Philoillogica

Mood music

as rendered by a particularly astute Ipod.

Explain it to me ~ Liz Phair
Away with the pixies ~ Ben Lee
Don't leave me on my own ~ Chris Issak
Heroes ~ David Bowie
Everywhere ~ Bran Van 3000
No beginning no end ~ Hawksley Workman
I would die for you ~ Jann Arden
Float on ~ Modest Mouse
The phone call ~The Pretenders
Like I love you ~ Bell X1
The winner takes it all ~ Abba

Hey, it beats therapy.

This is what democracy looks like

Aside from mustache-grooming, the NDP are leading the parties in the application of good, old-fashioned irony.

As someone who's usually of the table-thumping, rhetoric-crushing, solid mockery form of argumentation, I've been conspicuously silent on this whole election thing. 

Part of this is practicality - I tend not to listen to any news during an election campaign simply because most party lines offered at this time are reactionary and ill-conceived, constructed to capitalize on this or that potential backbencher's gaffe or this or that leader's off-the-cuff remark.    Canadian media outlets, having been stir-crazy with the banality of this country's Parliament for years (even Gomery was a bare blip on the radar, of less import than the still talked-about exposure of Janet Jackson's right nipple), celebrate by shedding the pretense of critical analysis, coating themselves in plastic to slip amidst the mud-slinging, recording every incidence of political maneuvering with a breathlessness normally reserved for Angelina Jolie's pregnancy or Ashlee Simpson's acid-reflux. Headlines scream that while the Conservatives are doing one thing, the Liberals have this to say about it, or that someone made a slur about Jack Layton's wife and he's being too self-righteous in her defense, conspicuously ignoring tracking the party that in the last election got 5% of the popular vote or the one that puts out most of their policy documents in French.

The other part of my election apathy is sheer laziness - laziness here meaning a refusal to be up-to-date on the nuances of the shifting strands of Canada's potential futures while I could be working busily (not to mention directly) to construct my own.  This isn't to say that I don't take Canada's elections seriously - only that I take them just seriously enough to acknowledge that I engage with the elections process in the same way that I vote: in determined self-interest.

And it is in a determined self-interest spawned by my teen aged obsession with Ayn Rand that I'll vote on January 23 in the Fredericton riding, weighing Stephen Harper's eyeliner megalomania against the sinister intentions hiding behind Jack Layton's mustache platform and the cardboard policy of our incompetent incumbent Prime Minister.

I'll be voting steadfastly ignoring the Liberal party's scare-mongering techniques designed, as Ed Broadbent aptly pointed out, to insult the intelligence of women, workers, members of the armed forces, or anyone who is capable of anything beyond knee-jerk reactionary thinking. 

I'll be voting recognizing that my Canada includes not only Quebec, but also Alberta, BC, and the Prairies, which are distinct regions with identities beyond that granted by the Ontario-oriented phrase "the West".

I'll be voting recognizing that my Canada includes the Maritimes and Newfoundland, who are experiencing a drain of their young people Westward, where there are jobs and money that have been denied to the Eastern provinces.

I'll be voting as as an inhabitant of an Atlantic province, as the roommate of an Albertan, as at least a 4th-generation Ontarian whose grandparents' first language was French.

I'll be voting as a university student with $20K of debt, as a woman of child-bearing age, as a granddaughter of seniors on tiny pensions, as a witness of the inept horrors of our health care system, as a survivor of our mediocre public schools, as an agent who will likely contribute to the 'Brain Drain' by eventually fleeing to the United States in search of a job, as a feminist, as a city-dweller in the largest of Canada's urban centres, as a member of the intellectual elite, as the descendant of farmers, as a fiscal conservative, as a left-wing social radical, as a critic, as a reader, as a supporter of amateur sport, as a person who believes in asymmetrical federalism, as a teacher, as a person who watches, reads and listens to the CBC, as the daughter of an artist, as someone who's worried about climate change, as a person who knows the difference between 'equity' and 'equality', as a white person who has been allowed think that the plight of Natives in the country is not my problem, as a media critic, as a bewildered observer of US social policy, as a witness of the unfair tax burden on the middle class, as a former high-school student who used to share her lunch with others who couldn't afford food, as a believer in human dignity, decency and mutual respect, as an advocate for free speech, as a former government employee at both the federal and provincial levels, as an animal-lover, as someone who believes that a government should not legislate morality, as an anti-lobbyist, as a person who believes in government reform.

