Language
Posted on February 7th, 2008 by Sidewriter
It is an odd experience to enjoy a book while finding its plot boring and its characters irritating. The story and characters were incidental, just vehicles for Tolstoy to show off his ability to break the world into its subtlest moments. He drops the tiniest of details without it ever feeling tedious, and he does it for nearly 1000 pages. I never cared about the characters, and like relatives that have overstayed their welcome, I was glad to see them go. Nevertheless, I read the whole thing with awe.
Rain
Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.–Raymond Carver
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The greatest weight — What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into you loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumberable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even, this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” woud lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
currently reading: Desert Solitaire A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey
I have always thought of places as existing in a category separate from people. People are portable, self-contained. Places are not portable, and they are connected physically to every other place in existence; no place is truly self-contained. Four chapters into Desert Solitaire, and I am questioning this fundamental separation.
“There’s another disadvantage to the use of the flashlight: like many other mechanical gadgets it tends to separate a man from the world around him. If I switch it on my eyes adapt to it and I can see only the small pool of light which it makes in front of me; I am isolated. Leaving the flashlight in my pocket where it belongs, I remain a part of the environment I walk through and my vision though limited has no sharp or definite boundary.” (p.15)
Perhaps place is not external. The boundaries the light of a flashlight creates sever the user from the environment. To be severed, one must have been connected in the first place. Place and person are one, as if all the creatures running around the surface of the earth are limbs, or at least extensions of the earth. I realize this is an obvious concept to a seasoned naturalist, but I am new, and although I’ve experienced a deep connection with the land while hiking or stargazing with my back against soft, damp grass, firm sand, or once, the cold asphalt of a deserted two lane road, I’ve never tried to articulate that connection.
We as humans are ambulatory and cognizant, therefore changeable and free. Yet, it is common for us to hunker down, make a nest, and establish a place that is not portable, that for the most part does not change. The vast majority of humans run patterns as predictable as a hamster’s. There’s a center, our home, from which we venture out and away from for varying lengths of time and varying distances. If we drew it, it would start to look like a flower with a dense center and thin petal paths shooting out and back in again, sometimes one would shoot far enough away for another, smaller flower to sprout, with a hotel or hostel or campsite as its center.
I think I could make a valid argument that this pattern is a capitalist function. It is because we have stuff that we think is valuable but that we do not always want to carry. We must have a central, unchanging place to leave it, and we return to that place simply to retrieve or exchange our stuff. But I am more inclined toward the argument that we instinctually know that we are incomplete without a stationary part of ourselves. Most of us choose to create a stationary part of ourselves that seems self-contained to us, that is small in the face of the entire earth. We prefer bedrooms, houses, cities, even states to call home. It is quite beyond my comprehension now to imagine feeling at home anyplace on earth, or in the universe. I suspect I’ll always need a building with a bed and pictures of loved ones on the wall to feel at home, but I like this concept as something to strive for: I am human, therefore the earth is my home.
2/13/06
I’m going to see The Vagina Monologues on Friday. I’ve seen it once before in ASL, so this will be the first time I see it in English. In ASL, I thought it was powerful, and fascinating, and important. I was not offended, not even when one performer emphatically signed “CUNT! C-U-N-T! CUNT!!!” and the interpreter yelled it accordingly. I was fascinated (the clitoris has more nerve endings than any other human body part!), I was horrified (it’s customary in some cultures to punish a woman for various affronts to social norms by throwing acid in her face), but I was not offended.
I’ve recently read a few articles that indignantly decry the horror of this play, (which, by the way, is put on by a non-profit organization that is devoted to stopping violence against women, such a horrible cause.) Apparently the writers of these articles think vaginas are inherently offensive (ridiculous) and that The Vagina Monologues is about vaginas.
This is much like saying that the Grapes of Wrath is about a family that moves to California to become farmworkers. It sounds true, until a person capable of thought spends a nanosecond thinking about it and realizes that The Grapes of Wrath is about social injustice, prejudice, class discrimination, labor, unions, government, food production, the strength and depth of the human spirit, etc.
“The Vagina Monologues are about vaginas.” It sounds true until a person capable of thought reads it, thinks about for a nanosecond and realizes it’s about social injustice, sexism, class discrimination, prejudice, violence, establishing identity and self-esteem, self-exploration, and the process of appropriating language, etc.
If you ever get the chance, go see the show. www.vday.org
Thanks for reading my rant. Here’s another rant and a link to one of the original articles:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/02/16/the-vagina-warriors-are-gonna-getcha