In Which I am Starry-Eyed

I've stumbled across a Sylvia Plath poem that makes my heart clench and stars my eyes:

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly--

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.


Could there be anything more beautiful than the lines "O my God, what am I/ that..." I have never hear wonder expressed so aptly, the overwhelming feeling that sweeps through you, makes you throw your head back, look at the sky, open to everything.

In Which I am Generally Very Busy

In general, I am Very Busy. There is so much to read and so much to write about what I am required to read. And then all of the Ghana paperwork. And NaNo. All in all, I will have less time to post here for the next month or so. Maybe things about poetry that particularly strikes me (I am loving Rita Dove at the moment) or about the novel attempt. But Very Little, generally. Perhaps more over Thanksgiving and over Christmas... have to start thinking about Christmas gifts (ahhhhhhh). Yikes!

In Which I am Once Again Overly Ambitious

So... I have started another blog. Not just me, though. My friend Kristen and I went to a reading tonight. Two poets corresponded by prose poem for a year or so. Neither Kristen nor I intend to write prose poems exclusively, but the idea of a call and response, building on the work of a peer, a friend, is tantalizing.
To put this in perspective, a few lists...
Almost as tempting: the second season of Sherlock, owl stickers, the cat (Martha!) at Murphy's.
At least as inspiring as: Frank Lloyd Wright , my new obsession with Natasha Trethewey, snowdrops.
Still overshadowed by: Virginia Woolf, Chagall windows, elephant-poop paper.
This is terrifyingly indicative of my overall world view.

In WhichI Fall in Love with Hushpuppy

Just saw Beasts of the Southern Wild. It was one of those movie experiences where the theater falls away (except for the popcorn) and you are totally immersed in the story. I was enthralled. It is the story of a young girl named Hushpuppy and her life in a Louisiana bayou (The Bathtub). She lived with her father, a volatile and complex--but also affectionate--man. As the film progresses, we learn that he is sick, dying. This is where a wonderfully magical, playful, ironic symbolism comes into play. The Bathtub is in danger because of rising water levels and increasingly violent storms. In school, Hushpuppy learns about global warming, the melting of the icecaps that will eventually flood her home. And far away,  we catch a glimpse of a beast, frozen in a glacier, trapped outside of time. But the time is coming when the beast will be released and The Bathtub will be threatened, and with it Hushpuppy's entire world. I cannot believe how amazing this movie was. There was so much hype (Sundance), that disappointment was almost inevitable. But Hushpuppy proved me wrong. She stood tall and showed the world--and the beast--just how strong she is.

In Which I am Overly Ambitious

I have agreed to participate in National Novel Writing Month. This is a time in which all of the amateur, would-be writers of the world sit down and write every single day for a month. And theoretically produce novels. I'm not quite sure that writing every day equates a novel. But it sounds like fun! More later, perhaps.

In Which I Learn About Chinese Poetry

My roommate and I had a long discussion last night about poetry. I picked up a book of Li Po's poetry and showed it to her. She had no idea who I meant at first. His name is now translated as Li Bai--so once we got that figured out things went a little bit smoother. She learned to recite some of his poems in school. She emphasized the brevity of the poems. Each line is only five or so character, and there are only four or five lines... But each character has a rich connotative meaning that can be difficult to translate. She was very excited to see that, in one of the books I chose at random at the library, the poem was shown in the original Chinese characters on one page and the English translation across from it. We talked about some of the metric devices of poetry. In Chinese there are four different ways to end a word, different ways to emphasize a sound. These form a pattern rather like the scansion of poems in English. She diagrammed a poem for me and I recited something in iambic pentameter for her. There are aspects of poetry that are the same across cultures, and that makes me very happy. 

In Which I Reflect at Sunset

Sunset over the Iowa River:
Sometimes it feels like old friends are moving quickly and very far away. I miss the moment in time in which I felt close to them.
Reflections on the water:
There are traces of the people who once were, but they ripple, are distorted. Have I changed so much, as well?

In Which I am Sleep-deprived

It feels like there is never enough time to sleep. College students must manage their time carefully, reserving sufficient time for studying and socializing and eating...and sleeping always seems to come in last, for me at least. I am writing this in the morning after a night spent furiously typing, trying to finish answering question after question so that I could finally get to sleep. I think that something should feel out of whack when sleep is given the short shaft, but it just seems normal. It is what everyone around me does. There is never enough time for what needs to get done. I think that, after I graduate, I am going to take a week or two and sleep--nothing else, just sleep. Maybe more like a month. Jeeze.