Tomorrow, I will be voting as a Canadian that believes that all Canadians are as equally nuanced in their systems of values and beliefs, and I will not allow my vote to be sidetracked by one party's dedication to endorsing fear or another's blatant disregard for issues that concern me.  I will not become distracted by the parties' attempts to play the needs of one group off against another for cheap votes.  I will not allow my complex needs to be simplified and reduced to merely my gender or political affiliation.

Tomorrow, I will vote not only with my conscience, but also with my intelligence, my research, and my long-term best interests.  I will vote recognizing that other people will vote with the same conscience, intelligence, research and self-interest at work, and I will respect the end result of the democratic process without denigrating the diversity of interests that make this country the best in the world to live and work.

My Canada includes other Canadians. ALL OF THEM. When I vote, I keep this simple fact most firmly in mind. 

 

"So THAT'S where Shawinigan is."

It was only thanks to the dulcet tones of Dolly Parton that Abby and I survived our returning trek to Lower Canada. After being waylaid only by an unfortunate tour through the labyrinthine alleys of Trois-Rivieres that increased our total driving time by two delirious hours, we alternated frantic clutches at the steering wheel, sobbing and belting 'Why'd you come in here (looking like that)' and 'Jolene.'  By hour fourteen, the depths of the New Brunswick interior resonated with the original War of the Worlds broadcast, the occasional flicker of oncoming traffic foreboding the senseless destruction of mankind into a spray of the Martian delicacy of blood.  As the tail-lights dissolved into the darkness, a fiendish red glow oozed behind our VW, our resistance to domination ensured as we slowly bled out to passivity. 

The word games helped a little:

Frankly,
Reason
Exceeds
Desperation,
Exponentially
Rousing
Incorrigible
Complaining
Throughout
One's
Neuroses.

Festering
Rashes
Everywhere
Develop,
Especially
Re-entering
Into
Carefully
Thought-
Out
Nonsense.

Honey, we're home.

Body Language

Abby and I have long since come to the conclusion that we can't have a pleasant meal unless we're watching an autopsy on television. 

And for the most part, it's true - there's nothing more deliciously sinister while flaking out in front of the tv with a bowl of tuna helper than when the flickering depths reveal a splayed human figurine grotesquely arranged on a dissection table, while bedewed actors with flawless skin carve pieces of meat from the corpse and inter-spliced animations explain the cause of death with glitzy precision.  Everything on CSI is metallic and blue lit, gleaming surfaces wiped clean by an art director's committed vision, and on my screen, even the last blood violently pulled from its shielding body is rendered into a feasting picture, one as readily fed into my eyes as my dinner is spooned into my mouth. 

This is the art of death, and it's this mimetic depersonalization of the body, this separation of humanity in life from the human form left behind in death, that some would argue is responsible for our disengagement with most of the actual death we experience in our everyday lives.  In this reading, art's stylistic rendering of life in turn becomes a gateway for life's imitation of art; seeing death as entertainment on television primetime prepares us for a commonplace reaction to death when it appears as information on the news.  I'm still not sure that I actually believe this, but after a year of bloody spaghettiOs and disembodied hot dogs, I figured that I was as ready as I'd ever be to engage with Gunther Von Hagens' Body Worlds.

So Sandor and I set off, our open minds gruesomely entertained by the prospect of actual human beings flayed into our common multitude of layers, science rendered art by Von Hagens' commitment to his viewers' hungry gaze.  We were prepared to spend an hour or two viewing cadavers in cavalier poses irreverently displayed, "nature chased to her hiding places," as Mary Shelley would say.  Later, we figured, we'd get some sushi.

Von Hagens' claim is that Body Worlds "reveal[s] significant insights about human anatomy, physiology and health, presenting an unprecedented view of the structure and function of the human body and offering an unforgettable lesson on the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle."  In other words, its purpose is didactic, similar in form and function to Canada's Food Guide or to a "Don't Drink and Drive" ad.  Viewing Body Worlds is supposed to "stimulate curiosity about the science of anatomy" and encourage us to eat healthier, exercise more and appreciate the unique mechanics of the human form.  But people aren't going for that.  People are going for this:

Body Worlds isn't significant because we're seeing dead bodies, but because we're seeing dead bodies arranged as art in imitation of life.  Viewers aren't going just for an anatomy lesson or reminder to quit smoking, but for the showmanship Von Hagens displays in his dead posed anew; instead of bodies preserved in a Jeremy Bentham, freeze-dried and pickled kind of way, Von Hagens' artistry emerges in his active sculpture, his scalpel carving through tissue to bring a viewer right inside a human body.  It's the same principle as that applied to taxidermy - the animal is best displayed in flight or about to pounce - it is the body in action that attracts us, captured forever in pose of what it does best.

