My Final Post.

This class has been a journey of sorts. It has been a movement from one place to another, though those places aren't necessarily different. It has also been a movement and journey from chaos to tranquility, and possibly back. To show you what I mean I would like to tell of the mid-semester oasis. This is, of course, spring break 2010.



We pulled into Vegas around three and sat with our bags in the lobby while Samantha waited to check in. The room was reserved under her name and we fully planned on fitting five more people in the room than the hotel knew about. A man in a wrinkled uniform sat next to the elevators, a sign told us to show him our hotel keys before going up to the room. A nerve shot through my stomach as I saw this until I looked at the man's face. Tired eyes sunk above a disenchanted nose, desensitized from the path of hookers and big women from the south, those who were either on their way to make money or lose it big. The poor man could barely care about six dirtbags using the hotel for a cheap place to crash during spring break, but not enough to say anything as we pass, loaded down with backpacks and sleeping bags.

A strange energy seemed to guide us south on I-15. We were at the crossroads of two powerful vectors, one coming from the red walls in the east and the other streaming through countless filaments on its path from the north. The actual intersection was probably somewhere in the west lobby or on the casino floor next to the blackjack tables. The tension was strong, more of a film that I wasn't quite willing to cross. I wasn't ready for the absurd labyrinth in the neuropathways of this place's collective cognition. The circuits were all loaded with a unique current that flowed through endless copper over countless miles of red sand and sagebrush. A straight shot to a dead end that eats anything that enters, only letting those out who have given all excesses of energy and money. The hotel itself was second rate, or maybe third or fourth. I know of the extravagance of suites and limos that sat so close. The difference, only the plastic hotel key. At some point, it seems, everything must die. The black summer days flood in through the heavy drapes, drawn until three in the afternoon.

We are not in summer though, it is only spring and the air is light with the breeze of chance, of fortune. We have not yet come to the hot and heavy days that crowd this place most of the year. We still have hope. I hope to find it in Red Rocks.

The city itself is strange in its contrast. The strip itself, which we sat on the north end, was fantastically mystical. What I found truly interesting was what is found directly on the other side of the strip. Vacant lots strewn with garbage and junky cars. Dust swirls up in the wind and obscures the endless desert. The price of a square inch just a block over? priceless. The price behind the huge casino? nothing.

Spring break has always been a time to rest the soul and take a much needed break from the academic setting and the hectic realities of life. In the city I wouldn't find it. We would have to drive fifteen miles west to the red sands and endless rock walls of Red Rocks Canyon.

We would climb during the day, drive back to the hotel, and go out on the strip at night. This wasn't anything like the seven day camping / climbing trip in Indian Creek that we took a couple years ago. I soon realized that I was not finding the tranquility and rest that I had so greatly desired. The city wouldn't allow it. The city is a dream, a fiction.

First of all, there are outdoor escalators. And needless to say, Samantha and I get really excited about outdoor escalators. Here we are, riding one.


The lights and massive scale appealed to my need for visual stimuli, and I was lost... not in myself but in a crazy story that never seemed to end.

We imagined that we held the key to a high level suite on the top floor of an expensive hotel. And then we would walk in and the difference was obvious. We didn't care about the things the people inside cared about. I don't think they were looking for tranquility in the night clubs and endless casino floors.

So much excess!





What I found very interesting was the ceiling in many of the casinos, here is a picture.



Nope, not real. One night I was completely exhausted, it was close to one o'clock and no one seemed to notice. We walked into the casino in Paris and suddenly it felt like it was the middle of the afternoon. It was strange, a complete shift in reality. Vegas is a dream, and it makes our normal lives feel like the completely concrete.

My soul did not find rest. Not until the fourth day when we went back into Black Velvet canyon was I able to find some solace. Here, about a mile from the wall we came upon a little pool. For a little reference, the wall on the left side of the photo is over 2000 feet tall. This place is absolutely surreal. And I was finally at rest. I took a breath, a true breath for the first time in months.




Then it was back to life in Bozeman. We drove back in one big push and arrived to bitter winds and snow. uggh. This class has been the same way. I have found solace and depth in a lot of the themes and texts of this class. But it started and ended with chaos and confusion. Our lives are surely dreams, sometimes it just takes a journey to realize that.

Thanks for the great semester everyone, and have a great, restful summer!

Favorite Text This Semester.

Okay, now to pick a favorite from the semester.

Skin of our Teeth, Finnegans Wake, The Alchemist... no, no, and no. (good just not favorite)

Beckett, Tempest, Haroun ... possibly, certainly great but all three of my literature classes are covering it, good as well and I'm very glad to be turned on to Salmon Rushdie.

The Following Story, Four Quartets? YES and YES! The Following Story is so well written and entertaining to the intellect. It is not something that you just fly through, and is very rewarding. I would like to add that when advising anyone to read this I would also include "Transparent Things" by Nabokov as a sort of sister text to this novel. The themes that are discussed are very similar in spirit and content, and the authors are both extremely creative and intelligent writers (though I'm still a bit partial to Nabokov).

