Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.
The Masque of Anarchy
1819
Percy Bysshe Shelley
- - -
Grief
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
one more thing...
with thanks to my daughter
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain
thank you
This class has been life-changing -- the works we read, the ideas we encountered, the discussions we shared, the work we did, the every day magic -- an unfolding revelation and joy.
I am so deeply grateful to each and every one of you and to Michael Sexson -- the Wizard, White Knight, Iorek, midwife and more ...
Lach Heim! To Life!
I am so deeply grateful to each and every one of you and to Michael Sexson -- the Wizard, White Knight, Iorek, midwife and more ...
Lach Heim! To Life!
The path into the light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.
Tao te Ching
v. 41, trans. Stephen Mitchell
______________________________________________________
A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)
Connoeisseur of Chaos, Wallace Stevens
______________________________________________________
Death is the mother of beauty
Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens
______________________________________________________
Pullman's Dark Materials is a work of complex beauty to which I know I will eagerly return -- and happily pass on to others. I found it profoundly moving and disturbing in the way writing should be.
I'm also very fond of his willingness to stand up to the prevailing winds of opinion, to fight the good fight for creating complex literature for people, young and old, who now, more than ever, need and deserve it.
two interesting interviews, chosen by Pullman himself
1."Everything that is Dust is the result of the amorous inclinations of matter (Blake: 'Eternity is in love with the productions of Time')."
2. "We're rightly concerned that children should learn to read and to write and to become literate, and so on, but in doing that, we sometimes forget that pictures can also tell stories, can inform us in ways that are not exactly parallel to the ways in which words do. They're different. They work differently. I think it important for us to help young people to gain that sort of literacy as well."
Pullman here also discusses narrative voice and metaphor/allegory and the nourishment stories provide -- fascinating!
"William Blake, of course: 'Show me a world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy' "
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.
Tao te Ching
v. 41, trans. Stephen Mitchell
______________________________________________________
A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)
Connoeisseur of Chaos, Wallace Stevens
______________________________________________________
Death is the mother of beauty
Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens
______________________________________________________
Pullman's Dark Materials is a work of complex beauty to which I know I will eagerly return -- and happily pass on to others. I found it profoundly moving and disturbing in the way writing should be.
I'm also very fond of his willingness to stand up to the prevailing winds of opinion, to fight the good fight for creating complex literature for people, young and old, who now, more than ever, need and deserve it.
two interesting interviews, chosen by Pullman himself
1."Everything that is Dust is the result of the amorous inclinations of matter (Blake: 'Eternity is in love with the productions of Time')."
2. "We're rightly concerned that children should learn to read and to write and to become literate, and so on, but in doing that, we sometimes forget that pictures can also tell stories, can inform us in ways that are not exactly parallel to the ways in which words do. They're different. They work differently. I think it important for us to help young people to gain that sort of literacy as well."
Pullman here also discusses narrative voice and metaphor/allegory and the nourishment stories provide -- fascinating!
"William Blake, of course: 'Show me a world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy' "
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Completed blogs due Monday
With special thanks to Taylor for letting me know!:
our completed blogs are due Monday, Dec. 8
How to Measure a Cheshire Grin?
“Lewis Carroll in Numberland”
.
our completed blogs are due Monday, Dec. 8
How to Measure a Cheshire Grin?
“Lewis Carroll in Numberland”
.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Three degrees of happiness
NY Times: Good Cheer May Spread Itself
"A paper being published Friday in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious -- and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers. [...] a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.
'Happiness is like a stampede [...] Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know.'
...Happiness spread outward by three degrees, to the friends of friends of friends."
Thursday, December 4, 2008
notes and assigments and dates oh my!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Odetta
NY Times: Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77
there's a wonderful video tribute as well -- Last Word: Odetta
at Newport
Water Boy
there's a wonderful video tribute as well -- Last Word: Odetta
at Newport
Water Boy
Surreal: illustrating nonsense
Surreal: illustrating nonsense
My visual essay examines the illustration of nonsense: Lewis Carroll's own original illustrations for Alice and John Tenniel's adaptations of those from the 1860s, Mary Blair's adaptations for the 1951 Disney film, and selected works of Rene Magritte in the 1920s and 30s.
The soundtrack is Fantastic Dance #1 by Dmitri Shostakovich.
The two-minute Quicktime movie I made is here:
http://homepage.mac.com/lpd/2surreal.mov
_______________________________________________________
Surreal: illustrating nonsense
The yin-yang symbol symbol is an emblem of the Self. The dualities are not separate and distinct and forever warring; the opposites co-exist in shifting equilibrium, they live within one another, moving toward the balance of individuation which Jung espoused, the Self which is not the little self of the singular ego, but the large Self of the cosmic Soul. Myth and fairy tale examine this movement toward wholeness and a large part is played by shape-shifting: the fantastic, the ridiculous, the frightening. Lewis Carroll brought all this forward into the written and published children’s story set in the present day.
The Surrealist movement of the early twentieth century appears a natural bridge between the Alice of 1865 and the Alice of the 1951 movie. Lewis Carroll’s delight in nonsense and wordplay resurfaced in the Surrealists with their insistence on play and dream, the unconscious and the irrational, their transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary. And when Mary Blair in her turn approached the Alice material for Walt Disney in 1950, she melded the absurdities of the original text and illustrations with the hallucinatory colors and forms of the Surrealists.
Carroll had a strong sense of how he wanted Alice illustrated; his own original drawings are both charming and grotesque and Tenniel’s subsequent translations are faithfully enhancing. I smiled at the uncanny resemblance of the White Knight to Tenniel himself and smiled again when I came across the photograph of Richard Burton as the Knight (in the 1983 PBS version, the year before his death, in which Burton’s daughter played Alice). From there it is not so far a distance to seeing the Knight again in the sly black and white reflective portrait of Rene Magritte in front of his own painting.
In comparing the Carroll drawings with the Tenniel engravings, one sees the tenderness with which Tenniel’s experience and natural talents amplify the originals. Alice confined within the bedroom was a favorite of mine as a child, illustrating as it does the constrictions and restrictions of childhood, and when I later came across Magritte’s paintings of the rose and the apple similarly confined, I was dumbfounded -- and thrilled, particularly because the rose and the apple are so recurrent in his work, as are the crescent moon, the mirror, the window (curtained like a stage), the bowler hat, the heads: empty or transformed, the blue sky with cottony clouds, the doubling, the unexpected emptiness.
The Cheshire Cat is one of Mary Blair’s most enduring gifts of illustration: what is he? where is he? who is he? this embodiment of playful, biting, whirling teasing and then the slow unraveling and dissolving into a crescent moon of grinning teeth.
In Blair’s work on the Tea Party, the Croquet Party, and the Walrus and the Carpenter, one sees again that she, like the Surrealists, is fearless and hilarious in confronting the silly, the dangerous and the macabre. Her oysters dance happily, without feet, toward their doom; a half-cup of tea both defies and obeys the laws of physics; flamingos and hedgehogs become human tools -- animals seriously under the subjugation of their human masters.