And so it is with Body Worlds. Even though the majority of the material consists of plastinated organs and cross-sections of body parts, the advertisements for the exhibit display the complete forms of what used to be people, now engaged in contemplation or in sport and stripped of skin and fat and any identifying marks of who or what they used to be.  They become Everyman, heralding  literally what we all are on the inside, and from the moment that we entered, it was obvious that these former creatures were the major draw.  People would cluster around the figures, circling and pointing, some whispering, some spellbound.  Because they're displayed without glass, viewers could lean in as unbearably close as they wished, looking deeply into the crevice where a heart used to be, or supplicate their hands in comparison. 

Turned into art, the materiality of the body is made painfully explicit as the mind struggles to remember that the glistening plastinated figures on display were once living and breathing just like the people looking at them.   In an interview about the original Body Worlds, Von Hagens claimed that his exhibition "is a place where the dead and the living mix," and I found myself more interested in watching people engage with the figures than I was in looking at Von Hagens' art.  And it is art - each piece is titled, and each anatomically segmented and posed figurine bears his signature inscribed in a metal plaque at its feet.  The only thing that distinguishes Von Hagens from any other artist is his chosen medium of flesh.

We make a great fuss over the distinction between art and science, even though we don't really have a compelling way of distinguishing where one ends and the other begins.  Canadian undergraduates traditionally do a degree in one or the other, but even the most stringent of catalogers will end up admitting to the repeated intersection of the two, the interchangeability of both 'art' and 'science' to finish the phrase, "she has it down to a/an _____."  Does 'science' mean precision?  Does 'art' mean inspired? And does it even matter? It's exhibitions such as Body Works that remind us of the interdisciplinary nature of all elements of our world.  If our bodies, the habitation of Reason, science's master, are no more than meat, no more than matter, then they don't matter as part of what makes us reasonable creatures.  "We are more than matter," I expected Body Worlds to say.  "But look at how beautiful this matter truly is."

And I don't think my expectations were unreasonable.  Such intermingling of disciplines was commonplace during the Renaissance, when physicians were required to have over six years of humanist education in classical languages and rhetoric before beginning their studies of the body.  Citing Renaissance artists and anatomists, Von Hagens claims to be working in the spirit of da Vinci and others by democratizing our understanding of the human form:

Von Hagens sees himself on a global mission to end the elitism of the medical profession which, he believes, has denied the lay public access to a better understanding of their own bodies. He hankers after the heady days of the renaissance and the three centuries thereafter, when anatomists and artists explored the workings of the human body as never before and made their workings public at anatomical theatres.

"My work continues the scientific tradition whose recurring theme is that research should serve the general enlightenment."

And appropriately, the exhibit is segmented by jewel-toned fabric screens of quotations from Classical and Enlightenment philosophers propounding man's contemplative nature, coupled with attractive Renaissance engravings and sketches in pen and ink.  Da Vinci's art features heavily, and the requisite Shakespeare quotation indicates appropriate reverence for the body in Hamlet's "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" (Bemused, I noted that the following line ["Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so"] was gravely absent.)

In a similar vein, piecemeal musings on life and death are everywhere.  We're told Epicurus said to "Get used to the idea that Death should not matter to us,for good and evil are based on sensation.  Death, however is the cessation of all sensation.  Hence, Death, ostensibly the most terrifying of all evils, has no meaning for us, for as long was we exist, Death will not be present.  When Death comes, we will no longer be in existence." The uncontexted echoes of Kant, Nietzsche and Foucault also appear to excuse our fascination with the dead and  voice their endorsement of this kind of didactic voyeuristic display.

And yet, before the exhibit was half over, I was troubled.  In art, I am accustomed to seeing female bodies rendered for my consumption, the 'gentleness' or 'strength' or 'beauty' of my sex offered for my appreciative, feasting gaze, the curves of the female body evoking 'bounty' or 'fertility' or 'vulnerability.'  But there were no women on display.  Von Hagens' figurines were man after man after man: The Pole Vaulter, The Skateboarder, The Thinker.  There was no question of their maleness - their genitals were displayed with no more or less thought than the rest of their exposed bodies, testes positioned relative to the penis, as Sandor pointed out, "a little too much like earrings for comfort." 