In Which I Discuss the Poet Laureate

Natasha Trethewey is the US Poet Laureate for 2012-2013; she was named in June of this year. In April, she came to Iowa City as the Poet Laureate of Mississippi, as a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I attended a reading she gave.I liked her poetry, her smooth Southern drawl. But it took finding out that she had been named US Poet Laureate to get me to read some of her work. I picked up Native Guard, the collection of poems for which she was awarded the Pulitzer at a reading last night. I started reading after my 10:30 class finished--I read it through, then read it through again. I did not think it possible to say so much so coherently in only 46 pages--26 poems--3 sections--one remarkable work. Trethewey weaves her process of grieving the death of her mother into the narrative of a group of freed slaves who join the Union Army during the Civil War and produced a biting commentary on the tensions of race in Mississippi. There is one particular poem that floored me. It is in the third section, after she cleans out her mother's house, after the hard slog of the Native Guard. The repetition of the line ends is haunting. Is it too much? Or is exactly right? What exactly does her name mean to her, in the context of where she was born, where she lives now? Look at the consonance in the sixth line: slaves, slicing, glaze, leaving. The 'l' is a harsh sound here, not rolling or slick. Harsh and melancholy. And when the punctuation changes in the fifth stanza. Both lines are complete ideas. Are those facts, when she was born and how she was named, really certain? I would say that the use of self-enclosed lines tries to make it so, tries to convince us, but everything is thrown off by the last stanza. Natasha--the Russian name, meaning Christmas child, even in Mississippi. That throws a whole new layer of uncertainty over the identity of the poem's persona... I love that this gives me something beautiful to chew on...

Miscegenation

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong--mis in Mississippi.

A year later they move to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner's Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It's your Jesus year--you're the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name--
though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.

Natasha Trethewey
From Native Guard

In Which I Freak Out a Bit

So... I have been looking at information on studying abroad in South Africa. It looks great and interesting and like nothing else I have ever done, but the I decided to check out the US State Department's site on South Africa...not so nice. The main thing seemed to be crime. I mean, there is crime in Chicago, but it is relatively easy to avoid it. I have never been the victim of a crime, so it all feels a bit unreal to me. I was also horrified by the percentage of the adult population affected by HIV/AIDS. It is amazing--and not in a good way. Is this worth it? I really hope so. I had a bit of a day dream the other day of browsing in a bookstore near the university, discovering contemporary African authors that I would never find in the US. There is a bit of uncertainty creeping into my well of enthusiasm... But I still think that it would be worth it.

In Which I Make Use of Poetic Diction

I watched the sun set over the river last night. There was a bank of clouds on the horizon, and the sun would glow around the edges, gilding the edges with gold. Then, as the sun sank further, there was a burst of pink grapefruit that dissolved gently into a dusky amethyst.
This would be considered poetic diction, which is not as positive as it might sound. Poetic diction is language that is predictably, cliche. I think I edge a bit too close to it for comfort sometimes. But then again, I never claimed to be a poet, as much as I might like to daydream.

In Which I am at the Library Late at Night

There is something sacred hanging quietly in the back of my closet that unfurls cautious fingers to tap my shoulder from time to time, reminding me that life begins and ends without ever consulting a jury of its peers.

In Which I am Charmed

I just saw a really wonderful woman read from two books she has recently had published. She was funny and charming, self-deprecating and blunt. But the what I most enjoyed was her sincerity. Whether she was telling us about her toenails falling out or her Vogue photo-shoot, she looked straight out into the audience and was honest and direct--even if I could see the beginnings of a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

In Which I Write It Out

I was very frustrated in my poetry class this morning. We were talking about why poetry is less important in America than it is in other places and than it has been in the past. I think that it is an important discussion. And one that has causal roots in many different places. I quickly became frustrated because it seemed as though I had heard everything that was said before. People were talking about a lack of imagination, but they were using arguments that have made their way into the very mass media that they derided and decried. I think that pieces of their arguments could be used--but an effort should be made to avoid the cliches that smother imaginative expression. I think that there is a separation of self that runs rampant through modern  life. We are pulled in at least six different directions before breakfast; and then we must emerge from the relative safety of home and face the cacophony of sensation that is day-to-day existence. It is media. It is work. It is urbanity. It is politics. It is expectations. I don't know it life has always been this confusing and demanding--and I am probably guilty of romanticizing more than a little--but it seems as though there is much required and little regained in these days of our lives. I think that poetry is one of those arts that allows us to knit our selves together again. The requirements of the poet (for poems are requests for reactions) take that strand of our consciousness and teach it a new way to twine with the fabric of reality. And that can be both restorative and spark new growth.

In Which I am Classified

The first day of classes...it is a bit repetitive. In all three of my classes today, we spend at least a half an hour going over the syllabus. I suppose that it is important to make expectations clear, but if I have to listen to any more class policy, I think that I might scream. Of course, it would have to  be special screaming--like the girl in X-Men who can scream at a frequency that shatters glass (I can't remember her moniker...). Despite this...things look promising. And I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester. Mostly.

