I Wonder...

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Jacques Derrida ever met William Strunk and E.B. White?

I don't know, but I imagine it would involve a lot of commas. Angry commas, with French words in italics and long, tangential commentaries on etymology. And parentheses. Livid parentheses, with honest, energetic, colorful words inside. (And perhaps a few lists of the items that make up a garbage heap thrown in for good measure.)

I could see it being jolly good sport, actually...

Perhaps Charlotte could referee. After all, they're all dead as well.

Could someone make that happen? Thanks.

I love Saturdays.

Life in 10 seconds

200 post-iversary!!!!

Now reading Derrida's "Force of Law," Griggs' Imperium in Imperio, Venice Preserv'd, Bain's Best College Teachers, and Austen's Mansfield Park. With a little Loomba's Post-colonial Shakespeares, Sensational Victorian (bio of M.E. Braddon), and Zizek's Monstrosity of Christ for light bedtime reading.

Abstract due tomorrow, conference in 2 weeks, work projects, summer research application due next week, three papers within the next two weeks...

And I don't think the germs got the memo that I didn't want to be sick this week.

Sometimes I think the grocery stores should not be allowed to put lemons on sale. Life has been stocking up on them lately...

Red Leather

I'm starting to have a piece-de-resistance kind of idea in honor of the upcoming Flying Fork Day.

It's Romeo and Juliet. A new film version. Based on the Yankees/Red Socks rivalry. It's called Red Leather. It's directed by David Lynch. And it goes something like this...

---------------------------------------------------------
VOICEOVER (HARRY DEAN STANTON): Two clubs, alike in history...

--Cut to shot of a screaming fan being violently stabbed in the parking lot outside Fenway Park while rap music blares in the background. Cut to black.

VO: ...in fair Boston, where we lay our scene...

--Handheld camera "runs" down Beacon Hill at night, breathing heavily, after a screaming Laura Dern. Fade to a high angle shot of a bouquet of red, red roses against the snow outside a florist shop on Harvard square. Fade to white.

VO: ...a pair of star-crossed lovers take their lives...

--Montage of Nicholas Cage...with Isabel Rosselini at sunset while an umpire in whiteface dances on top of a car waving a baseball bat over their heads and a majestic score borrowed from Gone With the Wind cuts to the violins. Fade to black.

--Scene change: Fenway park, seventh inning stretch. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" plays cheerfully in the background and happy children wave at the camera. Slow pan to the infield.

DAVID ORTIZ: "Do you kick sand in my face, sir?"
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: "No sir, but I do kick sand, sir."

----------------------------------------------------------
It's going to be brilliant.

Or further evidence that bad ideas spring from procrastinating minds.

Feeling Vulnerary

Today, the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day on my blog is vulnerary: an adjective that means "used to promote the healing of wounds."

That's not a word I would use regularly to describe myself.

(Partly because I didn't know what it meant before today--thank you Merriam-Webster for making me 0.1349% smarter than I was yesterday).

I'm more inclined to use the word vulnerable: "susceptible to being wounded or hurt." And I hate that feeling. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid it.

However, one of the things I love about words is the way they relate to each other on a root level. Both vulnerable and vulnerary come from the Latin noun vulnus, meaning wound.

(The Romans had a lot of words to describe injuring or killing things. Funny how that works...).

(Please also note, adding to my extraneous use of parentheses, that I didn't have to look that up. I just knew, 'cause I'm awesome like that. Although I did double check in my Latin/English dictionary. Yes, I own one.)

But I digress.

Sometimes when I think about brokenness and wounding, I get so caught up in thinking about my own propensity for being hurt that I forget about the possibility of healing. And, I want to push this one step further, I forget about my call to be a part of the healing of others.

(I'm especially thinking of Romans 12:6-8, and Ephesians 1 and 3:14-21. Which I did have to look up. Hmm...)

On the one hand, that's a lot of responsibility. There are good reasons I chose not to pursue a career in medicine. Seems like the blind leading the blind, to have the wounded trying to heal.

But there's another definition of vulnerary. As a noun, it means a remedy for wounds. That's not a role I can play. That part is up to God. I think, if I may fall back on the sheer beauty of grammar, I can fit much better as the adjective, "a word that expresses an attribute of [a noun]." It doesn't replace the noun. But it shows something about the nature of the noun.

So to be adjectivally vulnerary (oh, what a great phrase): What would that look like? While we're on the honesty note, I'm not sure I know. I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of the boundaries that keep me safe and me-focused. But I do think it's something to aim for.

And, in the wise (or not-so-wise) words of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, "Therefore a health to all that shot and missed!"

(No, I didn't have to look that up either.)

Oh Snow-Unaccustomed South

Oh snow-unaccustomed south, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

University, thy ways are so wise. When there is freezing rain starting at 8 a.m. and expected to continue until afternoon, thou dost open the campus at 11 a.m., so that the power has time to go out and the freezing rain has time to accumulate on the still-icy roads.

