-fiction book I've read since A Gentle Madness (sometime during the early part of the decade). I'm delighted to find that it fights well the atrophy of the brain under which I am currently suffering. My non-fiction reads have always been rather romantic, and certainly eclectic. I have read texts on paradoxes, puzzles (I particularly liked The Lady or the Tiger), mathematics and logic, quantum physics (Schroedinger's Kittens), and of course some little History (John Adams, Forever Liesl, Thunder at Twilight, you know the type). I've perused Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class and Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, but philosophy was never my thing.

Strangely, this latest escapade has blended many of the interests of the past. I'm reading Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. The book combines elements of late 19^th Century history, early and mid-20^th Century events, Viennese culture, the Oxford and Cambridge culture, the combined philosophies of logic and language, empiricism and logical positivism, and the basic difficulties of writing about a brief event that happened just over fifty years ago in a private setting. The authors manage to squeeze almost three hundred well-written pages out of it all. Currently, their history seems to be running the wrong direction; they're moving further back.

I mentioned the book on our opinions distribution e-mail list for Dixie College faculty and staff. I am curious about whether anyone has read it, and if they'll give me an opinion. I'm much more interested in the philosophies than I am with the politics and economics of which the professors currently seem so enamored. Perhaps this interest will lead to a field of study for my doctorate. Perhaps I should turn myself away from the Romantics and focus more on critical theory and modernism?

Justifications

Friday, after a long day of work behind the reference desk at the library, my mother and I attended a lecture given by a Cambridge professor. That is to say, after we'd enjoyed a lovely violin with piano accompaniment, and survived an interminably long montage of someone else's holiday snapshots in all the wrong parts of Europe, he finally spoke.

His message was both eloquent and amusing, but it sounded so much like an unnecessary justification for something people will do anyway. The main portion of his lecture was to expand the philosophical role of Poetry (by Classical and Renaissance definition) in the practical world today, which involved an elucidation of the relationships between the humanities and the sciences, and the humanities and politics. He spoke of the necessity of having finer feelings, of having the audacity to question the status quo from a human, a moral, realistic, and idealistic standpoints provided by an education in the humanities.

The humanities are in no danger of dying. There will always be those people who cannot resist; like those who are drawn to cloisters and abbeys. I could as easily choose to turn my back to sunlight as turn my back to Literature. I have tried both, and without them I am a parody of myself. Sitting in a cubicle, making phonecalls and clicking buttons, telling others which buttons to click, I looked as ridiculous as I felt; an intellect dressed for the opera standing in a breadline. I'm mixing my metaphors, and possibly being insulting.

I think that despite my self-doubts I really am an academic, if not a scholar. I can think of nowhere else that someone so odd could fit in.

Fools

I hate April Fool's Day. I always have. Perhaps it is my humorless Scottish heritage, but I find that a whole day in which one is unable to trust even one's closest friends causes too much emotional distress. It reminds me, though, of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Bahktin wrote about Carnival-like situations of chaos and reversal. He wrote about distressing language. Other theorists like Irigaray and (oh my, it's been a while. In one of the first entries of this blog I have a list. . .) hypothesized about the necessity of structure - of a tomorrow returned to the way it was in order for a reversal day, a Twelfth Night, or April Fool's, to function for society. I think what they meant, is that ultimately, role reversals support the status quo by relieving rebellious tendencies.

The reversals in Shakespeare's play (ignoring the typical gender switches) include Malvolio's ideas of control and marriage above his station, Sir Toby's alliance with servants in the rebuttal, and Feste (another of Shakespeare's unfunny fools). Ultimately, the tricks they played on each other caused real pain. Malvolio's ideas of marrying Olivia would have been their own punishment eventually. Olivia showed great strength, especially over her own household. She was never in any danger of falling for his delusions, and Malvolio would have found disappointment and humiliation anyway. Even Olivia acknowledges finally that he has been ill-treated. Depending on the interpretation, she may or may not find it funny. Helena Bonham-Carter didn't laugh.