In Which I Return to Iowa

So... I posted a grand total of...wait for it...ONCE this summer. This was an epic fail on my part, but I suppose that I'm not terribly surprised. Summer on campus was interesting. It was so laid back that I almost felt frozen in the soupy mess of my free-time. I got to read a whole lot, though. I suppose that is a good thing--even if I read absolute crap. I think I'm ready to have a more intensive schedule. I think that sometimes, when I don't have enough to do, I get caught up in some of the little things that make me behave in ways that others might consider insane. I have more to do this Fall, which I consider to be a VERY GOOD THING. So, here's to the start of a new semester and to things that keep my brain busy!

In Which I Live a Grant Wood Painting

Summer in Iowa is everything that a Midwestern summer should be. The sun shines bright every single day and the sky stretches out in smooth planes of blue, broken by fluffy nebulous clouds that skitter swiftly across the horizon. The downtown of Iowa City is idyllic, with narrow brick buildings snuggled close together along the main streets. There are few buildings taller that five or six stories. The gold-leafed dome of the Old Capitol Building rises, the glowing beacon of the city, above the banks of the river. There is a bagpipe playing somewhere in the distance, as I sprawl against the base of a Corinthian column that graces one of the glaringly neo-classical buildings on the Pentacrest. It is refreshingly bucolic, if that is possible.

In Which I Stare at Ducks

I was sitting by the river today, during the hour I have between my morning classes. It wasn't as pretty as it usually is; there were bits of foam flecking the surface of the water as far as I could see, both upstream and down. I was still lovely, though. And there was a pair of very amusing ducks. I was sitting on a bench behind the memorial union on the far side of the path that traces the riverbank. Two ducks, one beautiful mallard with a glowing green head and the other a tawny and scrawny one with a stripe of blue on his or her wings, waddled up as I sat down. They sidled into the periphery of my vision, heads bobbing and nibbling on bits of fluff. They came closer and closer until they were three feet from me, with only the path separating us. They totally wanted food. And I was so tempted to feed them. It kind of made my day.

In Which I Contemplate Funerals

I've been having trouble sitting down to write entries for this... The last few weeks before Spring Break were a bit nuts--although I was surprised that I didn't have even more to do. But now I'm back.
The younger brother of one of my good high school friends died a week ago. He was twenty. I went to the funeral and to the Shiva, but I'm having trouble connecting personally to how she must feel. On some level, I think, I just don't want to go there. I want to spare myself the pain she must be feeling. But over the course of the week, I found myself wondering what my funeral might be like if I were to die suddenly. I know. I know. I know. I am being incredibly morbid. But I couldn't help myself. What would people say about me? I haven't done half of the things that my friend's brother did--and he was two years younger than I am. I don't think that I have touched anywhere near as many lives as he did. But, then again, I am a totally different person, and that is completely ok... So my funeral would, naturally, be very different. I am quieter. I am more introspective.
But the question remains: what would my funeral be like? It would be unique to me, but what else? After I got back from Germany a few years ago, I pulled my mother aside one afternoon and gave her a postcard with a picture of a little church that was built in the neutral zone after the Berlin Wall was taken down. It actually reminds me of churches in the Southwest. It is simple, full of clean lines and smooth surfaces. I think that it was one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been. I asked my mother to go there, if anything should happen to me, and to remember me there. I came across the postcard recently, in the back of one of her desk drawers. I hope she remembers. I actually think that I would like that better than a big service. I would want the people for whom I cared most to remember me in places that made my mind sing with possibilities, all rushing to the front of my consciousness in a colorful jumble that brought tears to my eyes.

In Which I Genuflect at the Feet of Poets

I have found another poem to love:

Two Months After

A clutch of rain against the windows.
All day this beaten house has been bearing up
under the March wind, a wind that aches
down the thick beams the carpenter cut

to take its weight. A mud-covered truck
drones up the hill, under a stone sky.
Spring will come only after the hard work
of the water is done, after the high

green leaves have shouldered their sparks
through the winter's ancient test.
Perhaps then the hard ice of your death

will have rotted away. In Schubert's songs
I listen for your listening, for the arch
of smoking notes your night-heart sang.

Jay Leeming

This is a play on the structure of Shakespearean sonnets. It starts out traditionally, with quatrains with an alternating rhyme scheme. But then it diverges. There are two three-line stanzas that start to lift the despair expressed in the two quatrains. But the really interesting thing about this poem is the pattern of the types of rhymes. There are six pairs of half-rhymes--rhymes that sound similar but are not traditional perfect rhymes--and one pair that rhymes perfectly: "sky" and "high". If we look at the types of half-rhymes that make up the other pairs, a pattern emerges. The first half-rhyme is an example of consonance. The next is assonance, and then consonance, again. The perfect rhyme is in the middle, then the rhymes after the perfect rhyme mirror those before: consonance, assonance, consonance. This give the poem a feeling of hope--it may start out in the depths of despair, but this is mirrored by loving remembrance.
I am continually amazed by the complexity of poems--especially sonnets. There always seem to be greater depths to explore, and there are so many elements to fit together. I think that it might be time to let poets run the world... Anyone who can craft something with this much complexity of meaning must have something important to contribute. Probably.