The Four Quartets is SO intelligent, and caught my attention right away. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I have read through the quartets probably 9 or 10 times and certain sections countless times. The result: I have barely scratched the surface. There is so much going on that I find myself increasingly intrigued the more time I spend with it. Eliot is criticized for being such a modernist, and in many ways it is true. However, when passion exists behind creative philosophy, then a very strong piece is created, and continues to be created.

I want to mention again Beckett's three novels. I was also very intrigued by this and especially in relation to the concept of Kenosis. I'm quite curious as to what Bloom would have to say about this process in the context of this book. Great stuff, and I plan to read the last two of the novels over the summer.

Professor Sexson, thanks for exposing us to some really great material this semester!

Wordsworth and Eliot.

I make an allusion in my essay to Wordsworth's poem "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal" which follows the lead of Eliot in Burnt Norton Section III.

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.

It is the line "With slow rotation suggesting permanence" that reminded me of the Wordsworth poem. Here it is for any that have forgotten.

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course
with rocks, and stones, and trees.

There is not a direct allusion here, but the correlation (at least in my mind) is pretty high. Wordsworth's poem deals with an existence that feels utterly out of time. "earth's diurnal course" sounds a lot like the metronome of the sea that Eliot speaks of in Dry Salvages. It is not the invention of man, but of an earth that exists outside of our petty mechanism of time. The secret to this ancient time can only be found in the rocks and the stones and the trees that cannot be deciphered. If only we could come into such close proximity with them that we could then understand their secrets. Maybe we could suck on them.

Interestingly, the phrase "no motion has she now, no force" fits very tightly into Eliot's philosophy, or is it the other way around? Eliot mentions that movement is time, so this "she" is obviously outside of it.

Eliot's words make this short poem very poignant. No darkness exists in the slumber with all of the accompanying physical matter, and surely the sensual is successfully drained out of this existence. That is another point that corresponds to Eliot, sensual desire is in time, true love is not.

This poem has always held a dark edge with me, and now seems to more than ever. But maybe it is really a poem of great transcendence and joy. The object of the poem is outside of time and has apparently made the jump into the next "reality." It is into this next world that love becomes a little more pure, a little bit stronger. In some sense, death has always contained an element of hope. We just don't know.

So many Blogs.

What I am going to say, has already been said, though to reiterate is important. There are a couple blogs that really pulled me through this semester, and I have surely needed to be pulled, sometimes dragged.

Sam - Thanks for putting so much time and effort into your blog. I think we all know that if we miss a day, no big deal, just go to the monster blog and see what happened. Also, great insights into the class and the themes as a whole.

Jon - Jon always has great posts with fresh perspectives. I really respect his depth of thought and creativity when it comes to literature. Also Jon, you've got a great writing style, keep up the good work.

Christina - Christina makes us all look real bad. Thanks a lot. Sarcasm aside, she always has cool ideas and is quite motivated to be creative. I always am impressed by the eloquence and clarity in her writing. Yeah, she is the good student. Dang over-achiever! :)

To everyone who has kept up with their blogging... I commend you. I respect you all very much.

Group Presentation.

I never got a chance to really offer an explanation of our group presentation. I would first like to mention that this was the best group I have ever worked with for these projects. We had a great time doing it, and best of all started meeting early so we had time to really develop our ideas. Thanks to Thomas for his mad editing skills and creativity (and access to the 7D!), Sam always came up with loads of great ideas, and Erin made a killer quiche.

Our group was in charge of the 20 minute lifetime. We decided to portray this through the structure of a dreamer. Shortly before we gave our presentation (and by shortly I mean 2 minutes) I realized how much overlap there is between our theme and that of Life as Fiction. Would some differentiation have helped? I don't really think so. It is important to understand that there is strong overlap between all of the themes of this class. And clarification doesn't always clarify.

So the dream idea was that a lifetime could exist within one of Professor Sexson's tangents during a lecture. As the student, I fell asleep and began to have a dream. As we mentioned after our presentation, if you found any element to be a bit strange than the easy explanation is: it is a dream, it is supposed to be weird! However, we did try to incorporate a whole bunch of elements and themes from this semester.

Some of those were: notions of Alchemy and purification of the soul, birth, growth, life and death, lists, memory, narration, deja vu, recurrence, circularity, chaos, and illogicality. There were plenty of references to the different texts and sources that we used this semester as well including: The Tempest, Four Quartets, Beckett, Vico, Stranger than Fiction, The Matrix, classmates' blogs and plenty of other familiar sources of influence.

My favorite part of the video was the sucking stones bit along with the recitations of Finnegans Wake. So cool... and in HD!

Thanks to all my group members for making this a fun project, I think we did a great job!

My List.

Here is a list, off the top of my head, of some of the musicians in my iTunes library. There are 31 GBs, so I'm obviously missing a lot, but here it is... what I can remember.