I'd expected to see few women, but not none. Before arriving, I'd read the Science Centre's FAQ on the exhibit, which mentioned the lack of women on display, and claimed

Sensitive to perceived community concerns, Dr. Von Hagens did not want to appear voyeuristic in revealing too many female bodies. He sees himself in the tradition of Renaissance anatomists, whose works traditionally included far more masculine than feminine bodies, since all but the reproductive systems are essentially the same. The musculature of male bodies is generally more pronounced and illustrates more aspects of the muscle system.

The organs on display come primarily from the female body donors. However, since opening the exhibition, Dr. Von Hagens has received numerous requests from women visitors to see more examples of female anatomy.

But halfway through, there were still no visible women, and since gender is irrelevant to a plastinated organ, the pointlessness of Von Hagens' assertion that women were included in this way was abundantly clear.  Similarly inane is his claim that Renaissance anatomists weren't interested in women's bodies for dissection - sanctioned autopsies were frequently limited to the bodies of criminals who'd been executed by the state, a category that was largely male. Claiming that early anatomists had some kind of tacit understanding of the similarities between male and female anatomies before their investigations on the subject had taken place is simply post hoc reasoning for what is obviously Von Hagens' personal bias.  Rather than indicating the Everyman concept of "we are all equal under our skin," the exhibit continually seemed to suggest only that women's bodies were simply not interesting enough for this kind of medical unveiling. 

Unless, of course, they're pregnant.

Right when the absence of female bodies became disturbingly conspicuous, turning a corner, we were confronted by a choice.  On our right the exhibit carried on in much the same way as before, with exploded and reassembled bodies interrupting case after case of organs.  On the left was a shielded black tunnel of fabric with a large placard declaring that before she had died, the figurine inside had known she was ill and that she was unlikely to survive her pregnancy.  Unlike any other figurine in the exhibit, this cause of death - cancer - was declared, and the figurine's blackened lung exposed from behind just as the nestled fetus in its womb could be seen in the front.  Surrounding the pregnant figure  on either side were plastinated fetuses encased in glass and resting on black velvet like tiny Elizabethan courtiers.  These pieces of man-matter, we're told, were "over 80 years old, and, as far as we can determine, died of natural causes," as if such a fact should matter in an exhibit determined to detail the material nature of the body.  Surely, I thought - in this place at the very least, shouldn't we recognize that all death is natural?  And if all flesh, whether male or female, is essentially similar flesh, why should this former woman and these ounces of once pre-humanity be given a distinction beyond that granted to any other body in the exhibit?   Why does sex - and politics - matter NOW?  And why HERE?

There's a simple answer, of course, one that comes up again and again, charted repeatedly by me and others: the female body is special because it is not male.  And because it is not male, we have to treat it differently.  The female body - especially when gestating - is everyone's property in a way that a male body could never be, and so this figurine, alone of all others, is encased in glass to protect it from abusively well-wishing public - a few years ago, someone tried to cover one of Von Hagens' pregnant artifacts with a blanket, and when the exhibit was in LA, one of the plastinated fetuses was stolen.

But as I stood there investigating the way a fetus pushes a woman's organs up into her ribcage, trying to ignore the artificial eyelashes fluttering down at me, I wondered about the effect of shielding fabric tunnel I was in.  Watching other people watch the figure, I realized that this "choose your own adventure" motif wasn't so much to protect the figurine from the audience as much as it was to protect the audience from the figurine.  The fact that this piece was pregnant is somehow more controversial than the exhibit of plastinated dead bodies itself.  You'd think that people who'd forked over $25/head to be fascinated and disturbed by the remains of their fellow humans in grotesque displays of showmanship would be able to accept the fact that women's bodies can be rendered this way too, and that women's bodies are uniquely the places where human reproduction happens. 

But the curators of Body Worlds position the first female body in their exhibit away from the rest of material humanity, flanking it with associated prebodies as if this creature is somehow universalized by her pregnancy to be the ur-mother of us all.  Pregnancy may be a uniquely female phenomenon, but it certainly isn't the only quality of the female body, and yet Body Worlds ignores the female form entirely until it is forced by inescapable biology to acknowledge its existence.    Musculature may be, as Von Hagens claims, more pronounced in men, but is the skeleton? the nervous system? the arteries? The pregnant figure's positioning is a subtle but meaningful indication of women's inherent value as human beings.