In Which I am a Freebird College Student

It is difficult to shift between home and school. I went home this weekend, and the pace was so different. I had to contend with my parents' wants and needs rather than just my own. The life of a college student it quite autonomous... at least for most, I think. It is for me, anyway. I set my own schedule. I eat when I want. I sleep when I want. It is up to me to do work and go to class. It is much more complicated at home, where there are errands and chores and pets and parents to deal with. But I like going home. It is comfortable--and there are home-cooked meals. But it is an adjustment. My life at school is very different from my life at home. I'm not sure how I feel about that--my first instinct is to make a value judgement: which do I prefer? But it isn't that simple. I wish it was that simple, but it isn't. So, navigating the waters of the home-school  transition will take some work--but is probably worth it, in the end, because complication adds richness to life. And gives me something to write about...

In Which I Decorate

I scraped my knuckles on the ceiling the other day. The ceiling of my room is rough, like stucco, so it tore strips of my skin away. I was surprised how much it hurt. That is one of the disadvantages to having a bunk bed: proximity to the ceiling. Although this bed is not so bad. My freshman year at Case, my bed was bunked so high that I had to wriggle, half lying down, half crawling, to get out of bed. This is not anywhere near as bad.
I have added a lot to the decoration of my room. My roommate essentially doesn't live in the room, so I have taken some liberties with it. I have a collection of bits of paper, odds and ends, that has accumulated over the last ten years of so. There is a post-it that I painted with pink glitter nail-polish again and again until you can no longer see the original color. There is a doodle from my Modernism class--a branching swirl that belches bubbles and line arrays, and 'I want to live as a giant in time' written over and over in small blocky print. I don't remember what that is from--maybe I made it up. There are note cards, revived and not yet sent. There are sheets of stickers and bits of ribbon. There are bottle-cap pendants (one with a picture of an elephant swimming to the surface) and post-cards from place my father has gone on business trips. It is a collage of memory, feeling, impulse, and appeal--my personality spelled out in scraps.

In Which I Contemplate Goths

There is something wonderfully mystical about Jane Eyre. There is a Fae-like feel to Jane's first encounter with Mr. Rochester--the secluded lane, the foggy dark of night. It is all very poetic and very shivery-in-a-good-way. I do wonder at her descriptions of Jane. She is described as small and pale and plain. But there is a sharp edge to her thoughts, despite her Quaker looks and dress. Is it traditional in a Gothic novel to have a supernatural heroine, as well as an air of the supernatural infusing the plot and setting? Jane Eyre is the quintessential Gothic novel, but to me, it reads as more: more mystical, more mysterious, more romantic. But then again, I have read very few examples of Gothic novels. So. Next on my list: one of Anne Radcliffe's Gothic novels, as she is the pioneer of the genre. Perhaps The Mysteries of Udolpho--with ghosts galore!

In Which I am Snow Flaked

I left my room wearing impractical shoes this morning, so, of course, it started to snow. I am resigned now to the fluffy frozen bits of water that strike my forehead and give me brain freeze. It is only a thin layer of snow, so far. But it is falling in delicate and regular flurries, powdered sugar sifted for hours and hours, layers and layers, eventually ten stories tall. I don't mind it so much, I suppose, because when the snow that matted by hair melts, it will force curly waves as it dries. This it the only way to get my hair to curl without risking burning it all off in the process. So I will walk in falling snow, and furtively plan to sneak back to my dorm room to change into my boots. It's fun to have something other than homework to plan.

In Which I Make Connections

I just read this poem, "The Victims" by Sharon Olds. I'll copy it here:

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it, in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcases hung in your closet, and the black
nonses of your shoes with their large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked with her for your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass the bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the strained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from them in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing
left but this.

I'm fascinated by her imagery in the last sentence of the poem--comparing bums to sunken ships... The contrast of the remaining fire and the death underwater is a powerful metaphor. This says a lot about people--the way they treat each other, and the way that resentment can build up. There are people who suffer in silence and let anger fester... This reminded me of the Chimamanda Adichie novel I just finished, Purple Hibiscus. The main character, Kambili, does finally get away from her father. She and her brother find love and support with her aunt and come home changed. Her father discovers a picture of her grandfather--who still follows the traditional ways of ancestor worship--and beats her almost to death. She does not go back to live with her father. And a few months later, her father dies. Her mother deliberately poisoned him. With rat poison. And her brother goes to jail for it. The end is tragic and bittersweet. Kambili escapes her father only to be thrust into crippling responsibility--for her now mentally unstable mother and imprisoned brother. Her aunt and cousins move to America and are unhappy there. There is only the strength that she found--that she was able to pull from deep within herself.
I see so many parallels between this poem and the novel. He father did wonderful things for his country but stifled his family. I wonder how Olds would have portrayed him...