A-sides, Albert King, Alexi Murdoc, The Album Leaf, America, Amy Millan, Badly Drawn Boy, The Beatles (Abbey Road), DJ Dangermouse (grey album), Band of Horses, The Apples in Stereo, Arizona, Arrah and the Ferns, Ben Kweller, Beirut, Boston, Bill Evans, Bela Fleck, Andrew Bird, Fruit Bats, The Shins, Further Seems Forever, Blindside, Iron and Wine, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Belle and Sebastian, Seu George, Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack, Life Aquatic Soundtrack, Rushmore Soundtrack, Langhorne Slim, Miles Davis, Vince Guaraldi, Sufjan Stevens, Wilco, Loose Fur, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Los Lonely Boys, Buddy Guy, Elliot Smith, Coldplay, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Funky, Jay-Z, Grieves, TV on the Radio, MGMT, Girl Talk, That 1 Guy, Damien Jurado, Bees and Grass, The Bees, Glenn Miller, Fanfarlo, The Strokes, The Killers, Ben Gibbard, Rocky Votolato, Pedro the Lion, David Bazan, The Grand Archives, Grand Analog, Regina Spektor, Tom Waits, Beethoven, Bach, Modest Mouse, Okkerville River, Doobie Brothers, Chicago, Earth Wind and Fire, Anya Marina, The Format, The Avett Brothers, The Felice Brothers, The Postal Service, Explosions in the Sky, Unwed Sailor, Trace Bundy, Ratatat, Dan Aurbach, Bon Iver, Radiohead, Red hot Chili Peppers, Manchester Orchestra, Right Away Good Captain, Nick Drake, Los Petersellers, Norah Jones, Stars, Horsefeathers, Great Lakes Swimmers, Headphones, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Headlights, Kings of Leon, King of Convenience, The Gypsy Kings, John Mayer Trio, Snowpatrol, My Morning Jacket, Liam Finn, M83, The Be Good Tanyas, Dntel, Daft Punk, Vampire Weekend, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Derek and the Dominoes, Eric Clapton, meWithoutYou, Fleet Foxes, The XX, Audrey Sessions, The Autumn Defense, Josh Ritter, Devandra Bernhardt, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Darkness, Black Gold, Black Keys, The Black Kids, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, Franz Ferdinand, George Thorogood, Muddy Water, Mute Math, Moby, Dispatch, Jack Johnson, Simon and Garfunkel, Jaoa Gilberto, Stan Getz, Mac Lethal, Mason Jennings, Marvin Gaye, Bowerbirds, The Tallest Man on Earth, The Mars Volta, Phantom Planet, Nirvana, K'naan, M Ward, M.I.A., Greatful Dead, Jimmy Eat World, Herbie Hancock, Broken Bells, Cake, Built to Spill, Buena Vista Social Club, Arthur and Yu, The Helio Sequence, P.O.S.

Falling Behind.

This happens all the time... unfortunately.
I start the semester out strong and decide to keep up on the blogging unlike the semester previous. I failed again. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. As for coming short on an assignment, I feel bad. I believe that as an upper division college student I should be held to a high standard. But in general, I am so sick of my computer. I hate how much visual stimulation I need to be satisfied, not only that, but to just hold my attention. Honestly, there have been a number of blog posts that some of you have done that I didn't bother reading because... well... there were no cool pictures. This depresses me greatly.

About halfway through this semester I read an article on NPR that explored the ways in which readership is changing. All of these changes were in the direction of needing more stimulation and less downtime, or plot development, or anything that isn't overly stimulating. Suddenly I realized that that article described me all to well...

...and then we started reading Beckett. His style caught my attention, but it was hard to read. Nothing happened! There were no overly saturated pictures! No poorly animated GIFS! How could I even think to read this!

I fear that in such an age of visual stimulation and loss of patience, Beckett will never be read. Nor will the millions of others that require a bit of work. We must keep literature alive. It does not seem so now, but at some point this will be a plea of desperation.

I don't really buy this sort of study that goes on to understand the arising language of texting and other modern technological mediums. All I see is a movement towards the demotic and a push towards chaos.

To be quite honest, this is how I felt about Finnegans Wake. I couldn't stand it. Sure, there are some very interesting, beautiful, flowing lines, and I can also appreciate the wholly aesthetic approach that one sometimes needs when handling the text, but I get the same feelings about FW as I do about texting and twitter, etc. I know, I'm being pessimistic and dark, but I can't do anything else. My soul bids me. I can't wait to forget about checking my email, and wasting time on cracked.com, and reading countless forums on rockclimbing.com. I can't wait to write something NOT in a word processor, or in this strange QWERTY system. My trained fingers can cruise along at blinding speeds and I don't even have to think about it. They must be betraying me! Even as I "write" this they are jumping around quickly, I just think, they do the rest. What else are they doing that I'm not aware of!!???!!

I can't wait to retrain myself to be patient, and to be able to focus and be truly introspective again. It has been too long. Deep breathes help.

Until then I will try to add some quality blogs before beginning the process.

Term Paper.

I am supposedly going to present my paper today, we'll see if that happens. Sorry about the lack of basic formatting in the paper below, I don't have time to recreate all the paragraph breaks. Sorry, gotta run. Good luck to everyone who is going to present or is currently writing their papers!




