People in my Class

Today I had class over Faulkner (and will be for the next few weeks). In this class especially, I feel that I am learning more about my classmates than the literary style and thematic overtures of the novel. You know, the one who raises his hand, the Great Contradictor, the Butter-Inner, the I'm-Always-Right, and the I-will-never-talk-outlouder. These are my classmates. Oh yea, and the I-must-have-chronic-need-to-peeitis (er). These folks and their speaking skills (?) populate my physical space and my imagination for three hours a week. They postulate the woes of deciphering the meaning of italics, the place history occupies in our collective v. individual memories, memory itself, the glories and injustices of the Deep South.... And while these topics are themselves truly interesting and thought provoking, I can't help but wonder what Captain-Coughs-A-Lot eats in his ice cream, or how Miss-Chatty-Kathy-in-The-Plaid (everyday) writes at that funny angle and who her kindergarten teacher was who encouraged this haphazard writing style.

In my own individual memory of this particular class I will probably remember more about my professor's stunningly eccentric yet humblingly stylish choice of ensemble week after week than the recurring image of wistaria and what that must mean to the Compson/Sutpen families of Yoknapatwpha County.

I like studying literature, and characters--especially the ones in my literature courses.

Only in a lit course could a long-skirted wiz kid from Arkansas make friends with the cheerleaderish smarty on the right and scorn the silly frat looking guy who makes jokes without punchlines and comments about what must be a different novel than what the rest of us are reading. I love this microcosm we populate, me the seriously silly student who loves to read faces as much as lines, my buddy-in-crime perpetual Ph.D neighbor and the other characters who find words, language, plot and authoring utterly tantalizing. We each play the part of protagonist in our own wayward tales of student loans, too many jobs, and not enough books. We congregate to feed ourselves with fiction and prose as a way to understand and stifle the modern moment, yet we do so with the understanding that when we leave, we will not know where the other goes. We imagine a dimly lit carrel on the fourth floor of the library, a smokey coffee shop from the days of Nabokov--for of course the literate must occupy the shadowy, dusty concaves of the world.

The fictions we read, the fictions we write, the fictions we right make up the true stories of our graduate student lives. I go so far as to presume that not only the reading-enabled, but the others, the media, technologically entrenched minds engage in the same critical analyzations of others of their kind. However, I'll bet you can't guess what I did tonight when we closed the covers of Faulkner and diverged in the foggy downstairs portico, into what gothic, secret gable I secreted myself to muse over the musings of a modernist-mind....

Or, maybe I just made scrambled eggs and toast, ate some Rocky Road, wrote a silly blog, emailed my little sister and looked up the costs of a make-believe trip to Nepal. Maybe you did the same thing. Maybe we all populate an interchangeable world just like that of a Cheever story. Maybe we're all just a little silly, maybe.

PS--I have the greatest respect for all my classmates and other foragers of education, whether you be undergraduate, post-bac, teacher, reader, learner, person of all interests--I like you people. I really do. Keep doing whatever it is that spices up your potatoes so that I have more stuff to think about!

I saw a plate memorializing Obama in Walgreens. There were fireworks, the white house, Obama in a suit (not smoking).... Sometimes I think this country actually needs MORE prozac. Seriously. A PLATE? Let's eat off of our president-elect's face, that or stare at the cheesiest object ever created whilst we eat. Either way, I find it weird. Only octogenarians decorate with plates anymore and let's face it, most of them voted for the other guy. A marketing genius did not come up with this plate.

And in other news:
I did not eat any peas on New Year's Day. So I think 2009 is pretty much screwed for me. Any suggestions? Also, my cat broke my coffee mug with George Bush's face, complete with devil horns (which is not the same thing as a plate with Obama's face on it). The really sad thing is that now I think that my cat's a Republican. Soon he'll be clawing through my bags of Fair Trade coffee, organic muffin mix, all my books on Fidel Castro (and other revolutionary leaders axed by the holy United States of America) and carrying a flag pin in his mouth between meals. At least, like Sarah Palin, he's adorable. Unlike her, he's smart.