In Which I am Convoluted

I'm reading a book by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie called Purple Hibiscus. It was her first novel, and she received quite a bit of critical acclaim for it. I am in the very middle of the book, so I'm not exactly sure how things will unravel, but the main character, a teenage girl named Kambili, is a fascinating character. Her father dominates the family relationships, and is physically and emotionally abusive. It is very difficult for me to read about this. I am screaming at her--in my mind, of course--to defend herself, to defend her mother. She has been cowed by her father. She has no understanding of the context of his actions, that they might be considered wrong. The entire household revolves around her father's opinions and desires. He is fanatically Catholic--in such a way that he has not spoken to his elderly father in years because he practices the traditional religion of his village. I am having a difficult time with Kambili's situation emotionally, but I am starting to see the patterns of the prose. There is rich symbolism and imagery in the religious rituals her father insists that they follow--the motifs of whiteness and light, references to European mythology, and colonial influence emerge despite Kambili's limited perspective. She has begun her transformation--I think that she is the purple hibiscus, that will bloom and flourish. She visits her aunt, a professor at a nearby university, and, for the first time, experiences a typical and relatively healthy family life. She spends a great deal of time contemplating her aunt's garden, where a botanist planted several hybrid plants--including purple hibiscus. I think I will be able to write more about this when I have finished. Kambili's story is not yet complete for me--my thoughts about her are only half formed--as is she.

In Which I Play Imaginary Pooh Sticks

My Art history class is on the west side of campus. The university started in a relative huddle of neoclassical buildings, crowing the hill above the river. The dome of the Old Capitol Building gleams a dusky gold in the afternoon sun. It spread along the crest of the hill, across and down, down to the banks of the river, the flood plain that was filled up four years ago. Then they built across the river, buildings growing slowly from the backbone of Iowa Avenue. If you stand behind the Old Capitol and look out to the river, the world dips suddenly, then begins to rise up out of the willowy pines that cover the rocky riverbanks and culminates in the Gothic spires of the University Hospital. I walked the long way back to the Pentacrest, meandering behind the flood damaged art buildings that have yet to be remodeled or demolished. The new art building nestles against a rocky cliff, dull and rusty metal blending in with the yellow-toned rock. The path between the old art buildings swings out to meet the riverside path and follows the river, over and under the various bridges. The bridge it meets first is a pedestrian bridge made of green metal and white washed concrete. It reminds me of the bridge in Monet's garden, barred arch, stretching in a gentle curve.
I watched the water for a while. The sun glittered on the gentle tug of the current. There was wind, and sun, and a wide-open sky. I think it was as close to perfection as I have come in quite a while. I stood at the center of the bridge and looked South for half an hour, until my eyes hurt and began to tear.

In Which I Rant a Bit More

One of the other graduate TAs gave a guest lecture in my Western Civ discussion section this morning. I had quite a few issues with her analysis. She led a discussion in which we analyzed the relative freedoms of everyone in the European empires during the early and mid-eighteenth century. My issues were these:
We did not discuss the restrictions of the monarchy. The monarchs were, rather cavalierly placed at the top of the freedom and power scale. Now, I do not dispute that monarchs were immensely powerful, but there were a great many things that a monarch was required to balance in order to hold on to power. The first, and most obvious in my opinion, would be the monarch's obligation to the nobility. The nobility essentially made up the local government of a nation. They controlled, on a smaller scale, just as much as the monarch. Particularly powerful or wealthy nobles, and coalitions of nobles would have had great influence over the monarch. The monarch could not have done anything drastic to harm the power of the nobles because, together, they were capable of overthrowing the monarchy. The monarch also was dependent on the church for power. The Investiture Conflict, in which, during the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Emperor was excommunicated by the pope and had to plead to be forgiven, solidifying the influence of the Catholic church in Europe. The Catholic church lost power over the years, particularly after the Protestant Reformation, but was still a political force to be reckoned with in European politics. The Monarch was also extensively dependent on the middle and lower classes. They provided the labor that produced food, raw materials, finished goods, trade, finance, and many other things. They were the vast majority of the population and had ties to all aspects of the European economy. That said, the TA made a good point in saying that they were not unified. The unity of general purpose (meaning the retention of power and privilege) of the upper class was one of the main factors in the successful subjugation of the majority of the population. There was not enough emphasis placed on just how many groups the monarch had to remain aware of. There was relatively little extensive change that the monarch could affect without offending or angering someone. The power of the monarch depended entirely upon his or her subjects. A monarch could not just do whatever he or she wanted.
The TA did mention the discrepancy in the power of women during this time period, but she did not emphasize it nearly enough. Women who were also slaves were, admittedly, those with the least power. They were subject to both their owners and the men of their own class. The same was true to  much the same extent for serfs and for peasants. They had little control over their own lives. Decisions about children, marriage, and reproduction were generally handled by the men in their lives--the patriarchs. The same was true for women of the upper and middle classes. The social system of the eighteenth century was extraordinarily patriarchal. Even the Enlightenment, which did encourage the education of women, did not change this to any great extent. A daughter needed her father's permission to marry, if she had any say at all. She would often have no say in how her children were educated, or married. This was even more true for the aristocratic women of the time. They had little control over their marital lives, children, or selves. To be a woman in the eighteenth century was to be significantly less free than men--no matter the station in life.