The hour's NOW come; The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
I think we would all be better off with a healthy dose of skepticism concerning the commanding finality of the clock. Mine started a couple years ago, and I remember looking, fruitlessly, for alternatives to my linear concepts of time. At first I found relatively little, mainly snippets of String Theory and references to obscure Eastern thought. I knew there must be more out there, but the ever revolving hands, as so often happens, dulled the edge of my inquiry and brushed the topic aside. Pesky mechanism, always thwarting my endeavors! But alas, this is not a paper in which I denounce the chronometer, for that would be a paradox, which is certainly not useless but might confuse the aims of this argument. Eliot's use of paradox is not, shall I say, stingy and two people using this technique in such close proximity might only manage to conjure up a mass of uncorrelatable matter. This is a risk I'm not willing to take at the moment.
Definition: At the Moment: A phrase created by Time's division of propaganda in order to establish one's relative relation on the vector of Time (called a “Time-line”) and to mask the essence of the true, eternal moment. This is also achieved through the colloquial, and sloppy, use of the word “now.” From this relative point in time on, I must treat the use of the word “now” with utmost care. Eliot makes me.
In the opening lines of Burnt Norton, Eliot creates his first paradox. “If all time is eternally present // All time is unredeemable.” The problems that arise out of this sentiment are based off of notions of time and eternity, which occur throughout the Four Quartets. In his essay entitled, “Time, Eternity, and Immortality in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets,” Terry Fairchild makes an important distinction. “Time he [Eliot] says is not always present; it is eternally present. For time to be eternally present, it can have no temporal boundaries” (Fairchild 58). From the very beginning, Eliot sets about to define the point in time where time folds in upon itself, and where the depths of eternity exist. This difficult task is approached from this paradox. If eternity has, by definition and understanding, no temporal boundaries then its existence within time is impossible. Eliot attempts to dig to that point at which time is not time, but a dim reflection of itself staring into a mirror in Lisbon and sticking its ever maddening tongue out.
Time is also a boundary for consciousness according to Eliot. He says, “To be conscious is not to be in time,” and if consciousness is truth, then we must get to the point of eternity in order to wholly understand. This is an interesting intricacy in Eliot's philosophy of time. If time is a type of border line for our consciousness, then to break out of time would also effectively increase our consciousness. In that case, we as humans are imparted with enormous volumes of knowledge, to what extent we do not know, and the secret then lies in understanding how to gain access to those grand archives. In this vein, Eliot's philosophy is one of a gnostic bent, and he submits that the knowledge of the world is limited to us by the bonds of time.
Eliot makes this simple by saying, “All is always now.” He makes no distinctions about what is contained in the unsure “all.” It is not necessarily just knowledge that exists in the “intense moment isolated.” It could be everything in the broadest sense of the word, and even broader than our limited language will allow. This particular phrase is important, the words are simple but weigh heavy with implication.
Another important element of Eliot's philosophy of time is that love exists in the same manner as human consciousness. Love, according to Eliot, exists in perfection outside of the constraints of time. Outside the bounds of time, perfection in love and consciousness are seemingly achieved. Are these correlated? There is no possible way for me not to think so. Though “the detail of the pattern is movement,” and movement is time, the complicated pattern incorporates all, and “all is always now.” Surely, for Eliot, love and consciousness are infinitely related. And our version? Even within the limitation, love is saturated “Sudden in a shaft of sunlight // Even while the dust moves // There rises the hidden laughter // Of children in the foliage.” The children are there, but are only seen if we look. The warmth on our backs as we hike through the towering pine, and in the shaft of sunlight, filtered by clustered needles, what do we find?
For Eliot there are two types of moments. The moment isolated which I have discussed (that on a pinpoint of time contains the unimaginable vastness of eternity), and the moment made up of complicated patterns. In this type of moment, therein exists the whole of everything, not necessarily the ultra inclusive “all,” but at least the lifetimes of all mankind and “old stones that cannot be deciphered.” A beautiful line which gives a certain weight to material substance. Matter indeed matters.
“A lifetime burning in every moment.” Eliot introduces the ultimate twenty minute lifetime. It all exists in a moment. Not twenty minutes, but a moment, which is perhaps one of the most ambiguous terms related to time. It is difficult to destabilize one's thoughts around the concepts of time. When the existence of something is called into question apart from the structured context, I am nearly lost. How can my end exist alongside my beginning? The process is not easy, no one said it would be. Remember what the thrush said in the rose garden, “Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind // Cannot bear very much reality.” Does this type of moment only exist to accommodate the material? I am not sure the distinction between the types of moments can be made so easily, though the perfection of love does seem to be of a different realm. Either way, the linearity of time is challenged, and any substantial disassociation with the clock might be advantageous to an understanding of non-linearity.

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is concurred.
(From Burnt Norton section II)

As I mentioned initially, I cannot create the paradox of wholly discounting time. This is because Eliot holds time and memory closely together. It is only through time that we can understand the intricacies of “now” because time makes memory possible. Later in Little Gidding, Eliot sums up that memory is used for liberation. This is a liberation from past and future by way of love, a love that supposedly seeks its perfected form. Therefore, we need time in order to advance passed any preconceived notions of time. It is only possible for me to write this paper with the help of the clock.
The ever ticking clock tells me, in a roundabout way that the earth is still slowly moving along its dismal course. Or its diurnal course, as some might say. With transient beauty so ephemeral, Eliot reminds us that there is something more. He is, in many ways, a Christian and a Modernist. Especially a Modernist. Through the Four Quartets, Eliot urges exploration and suggests the fruits of such a costly labor to be unimaginable gains and a truth that starts with a capitol 'T.'
From some relative position on the irrelevant scale of time, I must make the attempt to swerve from previous notions of linearity and the naïve use of “now.” That small word, so often used but so little understood. The implications of Eliot's philosophy are monstrous; the moment contains everything, and the moment isolated contains even the abysm of eternity. It is difficult to draw clear distinction between these moments in the Four Quartets, but maybe that is the point. It is surely not easy, and we must remember the words of the thrush. Remember, yes, we must remember now.







Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. Orlando: Harcourt, 1971. Print.
Fairchild, Terry L. “Time, Eternity, and Immortality in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.” Modern Science and Vedic Science 9.1 (1999): 50-99. Print.

types of now in Four Quartets

Spending time with this poem is great. I have read it, and reread it, and underlined, and reunderlined. I have probably been cover to cover nine times and reread certain passages over and over. And yet, I have barely scratched the surface. I have never spent this much time with a single work of Literature. I always have imagined it to be daunting and stressful, but it is quite the opposite, I greatly enjoy the pensive stillness that Eliot's words contain.

Before this afternoon, I thought I knew what Eliot's "now" meant. No longer. In East Coker (V) I stumbled, again, into this passage.

from East Coker Section V

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Up until this point (and mainly throughout Burnt Norton) I have been focusing on just that, the intense moment isolated, with no before and after. This intense moment, the one where eternity exists, the one where the dance occurs is identified by an element, which Eliot identifies as Love.

Love is itself unmoving

Time is movement, and the moment isolated essentially contains eternity. Just as the pattern of the boarhound and the boar is reconciled among the stars, so too is the dance, in the artery, in the evening, assuaged under the starlight. Maybe that is the wrong way to put it. One must try multiple ways, multiple times.

But there is also the moment that is every pattern, overlain, a never ending cross-reference, I am just a visitor and yes, I trip. This is the evening underneath the glow of the lamplight, the memories, connections, and patterns come from the album, more than the life of just one.

And here I have to deal with these last lines

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

It is the word 'now' that bothers me. Is Eliot using it with the utmost care here? How do I take this? Is this the now of the starlight or the now of the lamplight? In keeping with Eliot's ideas of time and Love I am inclined to think that when the patterns fall away, love remains. The eternity of the evening under starlight. There is love.


I still feel inept in the intricacies of now.

Closer
maybe closer
I'll be tomorrow

Emergent reference in the "Real" world

I know that all of you are keeping a very close watch on the latest news in the climbing world, but alas, I haven't heard anyone mention this yet. The article can be found here: http://climbingnarc.com/2010/04/chris-sharma-visits-bishop/

Chris Sharma made a recent trip to Bishop, California and did some hard bouldering. One of the routes being Haroun and the Sea of Stories V11/12

If I ever put up some hard routes, I'm sure you guys will be able to tell from the name that it was done by a literature student.

Term Paper

I apologize for the lateness of this post, I have been needing to do this for awhile. While reading the Four Quartets and The Following Story, I was very interested in the concepts of time, specifically the singular moment. In the Following Story, Nooteboom is extremely careful about how he uses the word "now." When I read this, I instantly thought of all the things Eliot has to say about time and the moment singular. What are the implications of that moment. What does "now" really mean?



First I will explore Eliot's understanding of time and timelessness. With this in mind I will then focus on Nooteboom's use of the word in The Following Story and the implication that "now" takes on in context of the story. Good luck to everyone on their term papers, and if anyone has any thoughts about this subject I would be very grateful for any insight. Thanks!

HB LB reference on NPR

I ran across this blog on NPR that brings up the question of high brow / low brow or over here / over there. The blog itself isn't especially involved, but it is interesting to see the reference being made elsewhere. The film between the two camps is indeed quite permeable as the blogger suggests. This isn't anything that we haven't encountered or heard, but I think that is a good way to describe the demarcation: permeable.

However, she obviously has a terribly skewed notion of "over here" if she thinks that Alanis Morissette resides there. Just kidding... kind of... ok, not kidding at all.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/04/dont_get_too_comfortable_the_p.html

Finnegans Wake 452

I completely forgot about putting my FW page up on my blog until I ran across a couple other blogs that apparently had the same issue. I chose, quite awhile ago, to take on page 452 from Finnegans Wake. The reason for this initially was because of the mention of Vico on this page.

This passage was also the one that I chose to memorize for class. "The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin." If the structure and content of FW doesn't suggest Vico Giambattista's influence on Joyce and his work, then this passage surely points directly to the notions of recurrence that Vico was known for.

I found lots of cool things on this page. Joyce mentions livy and some possible references to Roman history and also there is quite a few references to Egyptian history and mythology. Another notable gem is "Tennis Flonnels Mac Courther" is actually a contemporary Irish poet of Joyce named Dennis Florence McCarthy.

I remember that when I started this page I didn't know if I would be able to find enough stuff. Soon I was pretty much out of margin space. That's how it goes at Finnegans Wake!

A Terrifying Mental Maneuver

I just experienced a terrifying mental maneuver that some of you might be familiar with.