Paradox and ambiguity are met head-on in these works; in fact they are chief among the invited guests. The relations of opposites -- up/down, before/after, above/below, past/future, good/evil -- are whirled and twirled and looked at from any and every angle. And always with the potential laugh, though the subject may be grim and the humor gallows. What budding vegetarian has not seen an eye staring back from a slab of ham? What young woman in love has not seen the skeleton beneath her own flesh and her lover’s? As Magritte said, “I’m sure even Hegel enjoyed his holidays.”
Our vision, into ourselves and onto the world, is a false, a suspect, mirror/window. Our rationality is undercut by our irrationality -- we ignore that at our own, and our neighbor’s, peril. We need to remain aware that our creations are creations -- this is one painting of a pipe, this is one description of a reality -- and skeptical and open-minded and balanced enough to laugh heartily and often.
_______________________________________________________
Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Pullman, Philip. His Dark Materials. New York: Random House, 2007.
Sexson, Michael. The Quest of Self in the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981.
Talbot, Bryan. Alice in Sunderland London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2007
Tatar, Maria, ed. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.
General OneFile. Gale. MSU Bozeman Library.
Bernays, Anne, and Justin Kaplan. "REREADING. " American Scholar. 69.2 (Spring 2000): 138.
Buck, Joan Juliet. "On love, maturity, and happiness; an interview with Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung's foremost disciple. " Vogue. 176 (Nov 1986): 206(4).
Bush, Vanessa. "Cott, Jonathan. On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering. " Booklist. 101.19-20 (June 1, 2005): 1718(1).
Cott, Jonathan. "Forever Jung; a conversation with analyst Marie-Louise von Franz. " Rolling Stone. (Nov 21, 1985): 83(6).
Kepler, Cynthia. "The use of philosophy in children's literature: Alice and her adventures.(Critical essay). ." Questions: Philosophy for Young People. 7 (Summer 2007): 9(3).
Mallan, Kerry. "Reading(s) beneath the surface: Using picture books to foster a critical aesthetics. " Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 22.3 (Oct 1999): 200.
Suarez-Toste, Ernesto. ""Which i's his I?": surrealist reflections in Elizabeth Bishop's Mirror (1). " Studies in the Humanities. 27.2 (Dec 2000): 103(20).
Tatar, Maria. "Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933. " The Art Bulletin. 80.2 (June 1998): 389(2).
Tatar, Maria. "George Grosz and the Communist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918 to 1936. " The Art Bulletin. 80.2 (June 1998): 389(2).
Walker, Joseph S., and Keith Perry. "Introduction: "If you think we're alive, you ought to speak".(Critical essay). ." Post Script. 27.2 (Wntr-Spring 2008): 3(5).
Walsh, Michael. "Conversations with Glenn Gould. " Time. 125 (Jan 7, 1985): 98(1).
"MODERN FOLK TALES AND ANCIENT STORIES: A CONVERSATION WITH BERYL KOROT AND STEVE REICH. " Afterimage. 27.3 (Nov 1999): 7.
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html
http://bridgetothestars.net/index.php?d=encyclopaedia&p=alethiometer
http://classics.mit.edu/
http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dherring/ap/consider/frye/indexfryeov.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://www.luminarium.org/
http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/
http://www.carrothers.com/rilke_main.htm
http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/
http://www.jungiananalyticpraxis.com/individuation_lecture.htm
http://www.magrittemuseum.be/
http://www.pangaea.org/street_children/world/sendak.htm
http://www.philip-pullman.com/
http://www.psychovision.ch/
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/bulf/
http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/
Monday, December 1, 2008
December 1, 2008 presentations
ELVES WANTED!!
Sadie Fri at 1 Corona production History Dept conference room
Once again, a fascinating set of presentations ... how deeply exciting it is to hear and see such wondrous various curious responses to the themes of this class!!
Brandon -- The Hero Compared
children’s and adult lit
Byronic hero | Frontier/pioneer hero
near-mythological status
confidence | darkness | sensitivity
we’re all fascinated and can relate
Sutter -- PoMo and the Great Escape
escaping the metanarrative
the Simpson’s metanarrative of Macintosh Steve Jobs
children’s authors and postmoderns
simile becomes metaphor
Child as Recycle Bin
Emily -- The Arts of Love and Seduction
John Donne The Flea and Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress
Love and making love
Racquel -- Plagued By Nonsense
uses of language -- rhythm and cadence
can’t quite define how we are changed by nonsense
Glenn Gould, Goldberg Variations #29
Kayla -- THE STORY
history and Children’s Lit
history and portals
history and imagination
the STORIES
Brett -- Transformations
Jungian archetypes
James Paul Gee -- how words transform us , create and shape our identities
“humans not fully aware”
Dr. Sexton’s transformative impact upon us as a class and as individuals
Kalli -- The Tasks of Adolescence
Lyra/Alice/Dorothy
Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Piaget
who am I? what is my destiny?
taking the journey, discovering friends, resilience, communication, self-esteem
apple-girls -- curiosity and knowledge
Stephanie -- Portals Real and Imagined
change coming, be open-minded, prepare for a different way of seeing
sprinklers
Portal to Pacific
Golden Gate Bridge
Yellowstone Park Arch
airplane boarding bridge
death | birth
Julie -- The Perception and Portrayal of Beauty in Fairy Talesphysical perfection as most important trait
impact on young girls
Purdue study
female/male definitions of femininity
relation to good and evil
real women cf. princesses
Ashley -- Time for New Tales
hidden lessons
relationship
the eternal story of two lovers
Prince Charming | Trickster |Beast
Kyle -- Dream Logic
lucid dreaming
the idea of the Self in Alice
a certain lack of awareness is necessary
dreaming | awakening
Sadie Fri at 1 Corona production History Dept conference room
Once again, a fascinating set of presentations ... how deeply exciting it is to hear and see such wondrous various curious responses to the themes of this class!!
Brandon -- The Hero Compared
children’s and adult lit
Byronic hero | Frontier/pioneer hero
near-mythological status
confidence | darkness | sensitivity
we’re all fascinated and can relate
Sutter -- PoMo and the Great Escape
escaping the metanarrative
the Simpson’s metanarrative of Macintosh Steve Jobs
children’s authors and postmoderns
simile becomes metaphor
Child as Recycle Bin
Emily -- The Arts of Love and Seduction
John Donne The Flea and Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress
Love and making love
Racquel -- Plagued By Nonsense
uses of language -- rhythm and cadence
can’t quite define how we are changed by nonsense
Glenn Gould, Goldberg Variations #29
Kayla -- THE STORY
history and Children’s Lit
history and portals
history and imagination
the STORIES
Brett -- Transformations
Jungian archetypes
James Paul Gee -- how words transform us , create and shape our identities
“humans not fully aware”
Dr. Sexton’s transformative impact upon us as a class and as individuals
Kalli -- The Tasks of Adolescence
Lyra/Alice/Dorothy
Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Piaget
who am I? what is my destiny?