In Which I Contemplate Pirates

I went to a reading last night by Sara Levine, a former professor at Iowa. She was reading from her first novel, a narrative about a twenty something girl who reads Treasure Island and decides to live her life by the four principles presented: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing. The horn-blowing alone reveals the book to be a bit of a spoof. But what I found most interesting was her conception of how it is possible to change, to get up one day and do things differently. I've tried to do something similar. It didn't work particularly well.
As difficult as it is to take seriously a narrator who believes that horn-blowing is the answer to all her problems (she really does, in a way) , there is something vulnerable about her that is very familiar. She has the same fear that today will fade into tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, that individuality is an illusion perpetuated by modern society. The definition of reality is something that, I think, comes only with an awareness self... Something that is not easy to come by. It is not just an awareness of thought, desire, or feeling. It is something that only comes from acknowledging that I, as a person, as an individual, am very, very small part of the cosmos. As a single atom in a human being, or an electron in a molecule, we are pinpricks in the vastness of space and time. Awareness of thought, desire, and feeling is important; they are what define our connections to the space and time in which we experience reality. So many things in everyday life feel like the end of the world. And I suppose, that for individual realities, disconnected from the larger context (like a novel), the piratic principles of Treasure Island could have some potential.
So. This novel was a thought exercise. And a parody, a commentary, a question: How do we as humans in modern society affect change in ourselves? I don't know the answer. But it's an interesting thing to think about...

In Which I Go to Church

I made a deal with my parents when I was young. I went to church with them on Sunday and to Sunday school, no questions asked, and when I got to high school I could decide what I wanted to so for myself on Sunday mornings. As a high school student, I naturally chose to sleep until noon.
When my parents mentioned that they had seen a Unitarian church as they drove through downtown Iowa City, I latched on to the idea. I have only gone to church at home on Christmas Eve for the last six or seven years. But I decided to attend this morning.
I was pleasantly surprised. When I first awoke, far too early for the weekend, I was terribly tempted to crawl right back into bed and shut out the world again. But I kept telling myself that I would ruin the rest of my day--the rest of my week--if I chickened out now. I went down to breakfast, and there were a few stragglers, but very little of the noisy shuffle I have come to expect. I left far earlier than was necessary, and found myself wandering around the junction between Iowa City and the university. I walked three blocks out of my way to find a Starbucks--for the material comfort of a latte. The Unitarian Universalist Society of Iowa City is a small building. The society dates back to the late Nineteenth Century, and the church looks to be from the same time period. It has a pointed roof, framed by dark wooden beams that give weight to the experience of sitting in the pews. There is an alter room at the front of the sanctuary, with a row of candles against a yellow banner. Against the dark wood and the sharp point of the roof are soft, Romanesque arches that span the three sections at the front of the sanctuary. The main church was designed as a cross--traditional, and an interesting aspect of the house of such a liberal faith. The sermon was about Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson Alcott. Bronson was an idealist and a Transcendentalist thinker. He tried to found a commune based on values of finding inherent good in each human and in bringing it out in the world at large. The project failed miserably. But the message of the sermon was that there is always failure and disappointment, but that such is life. There would be no light without shadow, no joy without pain. I'm not sure that it was conveyed in the clearest way possible (the readings bogged the message down in a discussion of Job and the suffering necessary for true faith), but I think that the ultimate take away was that, even when things seem darkest, there is another day. There is a cycle into which we all give ourselves from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death. There are certain realities of this cycle, but it is not static; it is what we make of a day, how we perceive the strife.
This is a particularly relevant message for me at this moment. I have to put one foot in front of the other, continuing through discomfort, uncertainty, fear, in order to find comfort, security, happiness.  I'm not sure if this is the right place for me, but I'll go back next week. It made me feel closer to the ground, which is rarely a bad thing.

In Which I Write About Reading

I wrote this for a class, but I think it turned out well so I would like to post it here.

During the first semester of my sophomore year at Case Western Reserve University, I took a seminar that served as an introduction to Modernism. At the time, I knew nothing about Modernism. I knew very little about the early Twentieth century. My understanding of World War I was a blur of archdukes and trench foot. I was raised in Chicago, so I had seen Monet’s water lilies and Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, but I had little experience with other Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, or Modern art. I truly was afraid of Virginia Woolf.