I was alone in my apartment, the clouded afternoon skies tried to cast light through the windows. I felt tired, I needed a nap. I love short afternoon naps, and don't like the grogginess that comes after thirty minutes. So I set my alarm for a half hour away and lay down. It was as if someone had pulled the blanket up over my eyes and pulled it instantly back down. I was in class. Not any classroom that I had ever seen, but it was Studies in Shakespeare. It was our day to act out King Lear and I didn't know any of my lines. The room was dark but light flooded in through the open door where the rest of the class huddled and watched us, like a shoe box theatre performance of Lear. I froze like a paper cutout forgetting my lines. There was an extra person who wasn't supposed to be there and the anxiety was overwhelming.

Suddenly the scene changed. I was in a crowded bar sitting next to my wife. A young boy was sitting on my lap. I had no idea who he was. There was some type of game that was going on but I couldn't understand what was being said over the loudspeaker. There was a strange remote control on the bar in front of me but I couldn't reach out and grab it. I suddenly realized two things. The first was that I was paralyzed, and the second was that I was dreaming. An image flashed on the bar top that looked quite like this:



Confused I tried again to lift my arm and grab the remote. My chest was getting heavy and breathing became difficult. Again an odd scene was projected on the bar, this time it stayed there.



I realized, and knew. First the waves of intense fear and paranoia began to pulse through my mind and flow over my body. Will I be able to make the leap? How long will it take to bridge the gap? I have gone through sleep paralysis enough times to know that I will come out of it, the question is always simply: how long? The bar scene faded and this image was all that remained:



It was my living room. My laptop lay open softly playing Bon Iver. It was my living room, but from another reality, not the one I was in. The light from the window was now blinding to my unprepared eyes. The perspective was from my own eyes, laying one mostly on top of the other close to the end of the couch. My brain was awake but I could not move anything. Breathing was difficult, nearly impossible. The catch is that the harder I fight the paralysis the longer it lasts. I knew this, I fought back against the clouds of paranoia and gut wrenching fear in order to relax. Nothing in my body was reacting to my mind's signals and I stopped trying to force it. If I could have close my eyes I would have, my mind was calm, my thoughts were calm. The lull was to last until the time came. It is a very small window, the portal hole is small, it's always small. I waited... waited. Relieved, I felt the invisible flap that indicates the bridge between the worlds and I jumped. Straining hard I pulled through suddenly and gasp for breath.

I can now feel my body, my fingers, my toes. They all move at my will. I made the jump, the mysterious yet terrifying mental maneuver. I looked at the clock, it had been only ten minutes since I closed my eyes.


Perhaps some of you know what sleep paralysis is or even have to deal with it yourself. The wikipedia article is here. The condition is when the mind wakes from sleep before de-paralyzing the body (which it does during REM sleep). It is sometimes accompanied by hallucinations and strong senses of danger and fear.

Quite the entrance into another reality. It is interesting, but unpleasant. Quite frankly, I hope death is easier.

Burning The Reel

On Monday, Professor Sexson mentioned a moment of awakening like when the film in a theater gets caught and starts to melt. In the allegory of the cave, this would be the moment in which a prisoner (or all of them) realize that the film is just a veil for "true reality." This would be an epiphanic moment causing the gain of another rung on the ladder. A step in the direction of finding that there actually is no ladder.



We went down to the movie theater at the bottom of the hill on a Wednesday night and bought two tickets to Lucky Number Sleven. The theater at the bottom of the hill was poorly lit and smelled musty. Our shoes stuck slightly to the linoleum of the bathrooms and to the concrete under the seats. I tried not to think about it.

I don't recall most of the film. It is somewhat intricate if I remember correctly, and we were waiting patiently and attentively for the end and the resolution of the different narrative tracks. We were close to the end, immersed, engrossed in the climax which took place in a room that was on fire. The two rivals were tied to chairs that were placed back to back. Everything was becoming clear, the story was coming together. The suspense built rapidly and I didn't blink.

We sat in the middle of a row five eighths of the way back. A dozen other people sat at random around us. The flame on the screen escaped out into the theater and I could see an orange glow on my girlfriend's face. The fire extended and reached out further. It was about to engulf the characters, I couldn't believe that they were about to die like this, were we going to be next?

Suddenly the fire changed from orange and brown to small white spots that spread rapidly across the screen. No! I thought. They can't die like this! I gripped her hand tighter and sat forward. We were blinded by a full white screen and a noise of fluttering quickly became a din of 24 frames per second lost, flapping around somewhere in the magician's machine.

We sat stunned. I was confused. Did they die? My re-entry into "reality" was a harsh one. I have seen a lot of movies and I have been trained to know when to make the switch, but this was different. I sat motionless, staring at the blinding wall in anticipation, not giving up the illusion that had just been before me.

It was minutes before someone left to find an attendant. I just sat there, dumb. I wanted the magician to come and put the moving people back up on the screen. I wanted to know what happened to the guys that were tied to the chairs in the burning room!

We were filed out of the room and taken to the front of the theater lobby. It was late and the theater was deserted except for a young female employee who wore too much makeup, and a lanky kid half heartedly sweeping stray kernels of neon popcorn into a dust pan. They gave us vouchers for another movie and we left into the cold spring night.