Sir Toby spent most of the play drunk and carousing, a role stereotyped for servants. He resents Malvolio's self-righteousness, especially as that should have been Sir Toby's role, were he as he should be. I believe that it is ultimately Sir Toby's fear of reprisal (Olivia's?) that rights him at the end, and sends him into a hopeful marriage and responsibility.

Feste catches my interest more than the other characters. Some of the unfunny fools are merely droll, but Feste seems to have some depth, some reason for acting and speaking as he does. I believe he appears in the play as lately returning from a war. His songs vary, from the bitter to the sweet to hysterical. He plays with words the way a writer does, half for fun, and half hoping that wisdom will spring out of it. Or perhaps he hopes that his wordplay will hide something.
A fascinating character!

After all the analysis, I still believe that Shakespeare disparaged role reversals. Although he preceded the Enlightenment era by perhaps a century or more, he seems to propone responsibility to one's social class and loyalties. It looks like citizenship at a more feudal level.

Romance, Romantics, and Research

I have no good opinion of romance novels. As a genre, they sacrifice everything, including prose, grammar, sensibility, realism, imagination, and punctuation for an outdated convention and illicit scenes. Long ago, though, authors still held themselves to some standards and wrote from an education. I discovered Georgette Heyer during an anti-romance rant and enjoyed it thoroughly. She did her homework. I'm currently reading another of her novels, and I discovered that her heroine is the child of a companion of Robert Southey and Coleridge, and party to their early scheme to settle on the Susquehanna under communistic principles. Southey became the laureate (sold out, according to Coleridge) just previous to the time setting of this book. The heroine's maternal grandmother was the first Mrs. Godwin, running in the feminist circles that produced Mary Shelley.

I enjoyed very much running across these references, and knowing that Ms. Heyer did her homework as she was writing The Quiet Gentleman in probably 1950. I have also read An Infamous Army which contains (without slipping into the superlative of some hubristic fandom) an incredibly detailed and researched account of the battle of Waterloo (which I must admit, I found almost as difficult to slog through as Victor Hugo's or Tolkien's battle scenes in The Two Towers). The resulting novel, as I recall, was very well balanced and at least marginally realistic.

Way to go, Georgette! I also recommend her successor, A.S. Byatt, who would more than likely take offense at that description, as her writing developed in a different direction (scholar first, novelist second).

A Brief Academic Blush

While discussing Dickens's Bleak House with a fellow reference librarian I was introduced to a new Victorian writer. Egotistically, I had presumed to know (or at least have heard of) all of the major 19th Century writers. As a devotee of British Mysteries, I am appalled at my own ignorance. Wilkie Collins seems to have launched the genre with two major novels: The Woman in White and The Moonstone, although he wrote much more than that.
I'm going to read them, but in the meantime some good background sites I found:
http://www.wilkiecollins.com/
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/collins/index.html (Victorianweb is a generally reliable and very thorough site for all artistic endeavors Victorian)
http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/wilkie.html to fit him into the fracturing face of literature in that era

Ambrose Bierce says Happy Valentine's Day from Friday the 13th

CUPID, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of the deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow - of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work - this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of prosperity. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

The difficulty of this protestation is that every possible alternative can be sexually construed, which overshadows all other aspects of love. Every mature, masculine figure is associated with a phallic symbol, and every female representation of love is reduced to a womb.
How many different kinds of life are created by love aside from merely the physical? Romance awakens the soul, and puts the powdered-sugar frosting on it. Romance is more, not less, than sex. Romance implies belonging, knowing, carefully cultivating, and showing deference. It requires self-sacrifice which yields even greater yet more subtle rewards. Ultimately, romance can turn anything common into something beautiful, which is why I am bitterly offended when instead, those who commodify romance turn something beautiful into something common. This travesty is a lonely-man’s mockery of a generous soul’s happiness. Bitterness against a world turned pink for a day is honest compared to the blatant capitalization on or prostitution of life’s finer feelings.

Cupid symbolizes inappropriately because he masks in meaningless signifier a signified only comprehensible to those who have clung to it as steadfastly as they have every other light granted to them.

Or perhaps this is merely the wishful thinking of the emotionally marooned.