taking the journey, discovering friends, resilience, communication, self-esteem
apple-girls -- curiosity and knowledge
Stephanie -- Portals Real and Imagined
change coming, be open-minded, prepare for a different way of seeing
sprinklers
Portal to Pacific
Golden Gate Bridge
Yellowstone Park Arch
airplane boarding bridge
death | birth
Julie -- The Perception and Portrayal of Beauty in Fairy Talesphysical perfection as most important trait
impact on young girls
Purdue study
female/male definitions of femininity
relation to good and evil
real women cf. princesses
Ashley -- Time for New Tales
hidden lessons
relationship
the eternal story of two lovers
Prince Charming | Trickster |Beast
Kyle -- Dream Logic
lucid dreaming
the idea of the Self in Alice
a certain lack of awareness is necessary
dreaming | awakening
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
November 26, 2008 presentations
GREAT job everyone!
for those who missed it ... you did indeed miss it
YES you can bring your daemon to class!!
revisit Plato's Allegory of the Cave in light of Pullman
Taylor -- All the Skins of a Life
Molly the ball python
add/remove skin
JW Waterhouse
Keats: Le Belle Dame sans Merci
the animal and the human/ the wild and the civilized
wholeness
Hannah -- The Portal between Adulthood and Childhood
Carroll childlike /Dodson adult
puer aeternus
Peter Pan
Sadie -- Too curious?
Psyche, Bluebeard - desire that is dangerous AND essential
Jesse -- Illustrations
something we can’t do with words
Alice in Sunderland, pp 79 and 135
variations in Beast, Puss in Boots, Rumplestilskin
Lyra’s alethiometer
Picasso -- Gertrude Stein's portrait “it will...”
Calvino: The Castle of Crossed Destinies -- mute, Tarot cards
Ronnie -- The Power of Literacy
Greenblatt: Marvelous Possessions
Columbus and indigenous peoples
Frederick Douglass “the pathway from slavery to freedom”
Knowledge is Power
Lyra’s sacrifice -- what is lost, what is gained
the many different forms of literacy
John -- Transformation
surrounding ourselves with art
suspension of disbeliefs
Henry V opening soliloquoy
Ben -- Cannibalism
Tracy Willard -- Tales of the Border -- stepmothers
Margaret VanDyke “Horrid Warnings”
cf theme of resurrection
jack and tom thumb offer themselves to be eaten when they are hungry
the apple as evil, as a weapon -- YET “keeps the doctor away”
eat the body and drink the blood
the unconscious learns from the stories
Kathleen -- The Slanted Truth
all these questions and no answers
Emily Dickinson “dazzle gradually”
"...because truth is such a rarity today, it SHOULD be in children’s lit..."
Lucy in the Sky + I Am the Walrus
dreams, shadows, mirror images
Revolution #9 and Revolution #9 Dream
layers
1964-65 A Spaniard In The Works and In His Own Write
Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll
Lear: The Owl and the Pussycat
John Cage
Jabberwocky "this nonsense reminds me of something..."
for those who missed it ... you did indeed miss it
YES you can bring your daemon to class!!
revisit Plato's Allegory of the Cave in light of Pullman
Taylor -- All the Skins of a Life
Molly the ball python
add/remove skin
JW Waterhouse
Keats: Le Belle Dame sans Merci
the animal and the human/ the wild and the civilized
wholeness
Hannah -- The Portal between Adulthood and Childhood
Carroll childlike /Dodson adult
puer aeternus
Peter Pan
Sadie -- Too curious?
Psyche, Bluebeard - desire that is dangerous AND essential
Jesse -- Illustrations
something we can’t do with words
Alice in Sunderland, pp 79 and 135
variations in Beast, Puss in Boots, Rumplestilskin
Lyra’s alethiometer
Picasso -- Gertrude Stein's portrait “it will...”
Calvino: The Castle of Crossed Destinies -- mute, Tarot cards
Ronnie -- The Power of Literacy
Greenblatt: Marvelous Possessions
Columbus and indigenous peoples
Frederick Douglass “the pathway from slavery to freedom”
Knowledge is Power
Lyra’s sacrifice -- what is lost, what is gained
the many different forms of literacy
John -- Transformation
surrounding ourselves with art
suspension of disbeliefs
Henry V opening soliloquoy
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
The Second Shepherd’s Pageant
Linfield Theatre Rm 125
Dec 3
7-9
plus
Raquel’s Recital
Howard Hall
Dec 6
7:30 pm
Linfield Theatre Rm 125
Dec 3
7-9
plus
Raquel’s Recital
Howard Hall
Dec 6
7:30 pm
Ben -- Cannibalism
Tracy Willard -- Tales of the Border -- stepmothers
Margaret VanDyke “Horrid Warnings”
cf theme of resurrection
jack and tom thumb offer themselves to be eaten when they are hungry
the apple as evil, as a weapon -- YET “keeps the doctor away”
eat the body and drink the blood
the unconscious learns from the stories
Kathleen -- The Slanted Truth
all these questions and no answers
Emily Dickinson “dazzle gradually”
"...because truth is such a rarity today, it SHOULD be in children’s lit..."
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---Jill -- John Lennon
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
Lucy in the Sky + I Am the Walrus
dreams, shadows, mirror images
Revolution #9 and Revolution #9 Dream
layers
1964-65 A Spaniard In The Works and In His Own Write
Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll
Lear: The Owl and the Pussycat
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
...They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
John Cage
Jabberwocky "this nonsense reminds me of something..."
Monday, November 24, 2008
November 24, 2008 notes
Presentations
begin Wednesday!
BE
SMART
INFORMED
ENTERTAINING
RELEVANT
____________________________________________
begin Wednesday!
BE
SMART
INFORMED
ENTERTAINING
RELEVANT
____________________________________________
divination: seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown OED
coincidence is not unusual
Charles Dickens’ final chapters full of coincidence -- NOT “too contrived” as some may claim
full of the dickens, euphemistically invoking the Devil OED
the metamorphosis of adolescence
Alice | Dorothy | Lyra and CURIOUSITY -- curator, museum
Sadie : Michael Chabon
Sutter: experience, knowledge, remembrance | ignorance, forgetfulness
to “know” have sexual intercourse with (someone). [ORIGIN: a Hebraism that has passed into modern languages; cf. German erkennen, French connaître.] OED [sorry, just can't resist the old Woody Allen joke: "Don't knock masturbation ... it's sex with someone you love."]
create | procreate
Beauty is truth
Meno’s Paradox
freedom
education/knowledge: submisson/ rebellion
The Grand Inquisitor (text) from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
knowledge is liberation
Ronnie: Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Richard Wright, James Baldwin
MS: DO NOT CONDESCEND TO CHILDREN
Baghdad Cafe ; Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx
Pullman
p. 864 “tell them stories, they need the truth”
Flannery O’Connor
Eliot’s “Four Quartets: Little Gidding”
ys.