As "Reality" Fades Into Another.

We have been exploring, for awhile now, the prospects of "reality" and fiction containing an indeterminate amount of overlap. We have taken a highbrow and lowbrow approach, and have seen how this theme is relayed through different times and mediums.

There are a couple distinctions that I feel should be made regarding this theme. The first only gains one rung on the ladder. This is the realization that the current "reality" is a fiction. This is the movie of the Matrix, and the first part of the Tempest. Neo, after much disbelief and some denial, realizes that the life he had been living was not real, that it was literally a construct in his mind.

After thinking about this I found that this first step is generally associated with a magus or special leader. This is Morpheus for Neo, and Prospero for the characters in the Tesmpest. Sexson mentioned something interesting on Monday which called into question the reliability of these leaders. Something surely seems amiss.

To an extent, it is true that just like Dorothy Neo didn't need the guidance of Morpheus. The realization could have been made, though not without difficulty. And like Dumbo who "needs" the feather to fly, the journey to the knowledge that the current "reality" is actually fiction is a personal journey realized through some form of catalyst.



But let us move on to the next step, because this one may be truly disheartening. In the sequels to the first Matrix film, Neo apparently has the ability (outside of the Matrix construct) to affect the machines of the "real" world. Is this a hole in the narrative? Did the Wachowski Brothers make a mistake? It seems that just as Neo realized his power in the Matrix construct, so to does he realize his power outside of it. Which now begs the question: Is Zion "real"? Well, a lot has been discussed on this, and this site goes into great depth on the issue: http://www.matrix-explained.com/matrix_within_a_matrix.htm



So then, there is the second rung, and the end of the Tempest. The realization that perception is not entirely trustworthy, and it cannot be dismissed that there may be another level above our current "reality." The second is devoid of a Prospero or a magus to show us the way. The second is understood because we learned the first time around. If we are to question "reality" once, then at no point is it possible to stop. "Reality" is itself a construction of the mind and there is an infinite amount of crossover, and repetition, and deja vu, and memory. We search and we search and find it difficult to recall. The words of Prospero echo thus in our minds, indeed... what seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?

Happy Groundhog Day!

No matter what Phil says about the weather it is always snowy here sometime until mid April, so with a heap of salt we say: Dang, six more weeks of winter.

Sure enough he saw his shadow. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/02/groundhog_day_shadow_winter.html



On a more interesting note, PETA thinks that Phil is treated unfairly and should be replaced by a robot. Think of that what you will.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123253181

Shadow Dancers.

My favorite time to wake up, owing to my ability to fall asleep with little effort, is during the ambiguous hours of midnight until sunrise. A stretch where time exists only to my spatial opposites of our ever turning world. Though in theory time still exists, the only metronome that suggests linearity is the tree blown across the house in intervals and the shadow dancers on my wall that creep in through the shades.

The light that is not turned away by the slats I find to be drained. The luminescence is wan and alien by either reproduction or imitation, and is oddly invariable, oddly sterile like florescent tubes on a hospital bed. The dance resumes as my consciousness shifts. My eyelids slide as an act of the dream, not in spite of it, and the lines of dream are drawn formlessly on my walls. To call it truly waking would be to assign a daytime term to a dreamtime process.

As conshiftiness occurs, I am softly aware of my surroundings. The dance continues as I roll onto my back and note the ceiling. The shift progresses and the geometric lines above me hinder the process. There is something hidden within the folds of the ceiling, presumably old ductwork that heated the house before it was split into apartments. An ancient heat register that has been roughly painted over looks down on me from its skewed perch. My rational mind attempts to understand the lines. They are absurdly off. Architecturally bunked. Dimensionally awry. In the league of poorly executed handy work are a number of cockeyed pipes running water this way and that, hot and cold, out of one wall and into another. A complex system of interconnected portals feeding the rest of the house.

On one wall the dark shapes of posters and pictures are illuminated harshly by the digital blink of an diode. Two of the posters have names invisibly hanging off of them. The names are slightly askew, from lack of use, as they used to be part of a memory palace. Clarence White is on the left, Robert Fripp on the right. In fact, now that I think about it, Scotty Moore, John McGlaughlin, and Les Paul are attached furtively to three other objects in view. Frank Zappa is under me. T Bone Walker is in the closet.

I pull the comforter up over my cold shoulder and turn another 90 degrees. I see a green blanket draped over the back of my wife. Again my eyelids slide in time with the dancers on the wall. The shift reverses, I bury my head and wiggle closer to her. My room was just a stop on my dream journey, possibly to fill up. And now the conshiftiness is creating poorly built palaces surrounded by a moat guarded with snapping turtles and inside the walls there is a dance going on. Hand in hand, they slowly turn in the wan light of the few beautiful ambiguous hours.

Giambattista Vico in Finnegans Wake.

For the record, my page in Finnegans Wake is 452 not chosen entirely at random.

The Italian philosopher Vico. Sexson has implored us twice to look him up, and for good reason. Joyce, as claimed by Wikipedia, was heavily influenced by the ideas of Vico and one doesn't have to go far to find those traces. Vico proposed the idea that civilization develops in reoccurring cycles.