Parts of Speech

Since my students are now threatening to visit my blog, I thought I'd include a list of websites that adequately explain parts of speech. I give this to give them a leg up on next week's lesson.

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/StudyZone/330/grammar/parts.htm
Simple definitions.

http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/partsp.html
This site breaks it up into the basic eight with more in-depth definitions.

http://eslus.com/LESSONS/GRAMMAR/POS/pos.htm
This site includes pop quizzes at the end of each lesson. I think it's way fun.

http://www.quia.com/mc/65832.html
This site has games to help practice.

That should do it, non?

Sentence Diagramming

My students are having difficulties recognizing whole sentences, so I taught them how to diagram.

These are the best diagramming site links I've found:
http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/diagrams.htm
(and my favorite sentence here: http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/dialit9.htm)
http://www.lifestreamcenter.net/DrB/Lessons/TS/diagram.htm
(this site is very basic)
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/diagrams2/diagrams_frames.htm
(this one requires that you understand parts of speech and grammatical terminology)
http://www.slate.com/id/2201158/
(too political for classroom use, but quite amusing)
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/cd5/SentenceDiagramming/sentence_diagramming_1.php
(and this is where you order the software that will do it for you - cheaters!)

Character

As a very young person interested in creative writing, I learned an odd fact. Writers tend, at the beginning, to create characters similar to themselves. Unfortunately, writers are largely sedentary and passive people, more interested in making observations than in experiencing stories, which means their characters may end up with the same difficulty.

I think I see what it meant, and not only in my own writing. I've begun dividing stories into character-driven, and plot-driven. Some authors write stories in which either a main character or a combination of characters creates a fascinating and complex story. Other authors create a character, usually a variation on a stereotype (as most characters are), and then throw things at them (usually bad things, like pianos and bolts of lightening) just to watch them squirm, I suspect.

Before Derrida rolls over in his grave, I must admit that several stories have found positions in the spectrum, but not entirely of one sort or the other, and although I am inclined to favor character-driven plots, man vs. man and all that, as being somehow the result of more skill (perhaps because they require a much more detailed familiarity with human nature), event-driven plots require a stronger grasp on the laws of probability.
Maybe I think that although humans fill the whole scope of action and attitude rather evenly and are defined by their rebellion, events obey certain laws almost always without fail. A writer who can keep both in mind, I think, might be able to put together quite the masterpiece.

Any volunteers?

Dickens

I finished reading another Terry Pratchett, and a Nursery Crime novel by Jasper Fforde so now I'm back to academia. I'm working my way through Bleak House.

The introduction of this Oxford paperback edition mentions that unlike most Dickens novels, the bad guys do not get the satisfying beating that we see in Nicholas Nickelby, for instance, or even the righteous hanging in Oliver Twist. The end is a sort of fading.

I believe that this reflects Dickens attitude toward an enemy he could not defeat. Individual villains are easily vanquished, but Dickens' own experiences with Chancery would have taught him more abject humility in the face of such overwhelming futility.