Here, in the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
... We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love 1342 – c. 1416
"...All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"
p. 926 Dame Hannah <--> Frances Yates “consciously / intuitively”
p. 911 other ways of travelling
p. 926 not pretending but seeing
The Tempest: Prospero
“But this rough magicBlake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell “Eternity is in love with the productions of time”
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.”
Stevens: Sunday Morning "Shall she not find in comforts of the sun ...Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?"
Ram Dass: Be Here Now
Stephen Mitchell: Tao Te Ching "Some say that my teaching is nonsense. Others call it lofty but impractical. But to those who have looked inside themselves, this nonsense makes perfect sense." "True words seem paradoxical."
Rabbi Abraham Heschel: No Religion is An Island "No word is God's last word."
"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Quixotic Lennon
from Sunday's Boston Globe:
No nukes
Once a quixotic slogan, the idea of actually dismantling every nuclear weapon is attracting mainstream policy thinkers
FOR MANY AMERICANS, the idea of a world without nuclear weapons is a bit like the idea of a world without war or disease - it would be nice, but, contra John Lennon, it's hard to imagine.
Friday, November 21, 2008
November 21, 2008 notes
WEDNESDAY NOV 26 presentations:
__________________________________
Trilogy -- why all 3?
the rarity of the length <--> the impact cf. Quixote (~900 pages)
the metaphor of starting afresh
the pain of endings, passing from innocence to experience
Roger Sales' "Fairy Tales and After" : Milne's "House at Pooh Corner"
“leaving childhood behind” “my tears are for the lost boy I am” "wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing."
knighthood
cf. the ending of Cervantes' Quixote
Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren in Man of La Mancha 1972
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
pro-temptation | pro-curiousity (Alice)
the story is born from doing what you’re told not to do
Milton and the temptation in the garden, “their eyes opened”
original sin <--> knowledge
The Fall as necessary
Blake: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.” Marriage of Heaven & Hell
Blake Archive: Milton a Poem
Salman Rushdie
“the devil gets all the good tunes”
William Blake "A Little Girl Lost" Songs of Innocence and Experience
Heinrich von Kleist -- the Puppet Theatre -- a fighting bear
Pullman as a gnostic chooses wisdom not ignorance (historically, Gnosticism lost out)
Pullman thinks his own daemon a bower bird
(a female satin bowerbird !)
(a female satin bowerbird !)
(Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia !)
sources:
folk and fairy tale
myth
Bildungsroman
science fiction
and
the Helsinki phonebook -- Serafina
opens in sleep …
“some themes too large for adult fiction, therefore go to children literature to find them”
“stories are VITAL”
TRUE stories or true STORIES
p. 273 parents
cut away from daemon = extinction?
Lyra | Trinity | Eve Matrix
father needs child to sacrifice
rash promises
father reads King James chapter 3 Genesis with a twist
an alternate phrase in an alternate universe
ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Genesis 3:19 (KJV): "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
from the current Anglican Burial Service: " 'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.' All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."
sin and shame and death -- fixed daemons --
square root of one
unto dust????
from original sin to necessary rebellion
Sutter on daemons and "Philip Pullman had said of the Chronicles of Narnia that, if it is supposed to be a religious book, it is void of the single most important Christian value: love.”
Lord Asriel's daemon is a snow leopard !!!!!!!!!!
materialism matters
p.s. my shipment of the Pullman books was on my doorstep when i got home ...
my heroes? Betterworld.com the "online bookstore with a soul" and Biblio.com
- Hannah
- Sadie
- Jesse
- Jill
- Ronnie
- John
- Taylor
- Ben
- Kathleen
- Emily
- Racquel
- Cheryl
- Sutter (rescheduled)
- Brandon (rescheduled)
- Kayla
- Kyle
- Brett
- Lisa
- Kalli
- Danielle
- Aaron
- Stephanie
- Julie
- Jessi
- etc. ...
__________________________________
Trilogy -- why all 3?
the rarity of the length <--> the impact cf. Quixote (~900 pages)
the metaphor of starting afresh
the pain of endings, passing from innocence to experience
Roger Sales' "Fairy Tales and After" : Milne's "House at Pooh Corner"
“leaving childhood behind” “my tears are for the lost boy I am” "wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing."
knighthood
cf. the ending of Cervantes' Quixote
Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren in Man of La Mancha 1972
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
“...Into this wild Abyss the warie fiendintertextuality : in conversation w/ Blake, Dante, Milton
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage…”
pro-temptation | pro-curiousity (Alice)
the story is born from doing what you’re told not to do
Milton and the temptation in the garden, “their eyes opened”
original sin <--> knowledge
The Fall as necessary
Blake: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.” Marriage of Heaven & Hell
Blake Archive: Milton a Poem
Salman Rushdie
“the devil gets all the good tunes”
William Blake "A Little Girl Lost" Songs of Innocence and Experience
Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.
Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.
Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.
To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book
All her tender limbs with terror shook.
'Ona, pale and weak,
To thy father speak!
Oh the trembling fear!
Oh the dismal care
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!'
Heinrich von Kleist -- the Puppet Theatre -- a fighting bear
Pullman as a gnostic chooses wisdom not ignorance (historically, Gnosticism lost out)
Pullman thinks his own daemon a bower bird
(a female satin bowerbird !)
(a female satin bowerbird !)
(Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia !)
sources:
folk and fairy tale
myth
Bildungsroman
science fiction
and
the Helsinki phonebook -- Serafina
opens in sleep …
“some themes too large for adult fiction, therefore go to children literature to find them”
“stories are VITAL”
TRUE stories or true STORIES
p. 273 parents
cut away from daemon = extinction?
Lyra | Trinity | Eve Matrix
father needs child to sacrifice
rash promises
father reads King James chapter 3 Genesis with a twist
an alternate phrase in an alternate universe
ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Genesis 3:19 (KJV): "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
from the current Anglican Burial Service: " 'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.' All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."
sin and shame and death -- fixed daemons --
square root of one
unto dust????
from original sin to necessary rebellion
Sutter on daemons and "Philip Pullman had said of the Chronicles of Narnia that, if it is supposed to be a religious book, it is void of the single most important Christian value: love.”
Lord Asriel's daemon is a snow leopard !!!!!!!!!!
materialism matters
p.s. my shipment of the Pullman books was on my doorstep when i got home ...
my heroes? Betterworld.com the "online bookstore with a soul" and Biblio.com
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
11/19/2008 notes
Assignment #16: what is your Daemon?????????
Term paper presentations begin next Wednesday Nov 26 ( Z to A : class roster by last name)
Lyra, Alice, Dorothy
myth | dream | coincidence | art | history
Talbot anchors everything in history
Pullman calls himself a “stark realist”
objects to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fantasy
mulefa
p. 281 the idea of North
metaphysical as opposed to geographical
the imagining of the North
frontier, edge, portal
"things as they are" not as we wish them to be...
“a mind of winter”...