After this point, a few more female figurines appear for the consumption of our gaze, but all are labeled with gender-specific monikers.  "The X-Lady"'s body has been split across itself, while "The Yoga Lady" arches in a backbend.  Only "The Angel," her splayed shoulder blades fanned behind her as if in flight, manages what could be in another context a gender-neutral term.  But these former women are not universalized figurines in the way that their male-bodied counterparts are teachers, chess-players or thinkers.  One wonders whether had a female body been used in a contemplative pose she would have been called "The Thinking Lady."  Once again, the default body is male, and as I leave, I wonder whether Von Hagens' endorsement of Renaissance anatomists also includes their adoption of Aristotelian ideas of female inferiority:

As we said one can easily identify the causes of birth as the male and the female, the male as the cause of change and development, the female as the supplier of the material.

...It is clear, then, that the female's role in birth is the material one, that this is to found in the menstrual emission and that the menstrual emission is an excretion.

...The male and the female differ from each other in the possession of an ability and in the lack of an ability. The male is able to concoct, formulate and to ejaculate the sperm which contains the origin of the form [of the being to be born]-I do not mean here the material element out of which it is born resembling its parent but the initiating formative principle whether it acts within itself or within another. The female, on the other hand, is that which receives the seed but is unable to formulate or to ejaculate it.

In the exit, we paused to examine the books of comments left by Body Worlds' visitors.  At least once on every page, in flowing script to childish scrawl to capital prose, someone requested "more women" or asked, "where were all the female bodies?" The concerted effort to demonstrate the man in Everyman, it seemed, was unsubtly, universally male - and it was a shame.  Instead of demonstrating the similarities between men and women as flesh and sinew and blood and bone - and in this case, plastic - Body Worlds only highlighted its own bias.  Didactically, the exhibit is a success - these are the fibres that connect the kneecap to the leg, this is what a heart attack looks like - but emotionally and theoretically as an examination of the human, it was a bust.  Perhaps it was too much to expect gender parity from a traveling exhibition designed to showcase a revolutionary new technique in tissue preservation, but I'd hoped to see more thought from those who claim inspiration from the equitable ideals of Humanism.

It matters, I think, what matter we're made of, and it's something that it certainly is worth $25 to see.  But mattering equally, I think, is what we don't see.  And why.

PhD burden, #326: the Ulysses S. Grant proposal

America's 18th president was also useful in a hypothermia emergency.

Having just spent the last three weeks sacrificing my toothsome, spifftacular self on the altar of “pleaseohpleaseohpleasegive me money”, I would like to offer my patient readers the grant proposal that, upon the advice of my supervisors, did not get sent on to the Sobriquet Library.

* * *

Over the course of a two month fellowship at the Sobriquet, I propose to do a bit of research for my thesis, which I should have done sometime before I hit thirty-five. I don’t think it’s reasonable for any of you to ask me for a more specific promise than that, because, I mean REALLY – have any of YOU tried to write a dissertation? It’s not like putting coins into a pop machine or something. It’s, like, WORK and stuff, with a whole lot of finicky footnotes and tracking down of musty documents and submitting chapters to a crotchety fellow who says “Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay...but you really need to ground this in volumes one through eighty-seven of The History of the Book in Britain.Why don’t you read those and get back to me after the weekend?”, a fellow who twirls the corners of his moustache with a Post-Modern sneer before jetting off someplace for a port-swilling orgy of nefarious academic posturing, leaving you in his office holding a hundred pages of heart-bursting agony while undergraduates pop by and tell you what a fantastic professor he is. Even after you kill one to roast for supper (with thyme and a bit of braising, even a psychology major can taste divine), you still don’t feel better, and have to commit yourself to a fervent weekend of smeared note-taking before dripping a handful of someone else’s thesis into the word-processed incarnation of your body, mind and spirit.

So it’s gonna take me awhile, that’s all I’m saying. 

So anyway, here’s why I think you should pick me.

First of all, I look adorable in blazers, especially the military kind that’re incredibly popular right now and available in every sweatshop-shilling, cheap knockoff-hustling, minimum-wage paying, Eaton Centre rental. You know the kind with all the buttons? As I figure it, this characteristic of mine can come in real handy for your library, now that the president has authorized the NSA to spy on Americans without warrant. I know that you’ve got a bunch of suspicious looking manuals like On the making and use of a staffe (STC2 3118) and appealingly-dirty ballads like how a bruer meant to make a cooper cuckold and how deere the bruer paid for the bargaine (STC2 22919) that could easily lead to your phones being tapped and a bevy of black, technology-clad supermen crashing through the windows, wreaking all kinds of messy havoc on the carpets and necessitating a thorough vacuuming.  But naturally, my military insignia will prevent just this kind of outrage, the doublewide, neckless, uber-soldiers passing the Sobriquet right over once they spy my brassy exterior shining brightly in the reading room. Think about it. 