One of the assigned readings for the course was Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. I decided to bite the bullet and read the novel through before the start of classes. Over a weekend in August, I devoured the story of Clarissa Dalloway. I loved her ephemeral view of the world; she was a sparrow, flitting delicately from thought to thought, memory to memory. I shivered as Septimus Smith was condemned to a rest cure, mourning the oppressive, condescending misunderstanding of his condition. I wanted more.

I read To the Lighthouse and was enthralled. I stayed up all night reading, crying over the death of Mrs. Ramsay, and painting with Lily. I raged with James, and came, finally, to the lighthouse.

I was a voracious reader as a child. I would go through five or six books a week, returning from the library with stacks of books—more that I could ever read in the time allowed. But I read fantasy, science fiction, mysteries. I was not interested in anything that might be considered literature.

One of my friends in grade school gave me her copy of Jane Eyre to read. I never left Jane’s  aunt’s house. I read what was required of me in high school, but never explored further. On my own, I read Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey, giants in their genre, but refused to try Dickens or Joyce. My introduction to Modernism changed that. I saw beauty where I had never seen it before.

It took some time after that, but I began to wonder why Woolf’s novels had affected me to such a great extent. What was it about Virginia Woolf’s work that made it so special, that provoked such a strong reaction? That transition, which took place over the course of about two, was my steady progression towards the study of literature.

I dropped out of Case Western after my sophomore year. I worked for a while, and realized that I wanted so much more than a job in retail. I took classes at the local community college. I loaded up on English courses, remembering my positive experience with Woolf. One of these was an introductory Poetry class. The professor was a lovely older man, gentle and funny. He read poems to us in a deep, slow voice, again and again. He showed me how to dig into a poem, how to see past the words, to the structure, the meter, the symbolism. He showed me that the success of a poem is based both on the message it delivers and the method in which the message is conveyed. I now understand that the technical analysis of a work of literature enriches the entire experience of the work.

I had a teacher in high school who said that if we were not there to study the literary aspects of a work, we should not be in his class. He summarily dismissed a question about the personal reaction, the individual experience of literature. I hated him for that. I would now argue that there cannot be one without the other. There would be no study of literature if it was not such an important aspect of human expression, and it would not be such an important aspect of human expression if it did not mean and evoke different things from different people. The experience of literature reflects the experience of being human—ignoring a part of our humanity would diminish the wisdom and meaning we find in it.

In Which I Feel Very Young

I finished Love in the Time of Cholera last night. The ending was beautiful. They are sailing on a riverboat and have to turn around to go home, but they raise the yellow flag that signals cholera on board and spontaneously decide to sail on and on forever. It's an interesting meditation on aging and on what is expected from a life. I'm not sure that I've experienced enough life for that message to resonate deeply. The male protagonist, Florentino Ariza, falls in love with a girl as a young man. They court secretly and exchange letters for years--as they both grow up. And suddenly, one day,, the girl, Fermina Daza, turns around and realizes that she does not love Florentino Ariza, not really; she is disillusioned with their youthful romance. The passion which which Florentino Ariza showers her seems empty. He has created an illusion of her, of himself, of this wild love. I have never been in love. And thus I do not have an understanding of the agony Florentino Ariza experiences over the five decades in which he waits for Fermina Daza. I am skeptical of his instant attraction and understanding--the love-at-first-sight aspect of the romance. He feel too much too soon. I cannot decide what Gabriel Garcia Marquez intended in the story of this relationship. In some ways I think that he is describing a dream--a fantasy that haunts a man over the course of his life. Or prehaps Florentino Ariza is the ghost, haunting Fermina Daza. It would certainly explain many of his actions, that he is indeed a succubus--draining energy from his conquests in order to one day capture his ultimate prize.
Or this is a story about a man growing up. This is a story about marriage. This is a story about love. Too much love, as Florentino Ariza proves, can be just as bad as not enough. As in so many things, it is balance that ultimately brings Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza together.

In Which I Reminisce

The first time I went to Germany, I was a member of an exchange group. There were fifteen of us in all (give or take), and I attached myself to the only other girl of the group who had no intention of being intoxicated for the duration of our stay. We did have a good time. We were trusted to go off by ourselves in Berlin (with one other student). Laura and Chris and I went to the big museums... antiquities, art, history. We walked along a section of the Berlin Wall and tried to translate the poems written on it and wondered at the murals and were awed by the implications of such a comparatively small bit of concrete. It was interesting to see East and West Berlin in a modern context. Our hostel was in East Berlin. The buildings were still rather uniform--grey and white, blank faces standing stoically like uneven teeth, clenched in a grin extending from the banks of the river.
One of the things that I remember most fondly happened by accident. The three of us were attempting to find a chocolate shop about which Chris' host family had told him. It sounded wonderful--like the Hershey's store in Times Square, but with German good taste. We never found it. But we did wander around a more residential area of Berlin for an hour or so, and finally found a chocolate shop. This one was not the chocolate wonderland of our Willie Wonka dreams, but a confection of unusual flavors and chocolate darker than coffee--like Juliette Binoche sprinkling chili pepper on hot chocolate in Chocolat.