City, thou art a gem. When thou hast not plowed our road in four days after the snowstorm, thou dost--while freezing rain is falling, so that there will be a clean, until recently cooled by the weight of snow and ice, surface on which it can fall and stick, without the remaining snow to give it traction. In the same sweep, thou pushest all the excess of snow and ice from the main road onto the lip of our parking lot, creating the equivalent of a ski jump...from the outside. From our side, thou hast birthed a leviathan.

This parking lot, thou development divine, remains to be touched, except by the spinning tires and smoking engines of those that cannot live without their bread and milk.

How do I love thee?
I scarce can tell.

Rest

Sometimes I forget how good it feels, and how important it is, to just rest.

...

...

...

I want to add more words, to expound on the sensation of not having a to-do list, not submitting to the expediency of graduate school and work and being a grown-up, and...

yet

there's

something simple

about

breathing deep

and

falling asleep

before the movie ends

with friends.

...

It's kind of beautiful. :-)

If Children Were Like Computers

If children were like computers, the education system would be a very different place.

Public school would be much less popular as an educational choice. Every time your child contracted an infection from the other children in his or her group, s/he would not only be sent home, but would have to un-learn everything s/he knew and start over from preschool again.

That might not be so bad in kindergarten, but by the sixth grade, re-learning the alphabet would get pretty old.

It's probably a good thing that children aren't like computers.

Speaking of which, I think I might start homeschooling Linus. When he gets back from the hospital. After he relearns his name. The other "children" in his "group" keep giving him the flu, and somehow the IT center doesn't think hand sanitizer will do the trick.

This whole starting over from scratch thing is not my favorite. Just saying...

A, B, C, D, E, F, G

1 + 1 = 2

Sigh.

It's Monday.

I See Trouble Ahead

I think Marvin has begun reading "The Tortoise and the Hare" to Linus as a bedtime story.

This does not bode well.

Stay tuned.

WANTED

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go

When I found this I thought: Gee, thanks for telling me now.

But there's no use crying over spilt...dollars...or hours...or brain cells...or stuff. Right?

So instead, what we need are some super-fantabulous Alternate Careers for Unemployed, Over-Qualified Graduate School...Graduates.

What a great idea. I thereby submit for your consideration the following:

1. Royal Food Testers

Worried about those political enemies? Fearing a bit of Roman-style drink spiking? Call in your friendly neighborhood graduate student. Believe me, after eating unidentified three-week old leftovers that were advertised as "free food," we've pretty much developed the necessary immunity. Your average deadly poison will give us little more than a stomachache, and you can partake with an easy mind.

2. Psychological Research Subjects

You need people who exhibit signs of mental illness? The truly complex cases that will test your new product? Let me put it this way: we ruin our eyesight staring at tiny spots of ink or images on a screen which tell us nothing is real in order that we may produce even more tiny spots of ink which tell other people nothing is real. Need I say more?

3. University "Living Billboard" Marketing Solutions

Can't afford ads during the Super Bowl? Olympic coverage out of your price range? Never fear--the ultimate marketing solution is here! We willingly wear the same college t-shirts and sweatshirts for up to 10 consecutive years while coming in contact with dissatisfied individuals in your target demographic at up to three different locations. What's not to love? What's not to pay?

4. Coffee Shop Undercover Investigators

Does the local cafe water down its caffeine content in an effort to reduce overhead? Are the mugs really washed after every use? Whether you're the Secret Shoppers, the Better Business Bureau, or the Food and Drug Administration, chances are, you'd like to know. On the surface we're innocent, we're loyal, and we're naive: underneath, we're hard-nosed investigators waiting to have our caffeine addiction financed. For the price of a cup of coffee a day, we'll give you the scoop.

5. Scrabble Tournament Referees

Is "Shakespearean" a proper noun or an acceptable adjective? Is "culpa," as in "mea culpa" sufficiently in popular use to nullify its status as a foreign word? No one wants to look these things up. What you need is an expert in the obscure, the grammatical, and the nonsensical. Someone who, though they may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, can quickly rule on an illicit attempt to use "frumious" as a game-winning word on the justification that it appears in a work of literature.

Trust me. You need us. You just don't know it yet.

So you see, all is not lost, even for those who wander. A deeply rooted love of learning is not touched by the frost of a cold economic situation. We will endure. And we will do a far, far more useful thing for society than we have ever done.

N'est-ce pas?

Life in 10 seconds

Preparing an application for an overseas research grant for the summer is not a piece of cake. Maybe it is, but it's a pretty stale piece of cake. Due Feb. 1, lots to do yet. Now reading David Walker's Appeal, Merchant of Venice, and The Country Wife, among dozens of articles. Just finished a rewrite of a novel I wrote six years ago; bravely stepping out to the next phase--getting feedback from friends. Yikes. Conference next week to present a paper on Plato and Thomas Hardy. Double yikes. Classes, work, homework, and deep thoughts top off the list.