Secondly, I’ve heard that the Sobriquet is filled with geriatrics, and I have to say, I’m great with old people, especially the kind that wear acrylic sweaters with pearl buttons and imitation tweed hats. I play canasta like a thing possessed, and do not refuse musty, unwrapped peppermints that have been sitting in the bottom of purses for decades and smell faintly like Vapo-Rub. I let those who qualify for senior citizenship lick their finger and wipe smudges off my face without wriggling away in horror, and I have been known not only to listen contentedly but ASK for stories about road trips from the 1950s, making me an endearing and obedient mascot. Plus, I’m hungry for dinner at 4:30pm too.

Thirdly, my thesis topic sounds far more impressive than it is, confirming that I’m a sparkling dinner conversationalist by virtue of never actually being allowed to speak. Because of its ubiquitous and mundane subject matter, everyone thinks they’re an expert in my field and therefore feels encouraged to offer me recommendations at length about what I should be doing and when, for how long, with which methodology and upon the advice of this or that long-dead and musty bugbear. I endure such advice with a gritted, but nonetheless pleasant smile, and have learned patiently how best to control my flaring nostrils. The end result is that people feel like they have helped poor, silly little me by the end of the meal, and then they get to retire to the lounge with a smug, assured feeling of contented self-aggrandizement.  

Fourthly, even though you do not tend to have many masquerade balls at the Sobriquet, I think it is fair to mention that I’m a dreadful but enthusiastic dancer who makes up for her inadequacies in the promenade with a zealous commitment to costume, often charming other, more introverted, souls into a camaraderie of bedecked, bespangled and even beribboned attires fit only to parade about in a post-Restoration manner while gently grasping expensive glassware by the stem.

Fifthly, I’ve been informed that my body temperature while sleeping is enough to warm a small household. In the event that one of the other Sobriquet scholars falls into the ocean, a la the Captain in the Voyage of the Mimi PBS special (starring a very young Ben Affleck!) and suffers from hypothermia, my superior basal temp will warm them to normalcy in no time at all – a valuable addition to your first aid capabilities as necessary in these troubled times as a defibrillator. You can never be too careful, after all – as they say, hypothermia is the “silent killer”.

Sixthly, I do not eat brazil nuts, leaving plenty of brazil nuts for all the other scholars.  

Seventhly, I know all the words to the ‘found a peanut’ song, which may be used to scare away book-nibbling rodents and attract small, delicious children who are much lower in cholesterol and trans-fats than braised psych major in jus.

In conclusion, my presence will offer a lively and much-discussed addition to the Sobriquet dramatis personae, and I sincerely hope that you will consider my application for fellowship with all the spirited nonsense that you refused to endow upon me last year. I still don’t think that the white powder was all that offensive, really, and hope that you appreciate the icing sugar more this holiday season, knowing the sweet spirit in which it was affectionately addressed.

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Commiserating with one of my PhD peers last night, we both came to the solemn realization that we will never be given the opportunity to read for pleasure again.

As we stood in his carrel hefting the tomes of the Canadian literary canon, weighing Not Wanted on the Voyage against The Diviners against Surfacing against The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Adam shifted the books around his bookshelf with the jocularity of a three-card Monty dealer. 

"Find the lady, find the lady," I thought, as he palmed Margaret Atwood across the desk, slipping her in between Ondaatje and Davies.  "One, two, three, nothing up my sleeve.  Easy as pie. Find the lady and win."

"Fifth Business was pretty good," Adam said. 

"When you're done," I said, "You should read World of Wonders.  It's even better."

As Adam and I stood there in uncomfortably close proximity, me with one foot literally out the door, him practically straddling his desk as we valiantly tried to chat without inadvertently engaging in a consummation of our relationship (ah, the joys of the carrel!), I was struck with yet another longing for a past life that slipped by without ceremony.

I'm not going to be reading any more Canadian literature in furious quantities, nor Romantic poetry, nor Medieval lyric, nor modern drama, nor randy eighteenth-century verse.  The moment for taking a course in the American novel has long past, and there seems to be no future opportunities for doing so anywhere visible on my career horizon.  Somehow, by finishing my course work and declaring my specialties, I've whittled my field down and enclosed it with hedgerows, clearly demarcating where I stand knee-deep in the texts of the Renaissance.

I can wave to Adam four fields over as he wades through his own puddles of the modern novel, but I don't think I'll ever get the chance to visit there. 