"For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive."
p. 280 the ambiguity of Lyra’s parents
Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats -- can you hear the piper? the music of the spheres? John Donne
forever young Dylan 1973
read the Renaissance philosophers
assigning sentience to the inanimate
p. 364 “Dust knows we’re here”
misinterpretations of Christianity
the Daemon: in children, metamorphasis -- awareness of self, sexuality, experience, sacrifice -- fixed in adulthood? sacrifice -- begins to be more obvious in Subtle Knife
Will and Lyra both have to sacrifice their instruments
Eric Shanower + Skottie Young -- Marvel Comics -- The Wonderful WOZ Sketchbook
Taylor’s response --- no loophole -- saw it coming from far away -- “please don’t do that”
Aristotle’s theory of catharsis
Northrop Frye "depressing?" something wrong w/ the reader or the writer
exultant even tho filled with sorrow
TM: the selflessness is both realistic and Romantic
the romance of Quixote -- that they never meet
The Idealist and Realist, Andre and Wally, Quixote and Sancho Panza
Findhorn
divination, fortune cookies, horoscopes -- what you bring to the experience, the nature of the divining instrument, imaginative devices -- imagination is what makes things happen -- Northrop Frye -- literature is about the possible
"Even a broken clock is right twice"
TM: the Daemon paintings, (erotic) attachment
in Mongolia last summer she bought a beaded bag w/ sheep bones from an old woman
Ryan’s blog -- symbols on the Aleithiometer
Sam’s blog -- I Ching
Ronnie -- symbolic interactionism
what CONNECTS us, not what SEPARATES us from animals, daemons, anima
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Well. It was snowing as we left class.
And. As I drove into the canyon, the electronic billboard, which usually says "BUCKLE UP -- IT'S THE LAW" or "DIAL 511" or "ROADWORK AHEAD" was now saying
By the time I got to the canyon, the snow was swirling round as tho I were inside that crystal ball with the little pine tree and little deer that my seven-year-old neighbor gave me for Christmas last year and the radio was playing "Man of my heart"
In my enchantment, I didn't realize that I'd forgotten to stop for gas as planned ... coasted into Livingston on fumes. My dear departed lover Michael used to say that for a woman with such a fine mind, I was shockingly oblivious to the obvious at times...
p.s. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was written by the incredible black-listed lyricist Yip Harburg who also ended up writing a significant portion of the film's dialogue ...
Term paper presentations begin next Wednesday Nov 26 ( Z to A : class roster by last name)
Lyra, Alice, Dorothy
myth | dream | coincidence | art | history
Talbot anchors everything in history
Pullman calls himself a “stark realist”
objects to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fantasy
mulefa
p. 281 the idea of North
metaphysical as opposed to geographical
the imagining of the North
frontier, edge, portal
"things as they are" not as we wish them to be...
“a mind of winter”...
"For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive."
p. 280 the ambiguity of Lyra’s parents
Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats -- can you hear the piper? the music of the spheres? John Donne
forever young Dylan 1973
read the Renaissance philosophers
assigning sentience to the inanimate
p. 364 “Dust knows we’re here”
misinterpretations of Christianity
the Daemon: in children, metamorphasis -- awareness of self, sexuality, experience, sacrifice -- fixed in adulthood? sacrifice -- begins to be more obvious in Subtle Knife
Will and Lyra both have to sacrifice their instruments
Eric Shanower + Skottie Young -- Marvel Comics -- The Wonderful WOZ Sketchbook
Taylor’s response --- no loophole -- saw it coming from far away -- “please don’t do that”
Aristotle’s theory of catharsis
Northrop Frye "depressing?" something wrong w/ the reader or the writer
exultant even tho filled with sorrow
TM: the selflessness is both realistic and Romantic
the romance of Quixote -- that they never meet
The Idealist and Realist, Andre and Wally, Quixote and Sancho Panza
Findhorn
divination, fortune cookies, horoscopes -- what you bring to the experience, the nature of the divining instrument, imaginative devices -- imagination is what makes things happen -- Northrop Frye -- literature is about the possible
"Even a broken clock is right twice"
TM: the Daemon paintings, (erotic) attachment
in Mongolia last summer she bought a beaded bag w/ sheep bones from an old woman
- Dreams will come true
- Weather will win
Ryan’s blog -- symbols on the Aleithiometer
Sam’s blog -- I Ching
Ronnie -- symbolic interactionism
what CONNECTS us, not what SEPARATES us from animals, daemons, anima
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Well. It was snowing as we left class.
And. As I drove into the canyon, the electronic billboard, which usually says "BUCKLE UP -- IT'S THE LAW" or "DIAL 511" or "ROADWORK AHEAD" was now saying
ANIMAL CROSSING
BE ALERT
USE CAUTION
BE ALERT
USE CAUTION
By the time I got to the canyon, the snow was swirling round as tho I were inside that crystal ball with the little pine tree and little deer that my seven-year-old neighbor gave me for Christmas last year and the radio was playing "Man of my heart"
In my enchantment, I didn't realize that I'd forgotten to stop for gas as planned ... coasted into Livingston on fumes. My dear departed lover Michael used to say that for a woman with such a fine mind, I was shockingly oblivious to the obvious at times...
p.s. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was written by the incredible black-listed lyricist Yip Harburg who also ended up writing a significant portion of the film's dialogue ...
Monday, November 17, 2008
11/17/2008 notes
The Pullman Trilogy
Assignment # 15: blog your reading in Pullman, a running commentary w/ page numbers
daemons -- must stay near
Pullman on the teaching of writing:
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness.
Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit!
Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy!
O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
~ from Ode to the West Wind, Shelley, 1819
p. 363-370
Lyra has emerged into a new world
Mary Malone was a nun, studies shadows or particles of consciousness -- you can’t see them unless you expect to (Stanley Fish: "poetry’s eyes") [Plato’s] Cave=computer cf. Matrix Neo sees a cat and suddenly understands “deja vu” almost a remembrance
the Red Queen: "a poor sort of memory that only works backwards"
quoting Keats’ negative capability -- from his letters -- state of uncertainty and doubt -- Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” -- a natural talent of children
p. 379 cat on Sunderland Avenue
aleithiometer <->Lethe = river of forgetfulness<->lethal
Heidegger -- aletheia -- un-concealment, un-forgetting, we need to remember -- truth
"Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment"
Francis Yates The Art of Memory
the magic eight ball
I Ching
the definition of Dust
Wallace Stevens poets.org uiuc.edu
haunted by ”the idea of North” -- central metaphor of the Northern Lights
281 colorful curtains and as a serpent
Wallace Stevens' Auroras of Autumn
stanza VI -- theatre -- the little blue book of Wallace Stevens (Major Author Fall '09)
northern lights as a metaphor of consciousness
cf: a scientific explanation "excreted waste of the sun" (thank you Chris :)
Novaya Zemlya archipelego Nova Zembla
Salman Rushdie book for children "Haroun and the Sea of Stories"
Zenda, Zembla, Xanadu
Nabokov Pale Fire
eclipse -- feeling of fear
Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five (film)
Glenn Gould
I Ching
instruments for the imagination
storytelling: In The Tempest, Act I, as Prospero unfolds the truth of Miranda's history to her, he asks repeatedly, "Dost thou attend me ... Dost thou hear?" She answers finally: "Your tale, sir, would cure deafness."