There are very obvious connections with Joyce's work and this principle. The theme of eternal return that we have discussed in relation to Finnegans Wake, and the structure in which the book is written lend themselves nicely to ideas of cyclical formation. Vico is referenced by name in Finnegans Wake on page 452. Joyce seems to understand that linear structure is difficult to let go of, the absence of a definite beginning and end is a scary concept. To this he writes,

The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin. Still onappealed to by the cycles and unappalled by the recoursers we feel all serene, never you fret, as regards our dutyful cask.

Cycles, agains, from the end back to the beginning, but if the cycle never stops then how is the real end known, the true beginning? Do we start at age 35? Do we start when our parents die? Or do we start when we realize that to end is only to begin? Who knows. I shrug to that.

Regarding Vico, Joyce said, "My imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn't when I read Freud or Jung." A source of imagination from the imagination machine himself!

Finn Begin.

I think that if I were a word, I would be quite upset at James Joyce for making me work so hard. Portmanteau - This means the blending of words and their meanings to form a new word with a hybrid meaning. Joyce is all about this. In other literature (I'm thinking of Through the Looking Glass) portmanteaus are somewhat surprising and unique. However, here in Finnegans Wake, wordplay, wordmashing, and wordbashing are the rules not the exception.

Some of my favorite combinations are:

Sinduced

Tighteousness

hippohobbilies

and certainly: caligulate.

Interestingly, I took a look at Thomas' blog and saw his latest post where Caligula is mentioned on page 60 or so. That blog post is here. When I first saw the word caligulate, I first thought of Caligula who was a Roman emperor who is known for his rampant acts of debauchery including killing and incest. What could this word mean then? Is it just the verb form of the man Caligula, or is it a combination with maybe "calculate" or something similar?

Actually, I'm not entirely sure that the real meaning would do me any good. I suppose it is the feeling that I receive that makes all the difference. For example, when I was younger I absolutely hated the word 'basin'. I'm not quite sure what it was about it that incited so much anger, yet anytime I saw the word in a sentence or anything it would affect the way I felt. Nothing good could ever contain the word basin. Isn't that what aesthetics is all about anyway? The feeling and movement of consciousness through art. I will try hard to remain on the tension film while "reading" this book.

And today in our "Random Google Image Search Matchup" we have the word Caligulate.

A Defense of Highbrow.

On Friday, Dr. Sexson talked about some spatial logics of literature in terms of seasons. There is plerosis (the filling up) of certain stories (we talked about romance and comedy) which is placed in the first half of the year (spring / summer). Then there is kenosis (the draining out) that certain stories embody, placed in the second half (autumn / winter). We juxtaposed the writings of Joyce and Beckett in these terms as Finnegan's Wake tries to include everything and Beckett's writing takes everything out of the story.

Dr. Sexson has a way of presenting things that makes stuff sound good. Finnegan's Wake? I tried to sell that one to my mom last year, she didn't buy it.

"But mom - just listen to this language, the way the sentences flow, it gives you the chills."

"What's the point?" she said, scrunching up her nose.

I wanted Dr. Sexson to explain it to her. I think she would like it then.

But this Highbrow literature stuff is difficult to sell - to anybody really, even lit majors. How many of us are going to get through Finnegan's Wake this semester (or ever)? Sexson predicted none. He, of course, is challenging us all to rise to the occasion... the very painful... arduous ... extremely fruitful occasion. And Beckett? Like I said, Dr. Sexson makes things sound enchanting and absolutely delightful, but honestly I was a little depressed after he lectured about the disturbing nature of his writing. The inevitable question arises. Why? Why read a novel that is dark or disturbing or depressing or something that has a pedophile as the main character?

I was reading The Western Canon by Harold Bloom today and it hit me...

"To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all. The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves.

All that the Western Canon ca

n bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality."

On a personal side, as we begin to read the difficult, arduous works of Joyce and Beckett I am going to attempt to truly receive the aesthetic power that is contained in these novels. I found the words "how to endure ourselves" extremely powerful and moving.
So how do I trick my sister into reading Lolita? I'll just pull out this quote the next time she asks why anyone would want to read about pedophilia.


On a different note entirely, Samuel Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school when he was a kid. Pretty sweet.

The evidence here.

Hello all.

First of all, I hope that everyone had a great relaxing vacation, was able to take a few more naps and to clear the mind.

Concerning the definitions of 'high brow' and 'low brow', I don't believe that the term 'depth' has anything to do with it. A 'high brow' work of literature (or art) may expect the reader to understand references to other obscure pieces that may not only make the meanings of the piece richer, but might possibly be entirely necessary for the most basic understanding of it. Whereas a 'low brow' work does not have such high expectations of its readership. While reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I ran into a passage that struck me. On page 86 Iff describes the Old Zone and mentions that there is little demand for the ancient stories that reside there, but it is said that all of the stories originated from that area.

All stories are retellings of other stories. Even our lives are displacements of fantastic tales. A highbrow piece of literature may make closer, more specific references to classic tales (commonly mythology) and a lowbrow piece may only nod in that direction. They both however, deal with the same thing. Rather than the black and white of 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' I think we'll find a great grey area that holds terms such as 'common threads' and 'themes'.