No, I've made my flower-bed, and now I'll have to sow and weed it for the years to come, defending my hedgerows from the rioting Oxfordian peasantry and offering toothsome, homegrown delicacies to the crown in return for her hoped-for patronage (read: tenure).   This isn't to say that I don't like my field best of all - I do, I'm just struck by the sudden realization of what I've lost.  Reading the Books section of the Globe and Mail or the Guardian, I find myself missing the long drink of narrative that novels have and suffering from their fierce omnipresence. 

"Have you read this?" someone will ask in a bookstore, holding up a G-G Award winner.  "It must be lovely to read all day long." 

"Er, no," I'm forced to say.  "Have you read Erasmus' Praise of Folly?  It was huge in 1509."

"But aren't you in English? You must've read a lot of the classics.  I just read War and Peace.  What did you think of it?"

"Er, I don't," I say, blushing.  "But the ballad of Protestant martyr Anne Askew is fabulous.  I highly recommend it."

This is always the most embarrassing conversation for an English specialist to have: an admission of what you haven't read.  It's even developed into a graduate student drinking game called "Humiliation", where you declare a classic work you've still not read, and everyone who has read it has to take a swig of their beverage.  Even in a crowd of my Renaissance peers, I can still win with Macbeth (I've been saving it for a rainy day). 

And from the looks of it, I'll be kicking ass at "Humiliation" for years, lobbing David Copperfield and Pamela and Ulysses and Vanity Fair at my friends as they feebly toss the Faerie Queene my way. 

So I'm feeling a bit morose this week, realizing that the more I read, the more I'll never have a chance to read. 

Of course, my embargo on the modern novel ("modern" here, meaning anything post-1660) means I'm spared this sort of thing:

And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

Personally, though, I'm rooting for Marlon Brando:

In a moment Annie was on his side, Madame Lai was like a plant growing over him, and her little fist (holding the biggest black pearl) was up his asshole planting the pearl in the most appreciated place.

"Oh, Lord," he cried out. "I'm a-comin'!"

Though, truth-be-told, the late Brando is probably not going to be "a-comin" anywhere anytime soon, least of all to pick up his award.  Maybe that's why I'm rooting for him: I seem to have a thing for dead authors, all lined up nicely in furrows of well-tilled soil. 

'Course, I've never encountered one who writes about pearls being inserted into bumholes before, but I'm sure that's just because I haven't read enough. 

On sitting down to read King Lear once again

Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking backwards, and I think that's meant to be a reminder for us all of the dangers of unbridled nostalgia:

And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed ...The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.  Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.   But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And maybe this is why skin tastes salty, because we're all so tempted to look backwards the way we've come, instead of keeping our heads inclined dutifully forward into the promiseland of the future. Our myth of a golden age, passed down from time immemorial, tells us that the world is, and always has been, going to hell - the past isn't prologue at all, really, but an inaccessible perfect space where laws are followed without question, where fruit always sweetly hangs from the trees and where we never knew shame at our nakedness.  How can any future possibly compare to such paradise?

And so we look back. 

And just like saltwater fails to quench thirst, encouraging the shipworn to drink deeper and deeper, a prolonged stare at our past can trap us into a nearly unbreakable internal gaze which can no longer see a future at all. 

The Golden Age, much stronger and more woebegone than the opposing myth of progress, is a crippling siren song for a graduate student, whose job is to rewrite herself a future out of the narratives of the past.

For the past five months of studying for the first of my three comprehensive exams, I've been reading obsessively, hysterically trying to chip away at my ignorance and fill the gaps in what I think I know with cursory, desperate gulps of literature.  Exclusively reading drama, my mind is a maelstrom of strange, transitory worlds that last "but two hours traffic upon a stage", worlds where revenge is possible, where love is rewarded, and where clowns always have the best lines and the last words. 

Exploring these worlds five hundred years after their construction, my audience of one sees the characters in these plays returning again and again to the myth of The Golden Age, fleeing to the freedom of the Edenic forest of Arden, or chastising a poet for failing to properly endorse the myth of progress.  Troilus and Cressida walk their play self-consciously, painfully aware that their story has already been written, their very names Renaissance iconography for a doomed love affair.  Trapped in the past, the characters can't look forward, and Fortune marches on, crushing the blind beneath her wheel. 