Assignment # 15: blog your reading in Pullman, a running commentary w/ page numbers
daemons -- must stay near
Pullman on the teaching of writing:
- public and private payoff
- discovered in the writing
- willing suspension of certainty
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness.
Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit!
Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy!
O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
~ from Ode to the West Wind, Shelley, 1819
p. 363-370
Lyra has emerged into a new world
Mary Malone was a nun, studies shadows or particles of consciousness -- you can’t see them unless you expect to (Stanley Fish: "poetry’s eyes") [Plato’s] Cave=computer cf. Matrix Neo sees a cat and suddenly understands “deja vu” almost a remembrance
the Red Queen: "a poor sort of memory that only works backwards"
quoting Keats’ negative capability -- from his letters -- state of uncertainty and doubt -- Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” -- a natural talent of children
- non-moralizing
- nonsense clears the palate
- uncertainty required
p. 379 cat on Sunderland Avenue
aleithiometer <->Lethe = river of forgetfulness<->lethal
Heidegger -- aletheia -- un-concealment, un-forgetting, we need to remember -- truth
"Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment"
Francis Yates The Art of Memory
the magic eight ball
I Ching
the definition of Dust
Wallace Stevens poets.org uiuc.edu
- 32 short films of Glenn Gould
- Bach's Goldberg Variations (Edgar Allen Poe The Goldbug) Goldbug Variations
haunted by ”the idea of North” -- central metaphor of the Northern Lights
281 colorful curtains and as a serpent
Wallace Stevens' Auroras of Autumn
stanza VI -- theatre -- the little blue book of Wallace Stevens (Major Author Fall '09)
northern lights as a metaphor of consciousness
cf: a scientific explanation "excreted waste of the sun" (thank you Chris :)
…. A capitol,
It may be, is emerging of has just
Collapsed. The denouement has to be postposed...
This is nothing until in a single man contained,
Nothing until this named thing nameless is
And is destroyed. He opens the door of his house
On flames. The scholar of one candle sees
An Arctic effulgence flaring on the frame
Of everything he is. And he feels afraid.
Novaya Zemlya archipelego Nova Zembla
Salman Rushdie book for children "Haroun and the Sea of Stories"
Zenda, Zembla, Xanadu
Nabokov Pale Fire
eclipse -- feeling of fear
Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five (film)
Glenn Gould
I Ching
instruments for the imagination
storytelling: In The Tempest, Act I, as Prospero unfolds the truth of Miranda's history to her, he asks repeatedly, "Dost thou attend me ... Dost thou hear?" She answers finally: "Your tale, sir, would cure deafness."
Philip Pullman
Pullman
I thought it would be hard to find an audience for this story, and I've been astonished and delighted by the reception it's had all over the world
The Science of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials"
Religion: The religious impulse – which includes the sense of awe and mystery we feel when we look at the universe, the urge to find a meaning and a purpose in our lives, our sense of moral kinship with other human beings – is part of being human, and I value it. I'd be a damn fool not to.
But organised religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people's lives in the name of some invisible god (and they're all invisible, because they don't exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it.
That is the religion I hate, and I'm happy to be known as its enemy.
From time to time I have a new thought on the subject. When I come up with something worth writing down, I'll put it here.
on writing:
What qualities do you need to be a successful writer? Stubbornness, for a start. Pig-headed obstinacy. The capacity to sit still in front of an empty sheet of paper for hour upon hour and feel that your time is being valuably spent. Then I'd say an interest in the shapes of things. What shape is a story? Is a short story a different shape from a novel? What shape is a joke? Once you become interested in the structure of stories, you're well on the way.
The public doesn't know what it wants until it sees what you can offer. So follow the whole of your nature and write the book that only you can write, and see what happens.
The only duty [children’s literature] has is best expressed in the words of Dr Johnson: "The only aim of writing is to help the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
To tell someone else how to read your book is to fall into the temptation of fundamentalism.
on education (the Isis lecture, April 2003):
Stories are written to beguile, to entertain, to amuse, to move, to enchant, to horrify, to delight, to anger, to make us wonder. They are not written so that we can make a fifty word summary of the whole plot, or find five synonyms for the descriptive words. That sort of thing would make you hate reading, and turn away from such a futile activity with disgust. In the words of Ruskin, it's "slaves' work, unredeemed.”
Those who design this sort of thing seem to have completely forgotten the true purpose of literature, the everyday, humble, generous intention that lies behind every book, every story, every poem: to delight or to console, to help us enjoy life or endure it. That's the true reason we should be giving books to children. The false reason is to make them analyse, review, comment and so on.
But they have to do it – day in, day out, hour after hour, this wretched system nags and pesters and buzzes at them, like a great bluebottle laden with pestilence. And then all the children have to do a test; and that's when things get worse.
... as we know, these days editors are lower in the hierarchy of publishing than accountants, and teachers are less important than those who set the tests. We have let the wrong people take charge. [my emphasis - lpd]
on telling stories :
Well, one doesn't want to be patriarchal, authoritarian, imperialist, etc, perish the thought; but this question has always interested me from a storytelling point of view, because the rejection of the central directing consciousness, of the omniscient narrator, is exactly what happened to literary fiction in the twentieth century, to its eventual impoverishment. Novelists became fascinated by other things than telling stories, and in the process, the feeling seemed to grow that there was something wrong about telling a story from a single, central directing consciousness, because that act involved a narrative voice, and narrators were now notoriously unreliable. So more and more literary fiction became tentative, diffident, uncertain, openly self-contradictory, uncommitted, shifting, relative … and story, which is both events and the voice that tells us about them, was banished. Where story went was into genre fiction – crime, romance, fantasy, and so on; and into children's books. And, incidentally, and increasingly, into non-fiction. You couldn't kill it; it's too healthy for that, and people have an insatiable appetite for knowing what happened next.
a culture of fear:
Shame on us, to be so timid. Shame on us, to be so mistrustful. Shame on us, to have so little faith in literature, in poetry and drama and story.
five steps we should take, starting right now:
- Do away with these incessant tests; they only tell you things you don't need to know, and make the children do things they don't need to do.
- Abolish the league tables, which are an abomination.
- Cut class sizes in every school in the country. No child should ever be in a class bigger than twenty.
- Make teaching a profession that the most gifted, the most imaginative, the most well-informed people will clamour to join; and make the job so rewarding that none of them will want to stop teaching until they drop.
- Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.
If we do those five things, we will not bring about a golden age, or an earthly paradise; there are more things wrong with the world than we can cure by changing a system of schooling. But if we get education right, it would show that we were being serious about living and thinking and understanding ourselves; it would show that we were paying our children the compliment of assuming that they were serious too; and it would acknowledge that the path to true learning begins nowhere else but in delight, and the words on the signpost say: "Once upon a time …”
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Tristesses de la lune
Tristesses de la lune
Sorrow of the moon
from Les Fleurs du Mal
Baudelaire
Sorrow of the moon
from Les Fleurs du Mal
Baudelaire
The Moon more indolently dreams tonight
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.