In Which Hannah Visits the Library

The Main Library at Iowa is quite large. And they are in the process of moving quite a bit of their collection. I'm not sure where or why or even how, but it gives the impression of a ghost town... of books. That is a surprisingly exciting and just a little bit creepy... At Case, the library was pristine. From the classical columns outside to the ruthlessly organized stacks, I always felt like an visitor. I was never quite organized enough to fit with the decor. It was rather like the resident population in a way... Cold and distant, but nice to look at, in theory at least, and painstakingly executed. Iowa feels much friendlier, like a friend who a bit flustered perhaps, but is well on his or her way to normalcy.
I have yet to attempt to locate a book, though. We'll see how I feel then...

In Which Hannah and Suzanne Watch Buffy

So. I just did a simultaneous watch and chat with Suzanne... of Buffy, of course. I had forgotten how funny some of the dialogue is. Usually I think of Buffy and the DRAMA of the show. It is angst and 'oh my god the world is going to end before the end of the show.' But the bouncy blond and the quirky sidekicks do actually make for some funny situations. And we can't forget the snark. Never forget the snark. Snarkity snark snark snark. There has always been a self-conscious mockery to show. Throughout high school, the Scoobies lived on the outskirts... looking into the normal teenage world, wanting to be in the normal teenage world, but fighting the forces of darkness... a bit of a wake-up call. Though the individual characters may not clearly express this self-consciousness, it is apparent in the situations in which they are placed... and the way they react. Buffy's recurring clothes minidramas... her puns! Her puns are some of the best things on the show! As Xander remarks in the first episode of Season 3, "I feel like we took her punning for granted."

In Which I am Introspective

There is something that I am very good at... that I have shown again and again is a part of my personality, but that I have not acknowledged as an important part of myself. I am a nest builder... or a niche builder. I can create an environment in which I am comfortable with relative ease. This can be a positive thing or it can be a negative thing. Examples... My dorm rooms so far. My two rooms at Case were filled with things: knick-knacks, poster, pictures, books, pens, pencils, markers, notebooks, stationary... enough to drown in...or enough to block out the rest of the world. This latest haven I have created for myself is less packed, but it is no less evocative of comfort and is filled with slips of paper: pictures, cards, notes, post-its... all with some meaning to me or some aspect that is pleasing to my aesthetic tastes.
So. A point: I can create a place (a physical place) for myself in a variety of situation. A question: What does this say about me? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I have no idea. In some way it definitely feeds into my already severely introverted behavior. It is also an effective coping mechanism... a method of adjustment to being alone in a strange place. Does one outweigh? the other? I don't think there is a definitive answer to this. But it is something I should think about.

In Which Chouette Appears... and Hannah Hopes She is Not a Cat Lady

In Which I Ramble a Bit

So. The one thing I regret the most about being at school is that I am now four hours away from my kitten. She is darling and snuggly and represents everything I miss about home. But what is it that this really means? Is it all a displacement of fear and anxiety? That can't be everything. If it were, I would be curled up in a corner muttering about cats and my owl, rocking back and forth and staring blankly at nothing...
Or it could be that I'm stuck in a dorm that seems to be populated by dyed blonds, wearing nothing but Pink attire. Having worked at VS for more than a year, not only do I know how ridiculously overpriced everything there is, I am also well-acquainted with the fact that Pink clothes are not particularly fashionable. They are like Juicy sweatpants. No truly fashionable person would be caught dead wearing them.
But enough of that. If I were saying this to my mother she would chide me for being judgmental. I am early in the process of reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A month or so ago I read a book called Like Water for Chocolate, written by a Mexican woman, and supposedly a bestseller in Mexico. It was an irresistible blend of evocative recipes, sensual descriptions, and the slightest hint of magic. This has inspired me to read more Latin American fiction. There is supposedly a fantastic element to the ordinary--magical realism. I have yet to encounter any such thing, but I am perhaps a third of the way through...
I think that if I were to write anything it would be something with a breath of magic--of imagined reality. Such a place is where I imagine myself to be... in a perfect world... But can there be a meaningful novel without the awful crash and burn of reality? Marquez weaves the filth of the streets and the horror of poverty into his narrative... and perhaps that is what gives him power. I think it best that I reserve judgment--as my mother would prefer.

In Which I Begin...

So. This will be an account of my second attempt at college. My first didn't go so well (engineers have no souls). Now I am a student at the University of Iowa, studying English and trying to find a place for myself. I don't really expect anyone to read this. I don't know if it will interest anyone (except perhaps my mother). But I think that this is a good idea. And I might be better at updating a blog than I have been at consistently writing in a journal. I intend to use this as both an expression of my thoughts and feelings and as a method of expressing my academic development. I think that this will mean, for the most part, that I will write about what I read. This has always been the kind of writing with which I have the most success. So that will be where I start.