Syllabi

Some hours after dark, when my mother called me in to our meatloaf dinner, I suddenly realized I hadn't changed out of pyjamas. I had been brasier-less for almost seventeen hours (a fact my father would rather not have known, and yet somehow I feel perfectly safe sharing it here).
Having been awoken during the seventh hour of the morning by a sister's hair-dryer, a sound that hasn't failed to arouse in me a homicidal rage in two decades, I rolled over and plunged back into a dream that was thankfully not about sex and stayed there until just before ten. At that point I decided it was time to get up. I'm certain I cursed. Oversleeping makes me quite angry at myself.
I breakfasted on malt-o-meal cheerios while playing Riven until eleven, at which point I decided that the semester had officially begun and I was being left behind. I cracked open my textbook to write the syllabus for my class which shall commence on the morrow.
The mail lady sacrificed her poor lower spine to bring me a box full of antique paperbacks at around noon. After a good giggle at the trouble I'd put the USPS to, I took stock of my progress and realized I still had almost no idea what information was in the textbook.
At two I emerged from my Campion-steeped den for a spot of lunch. I think I may have eaten two hamburgers and some thousand-island on a bun. I had begun reading the Dixie State College requirements for syllabi, but hadn't synthesized it.
At four my father knocked on my door, asking for his copy of DUNE, as John's was missing. I had to dig through a pile of semi-dirty clothes. At that point I had translated my inner German Governess into my totally intolerant attendance, plagiarism, and grading policies. As I continued, I could now hear the Boses commence a semi-constant boom from the next room. I'll never quite understand why spice mining can't be just a tad quieter.
Dinner was called at six-fifteen, and I'd mostly laid out the reading assignments and essay due dates. After meat-loaf and garlic bread, I returned to Campion and my syllabus and embarked on the most difficult stage. I sold out. I tainted the elaborate legal and balsa-wood structure I'd painstakingly constructed with that final two-pages chunk of "required elements," like lowering the Albert Memorial unceremoniously atop a garden gazebo. It made a "thock" noise.
Family Home Evening came abruptly at eight, and I abandoned both Campion and syllabi for a brief series of spiritual moments followed by peach sherbet drowned in green apple Jones Soda.
It's almost ten-thirty, and I have syllabus burn-out. I shall frighten all five of my students off and end up jobless, or I shall find myself embroiled in some Dickensian legal squabble which will eat my twenty-dollar fortune and leave me penniless and fever-scarred (and there my Dickens-ness will stop, with my social luck), so I'd better pick out a very striking outfit.

Silence

There are moments - just after your roommates close their eyes but before they begin snoring, for instance - when it seems the air bates its breath for the frantic moments of dreaming that approach.
The sound of the car engine and the tires on the freeway, the cool hum of a forest under snow, the whine of plumbing in a long, hot shower, the hum of computer cooling systems or the wide, background roaring of the ventilation all appear only when everything else ceases.
When for an hour there are no sirens, no click of typing, no cell-phone gossip or cluttered radio - when from behind the drywall there come no explosions or crescendoing soundtracks, or the syncopated rhythms of tap-dancing suddenly there are spaces. No one argues, or laughs. No one applauds or declaims. Nothing is turned on, or warmed up, or begun.

In those moments crowd all the neglected thoughts of the day and cry pitifully for attention, and they must be sorted out carefully before any new comfort can be had. All my infant thoughts must be sung to, lullabyed into slumber before my tired body thoughts drift out into the warm dreamtide.
In the glowing dreamtide beneath the blackest of skies I find all the harmonies of silence.

Thursday

Thursdays are not Fridays. James Joyce wrote Ulysses about a Thursday (mostly). He said "Every Friday buries a Thursday" in his Hades episode. My Joyce class was held on a Thursday. It sparked a fascination.

Friday evenings usually find me in a bit of a lonely funk. Maybe it's because they're all funerals for Thursdays, or maybe there is a darker, more socially significant reason. Maybe I'm just lonely.

It's the first of January, for another seventy minutes or so. In 2009 I look forward to the possible beginning of a PhD program and a new direction and focus for my academic life. I feel almost as if that new direction hangs on the toss of a coin subject to all the laws of probability. A whole crowd of friends and relatives are waving their hands in the air and singing "Maybe, maybe not" in falseto voices. I'm mixing my allusions. It's not my decision, nor is there any longer anything I can do to either help or hinder the coming of that opportunity. I have only to wait well.

I will be turning twenty-eight this year. I would like to publish something, either fiction or nonfiction, before I turn thirty but unless the opportunity walks up, grabs my head and plants a juicy kiss I won't pursue it.

Speaking of juicy kisses, it is time I divided my life into that which is under my control and that which is not. I cannot control whether I am accepted into the PhD program, whether I am asked on a date, how much money I earn (if any at all), whether someone will take my room before April, and any accidents which may occur.
I can control what I learn, how I balance my time (within reason), how I treat people, whether I give my students a fair chance and an opportunity to learn, and if I fulfill my responsibilities as a teacher, member of my congregation, and member of my family. I can make sure that I keep my word. I can control a percentage of my efforts to increase my health.

Don't think that means I will.