Upon her silken avalanche of down,
Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;
And watches the white visions past her flown,
Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.
And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,
Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,
Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,
Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow
Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,
And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.
Friday, November 14, 2008
at the gas station
The morning after the election of Obama, I drove to Bozeman in a rain/sleet/slush nightmare. I laughed at how little the horrible conditions seemed to affect my mood this day. I stopped to get gas and the woman at the next pump had an Obama sticker on her car too. She pointed at mine as we stood in the rain and said, "It's a beautiful morning, ain't it?"
Today, one week later, I stopped to get gas at the same station. There was a four-year-old cherubim inside the door when I went in to pay. As she left with her dad, she held up a package of candy and said to me, "These are good -- sour and sweet at the same time!" The cashier said, "They're my neighbors. I watched her learn to ride a bike this summer -- no training wheels." I remembered my father standing behind me to steady the bike and then pushing me off. I remembered the smart of skinned knees. I remembered exhilaration.
Today, one week later, I stopped to get gas at the same station. There was a four-year-old cherubim inside the door when I went in to pay. As she left with her dad, she held up a package of candy and said to me, "These are good -- sour and sweet at the same time!" The cashier said, "They're my neighbors. I watched her learn to ride a bike this summer -- no training wheels." I remembered my father standing behind me to steady the bike and then pushing me off. I remembered the smart of skinned knees. I remembered exhilaration.
11/14/2008 notes
(click for details)
Assignment #14: Term paper presentation
Assignment #13: Corona boxes
Assignment #12: blog Pullman
Women in Black:
overview of the trilogy by Ronnie and Sam (thank you!)
what is a child? what is the end of childhood? what is moral? what are morals? what is dust?
instruments: golden compass, subtle knife, amber spyglass
seeing
portals
Lyra, Will, Mary Malone
Ashley: Find Your Daemon
MS: soulmate Martha Stewart
Assignment #14: Term paper presentation
Assignment #13: Corona boxes
Assignment #12: blog Pullman
Women in Black:
overview of the trilogy by Ronnie and Sam (thank you!)
- both were introduced to the work around age 13
- both have read and re-read it several times
- both found it profoundly moving
what is a child? what is the end of childhood? what is moral? what are morals? what is dust?
instruments: golden compass, subtle knife, amber spyglass
seeing
portals
Lyra, Will, Mary Malone
Ashley: Find Your Daemon
MS: soulmate Martha Stewart
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
portmanteaux
damsel-in-distress-fly
delisherist: one who relishes the delicious
impursable: you can’t take it to the bank
mirtherous: killingly funny
tortle: to torture, in a slow and legal manner
delisherist: one who relishes the delicious
impursable: you can’t take it to the bank
mirtherous: killingly funny
tortle: to torture, in a slow and legal manner
Monday, November 10, 2008
ambiguous undulations
I saw a young red fox running up through a young green field
Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Stevens, Sunday Morning
Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Stevens, Sunday Morning
the handsome young man with the big vocabulary
I once dated a handsome young man and I was sorely tempted to marry him. He was beautiful and a zoologist. I thought that meant he loved animals. But it meant he loved zoos! On a "field trip" we chanced upon dragonflies -- iridescent, humming, hovering, darting, disappearing, appearing, miraculous! But he was not captivated. No. He gave me a lecture on species, phyla and related taxonomic classifications -- and I -- and I -- and I -- escaped with my life!
seven ages of man...
salmagundi: a salad of whatever is at hand [purportedly served on pirate ships] derived from the French salmigondis - disparate assembly of things, ideas, people, forming an incoherent [!] whole ...It seems likely that the name is connected with the children’s rhyme, Solomon Grundy. (wiki)
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
Oedipus and the Sphinx
"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?"
"Man"
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw ...
Wallace Stevens, A Postcard from the Volcano
fox and grapes
Pompeii
The River
Toward the end
of its journey
the river
made its final bend.
Clouds of mist
pollen from pines
far above
descended dream like
upon our craft
and upon ourselves
The river flowed
and I flowed,
not only with it
but as it
Not only was I upon it
but it was upon me
And finally we were one
Michael Francis Doyle, 1948-2006
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end of
Solomon Grundy.
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
Oedipus and the Sphinx
"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?"
"Man"
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw ...
Wallace Stevens, A Postcard from the Volcano
fox and grapes
Pompeii
The River
Toward the end
of its journey
the river
made its final bend.
Clouds of mist
pollen from pines
far above
descended dream like
upon our craft
and upon ourselves
The river flowed
and I flowed,
not only with it
but as it
Not only was I upon it
but it was upon me
And finally we were one
Michael Francis Doyle, 1948-2006
Questions for quiz #2
Tatar book -- various endings
My Book and Heart Shall Never Part
Alice chapters
QUESTIONS:
Classic illustrator of Alice: Tenniel
Last word in Beauty and the Beast (Tatar): Virtue
Who wins after death? the worms (we may yet triumph through Art (Groucho))
Oscar Wilde: "Life imitates art"
themes of the class:
myth | dream | coincidence | art | history
White Knight might represents? Carroll himself
Parodist’s counterpart to "How Doth the Busy Bee"? "How Doth the Little Crocodile"
The beautiful food of which the mock turtle sings? soup
Hatter's riddle: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Most quoted author after Shakespeare? Carroll
___ is a depersonalized _____ and _____ is a personalized ___
(myth is a depersonalized dream and dream is a personalized myth)
Create your own portmanteau
Who is the rudest of all the flowers?
Animate | anima | soul
Who is the volcano? Alice
Where does Alice live? the collective unconscious | dust
Alice first growth change? shrinks to 10 inches
Title of the deleted chapter from Through the Looking Glass? A Wasp in a Wig
How does Alice offend the mouse? cats!
During the Protestant Reformation, what was the intent of children’s literature? to inculcate moral values to children
According to My Book and Heart, the first Bible published was in? Algonquin
Which two animals sparked curiosity re: evolution? the mammoth and the monkey
What invention influenced the Reformation? the Gutenburg Press
Why are hatters mad? mercury in hat bands (misplaced concreteness)
Create an anagram of _____ (MS torture)
What does White Rabbit drop? white gloves and a fan
In Cocteau's film Beaty and the Beast, Beauty's tears become? diamonds
D.H. Lawrence: “Never trust the teller, trust the tale.”
Lewis Carrol's nickname inspired which character? Dodo
Tautology: circular argument “I’m interested because it’s interesting.”