It's a truism amongst Shakespearean critics - whose banner, I suppose, I'm squired beneath - that as he aged, Shakespeare became more and more interested in the relationships between individuals that can forgive the horrors and terrors of a cruelly systemic world.    While most of his early comedies end in marriage, his later "problem plays" and romances end in silences and miracles, a more mixed and complicated message than "love is all you need."  But before the harmony threatened by the trials of the first four acts can be restored, Shakespeare's characters experience turmoils of regret and longing for an elevated past.  Otherworldly magic may make Prospero's reconciliation with his usurping brother possible, or restore the marriage of Leontes and Hermione or the life of the entombed Thasia, but these events are less spectacular than the desperate need these characters have for reunification.  Their guilt and longing is driven by their yearning for an inaccessible past that they can not reclaim without the magic possibilities of romance.

And just like a Florizel who flees kingly authority for the freedom of a shepherd, in my revelry and word-bathing, I want to stay in those worlds long enough to savour them,  lingering over Marlowe's Tamburlaine and fussing over Bartholomew Fair long enough to make even Jonson approve.  But such looking back is discouraged, and there's no time to explore as I rush through my list and gulp down the next narrative of the past.  I suppose it's his job, but I can't help resenting my supervisor as he wrenches my head back around to keep my future squarely in view.  In retaliation, I construct my own Golden Age, one where I could read for pleasure surrounded by others doing the same, in reading rooms with proper chairs and adequate light, where decompression with a cheap pitcher of beer and a cathartic argument could make everything right with the world again, and where the homefires burned brightly all night long.

So I can't help but look back, and I sympathize for Lot's nameless wife, eternally punished for her inarticulate longing for what has come before:  

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger
His huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:
"It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
At the empty windows of that upper storey
Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
Her body turned into transparent salt,
And her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she will never be lost
She who gave up her life to steal one glance.

-- Anna Akhmatova

As Keats settles down to pay homage to the past, he too is struck "Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay".  Recognizing that inherent in his backward glance is the threat of a potential loss of self, Keats embraces the past and sets it ablaze, letting himself rise from the ashes of what has come before:

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

 

Maybe Keats' efforts to thwart "our deep eternal theme" are right - maybe we should just springboard from our prior narratives into a self-fulfilling prophesy, leave melodizing and the Queen of Far Away entirely for the more practical experience of flying at our desire, heads wrenched forward into an uncompromised future. 

Hmph.  He must've been speaking with my supervisor.

This surprises noone

Exclamation point !

Yes, you are fine around others. Fine. But you wish you could have just a *little* more alone time. Okay, well, a lot more alone time. In fact, you'd be happier if you didn't have to go out nearly as much. You get along very well with the period, who tries mightily to take up as much of the load as he can. But fools will not listen. You want to scream, "Cut it out, for the love of Safire!" But, all of that notwithstanding, you do your duty. And, if sometimes you feel like a Chicago street hooker, you also remember that you really do have an important role to play. Your soul remains pure. Hold your head high!

Link: Which Punctuation Mark Are You?

Self-aggrandizement for a Thursday

The Second Carnival of Feminists is up, and I'm in it, so go check it out!

(And if you don't like me, there are many, many other excellent posts linked too.)

Remembering Not to Forget: The Loss Suite

The mock orange tree.  Sticky buns. Pickles. Edgar Cayce.  Hockey cards. Crafts. Dolls.  Endless catalogues.  Peanut butter for the squirrels.  Letters to the editor.  The pheasant sofa.  Cleaning the carpets. Toys. Countless humbugs.  The hard, horse barn shaped purse.  "You know, Sarah..." Taking her teeth out and hiding them in her bra.  Dreamwhip.  Diet soda. The clocks.  Never throwing anything away.  Noxema and Dove soap.  Saving the potty for every grandchild.  "Hai-waii."  Never playing favourites.  Always knowing what the must-have toy is.  Climbing roses.  Black-eyed susans.  Ring toss. The never-used treadmill. 

How hugable she was.  Rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  Parcheesi.  Cribbage.  Squares.  "Rolled oats."  Cookies straight from the freezer.  Pickles at dinner.  Plastic tablecloths. Naked ladies shower enclosure.  Not taking down Mom's folk art, even after the divorce.

Camping.  The video camera.  The pink deer sweatshirt.  Dangly earrings.  The church.  The way they french-kissed at Dad's wedding.  Cheese and apple salads.  "Fluoride is bad for old people."  The way she took care of Grandma Zach.  The ceramic milk jug.  Dallas.  The silver mirror, brush and comb on her dresser.  Orange doilies on the coffee table.  The first satellite dish: "Don't touch that remote!"  Mating pairs of cardinals attacking the front window.  Hanging the dishtowels up high.  Reusing the wash water.  Composting. Recycling.  The macrame owl.  The post-funeral spread that wasn't her equal.

I miss you Nan.