Goody-Two-Shoes is an emblem of _____ (perfection) which adults lack -- My Book and Heart
If Alice is a part of the Red King's dream, then what are Tweedle Dum and Dee? ditto ditto ditto
What causes Walrus and Carpenter to weep? they feel sorry for the wee Oysters they are gobbling down
Big theme of English classes? the Dark Side (Far Side? :)
Most prolific serial killer 19th century England? Mary Ann Cotton
Two primary ghosts in Talbot book? Sid James and The White Lady
Jabberwocky poem based on which legend? Lambton worm
Last line of Alice: "Life, what is it but a dream?" ACROSTIC
Walter Pater: “All art aspires to the condition of music”
My Book and Heart: “The text informs reality”
- Snow White
- Sleeping Beauty
- Rapunzel
- Rumplestilskin
- Jack and the beanstalk
- Frog Prince
- 21
- 27-29
- 92
- 134
- 183 - 186
- 204-206
- 290 - 298
My Book and Heart Shall Never Part
Alice chapters
- Humpty Dumpty
- Wool and Water
- Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee
- Caterpillar
- Question of morals
QUESTIONS:
Classic illustrator of Alice: Tenniel
Last word in Beauty and the Beast (Tatar): Virtue
Who wins after death? the worms (we may yet triumph through Art (Groucho))
Oscar Wilde: "Life imitates art"
themes of the class:
myth | dream | coincidence | art | history
White Knight might represents? Carroll himself
Parodist’s counterpart to "How Doth the Busy Bee"? "How Doth the Little Crocodile"
The beautiful food of which the mock turtle sings? soup
Hatter's riddle: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Most quoted author after Shakespeare? Carroll
___ is a depersonalized _____ and _____ is a personalized ___
(myth is a depersonalized dream and dream is a personalized myth)
Create your own portmanteau
Who is the rudest of all the flowers?
Animate | anima | soul
Who is the volcano? Alice
Where does Alice live? the collective unconscious | dust
Alice first growth change? shrinks to 10 inches
Title of the deleted chapter from Through the Looking Glass? A Wasp in a Wig
How does Alice offend the mouse? cats!
During the Protestant Reformation, what was the intent of children’s literature? to inculcate moral values to children
According to My Book and Heart, the first Bible published was in? Algonquin
Which two animals sparked curiosity re: evolution? the mammoth and the monkey
What invention influenced the Reformation? the Gutenburg Press
Why are hatters mad? mercury in hat bands (misplaced concreteness)
Create an anagram of _____ (MS torture)
What does White Rabbit drop? white gloves and a fan
In Cocteau's film Beaty and the Beast, Beauty's tears become? diamonds
D.H. Lawrence: “Never trust the teller, trust the tale.”
Lewis Carrol's nickname inspired which character? Dodo
Tautology: circular argument “I’m interested because it’s interesting.”
Goody-Two-Shoes is an emblem of _____ (perfection) which adults lack -- My Book and Heart
If Alice is a part of the Red King's dream, then what are Tweedle Dum and Dee? ditto ditto ditto
What causes Walrus and Carpenter to weep? they feel sorry for the wee Oysters they are gobbling down
Big theme of English classes? the Dark Side (Far Side? :)
Most prolific serial killer 19th century England? Mary Ann Cotton
Two primary ghosts in Talbot book? Sid James and The White Lady
Jabberwocky poem based on which legend? Lambton worm
Last line of Alice: "Life, what is it but a dream?" ACROSTIC
Walter Pater: “All art aspires to the condition of music”
My Book and Heart: “The text informs reality”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
dream
Dr. Sexson, looking like the Wizard, is telling me something important, but he is fading and I can't quite hear ... "pay more attention to..." I turn over and go back to sleep to try and hear the rest. I'm in the Beartooths with my father. We're grazing like bears on the huckleberries, stopping to listen for real bears, then clambering down to a small stream for a drink. He shows me the horsetails ! and how to use them to shave oboe reeds. He shows me the mayfly casings on the stone cliffs and tells me the story of their short lives.
I wake and weep. He's been gone ten years. I remember his anger at my grandfather, my husband. I remember my mother's fury when I got lost in a book or at the piano. I remember reading in the green chair near the window and his gentle hand on my head as he passed by.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
favorite Alice
more trouble! Every time I try to pick one, I think "But wait, what about..."
Still trying to choose ONE...
'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible things.'from "Wool and Water", but then there's also chapter one, watching the snow kiss the windows and the drifting into sleep and the pondering of punishment ... and chapter three with everything "worth a thousand pounds" and chapter two "remembering one is a Pawn" and on the way to becoming a Queen!!! ... not to mention "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" and trying to get out of the dark wood and the incredible shocking mesmerising horror of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" !!!!!!!!! .... and Bob Dylan's "a childish dream is a deathless need and a noble truth is a sacred creed" from Love and Theft released on 9.11.2001 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And it certainly DID seem a little provoking ('almost as if it happened on purpose,' she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't reach.
Still trying to choose ONE...
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?
impossible
I'm having trouble with this -- when I try to think of something impossible, I always come up with some way it could be possible -- my father used to say I was a classic case of someone who, coming upon a huge pile of shit, would think "there must be a pony here somewhere"
dream
I'm trying to hide money from my mother ... bills ones and fives, I push them into crumpled newspaper and shove it all to the back of shelves stacked to overflowing with other papers. When I go to retrieve it, I can't find it. It’s gone. Madly searching. Gloria shows up and says not to worry, I should go with her to a party at Chico (only it’s not) It’s night, many people, all strangers, music, talk, labyrinthine halls and rooms. I'm sitting at a low table in a small room ... two women and myself smoking opium (only it’s not) ... small dabs like soft hashish but in odd colors like oil paints ... heated, inhaled, a slow smiling gentle floating high. A man behind me, his hands light on my waist, a great soft dark voice, whispering "do you want to dance" ...we do, close, erotic, delicious... “I don’t like cheerleaders” as he disappears ... hoping to find him among the rooms, but I'm in a crowded gallery with lots of small art on the walls that i do not like ... I see Gloria again, she laughs and says his name is Isaac ...
when I woke the Beatles' "Help" was on the TV ... PBS 3 AM
when I woke the Beatles' "Help" was on the TV ... PBS 3 AM
November 5, 2008
DREAMS
dream language
dream logic
intensity
personal myth
"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."
Macbeth Act 1, scene 4
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
The Tempest Act 4, scene 1
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth | Act 5, scene 5
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
Henry James
synecdoche
elegy
history| myth
Talbot
290 recurrent violence
p.291 only immortality is Art
p. 294 immigration
p. 298 all our people
Lambton Worm
The worms crawl in,
the worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
Mayflies Ephemeroptera
dragonflies and damselflies
My Dinner with Andre
Groucho
Duck Soup
dream language
dream logic
intensity
personal myth
"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."
Macbeth Act 1, scene 4
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
The Tempest Act 4, scene 1
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth | Act 5, scene 5
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
Henry James
synecdoche
elegy
history| myth
Talbot
290 recurrent violence
p.291 only immortality is Art
p. 294 immigration
p. 298 all our people
Lambton Worm
The worms crawl in,
the worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
Mayflies Ephemeroptera
dragonflies and damselflies
My Dinner with Andre
Groucho
Duck Soup
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