division

english grad students should not be about division. that's math. we shouldn't like it, we shouldn't seek it out, and we sure as hell shouldn't tolerate it. (not because it's math, but because it's division. math is ... necessary.)

so. there's some division. and lines are being drawn. and people are being manipulative and vicious. and it just makes me sick.

i remember when this organization stood between us and the "enemy" and i remember when it leaked information that was being kept from people who needed to know it. perhaps we didn't have donuts every monday morning, but we had things that mattered. now, because not enough people eat donuts on monday morning, because not enough people go play around at bar-based get togethers... suddenly there is division.

i see good, kind people being danced, puppet-like, into opposite corners. i see people who have no reason to disagree being led into bitter arguments about things that neither party used to consider important.

and i see a person who very much resembles (in the non-physical ways that truly matter) a person from back home. this person, to my mind's eye, holds strings, weaves webs, and sits in the center enjoying the entertainment.

and let me just say that it makes me sick.

another thing that makes me sick? copycat shooting threats issued less than 24 hours after people fucking died in that geology lecture hall.

what the fuck is wrong with this world?

'scuse me. i'm going to go cry.

love and peace, people. are you deaf? love and peace already. love and peace.

three things

...in order of my awareness and completely unrelated... or mostly unrelated... i think.

1. dr. nikki giovanni reading kicked ass today. to be honest, my faith in big-name writers has been restored. she was human and personable, had a powerful message, and was so dynamic that i had to work to hear all the nuances. and she was nice. the only other really big name dude i met was an ass in every way imaginable, so i'm glad to finally have gotten a balance for that.

2. (this one is more introspection than anything else, and may tend toward the "brutally honest about self" category) i am apparantly quite a bit worse than i thought when it comes to relationships. mini breakthrough of the evening: when things "click" off and i lose all interest in anything physical or even just emotionally intimate, there's actually a trend. there's a point where this happens. it's the same every single time and i hadn't noticed. (of course i must note here that there isn't such an "on/off" feature for purely platonic friendships... just physical, dating-style relationships)

i'm like one of those guys women are afraid of! once i see the vulnerability of true intimacy, i check out. i cannot handle the trust these people place in me, and i cannot bear the idea that i could be expected to be as trusting, open, and vulnerable in turn. it's a good thing i have no interest in relationships at the moment, because i'm apparently not the sort of person i could inflict on others with a clean conscience.

it's amazing what a steak dinner at a nice restaurant with a friend can do to enlighten you. and why we talked about relationship issues? who knows. but at least i've gotten another clue as to why this previously inexplicable off switch thing happens. not that i've got it nailed down or anything. but that is an interesting shared feature.

3. on a completely different note... every time i read about school shootings, i start to envision the layout of my current classroom. i try to figure out what the danger areas would be vs the somewhat defensible ones. sometimes i come to the conclusion that the third or fourth floor windows wouldn't be as dangerous as the walls, because student killers these days have some powerful firearms that could probably blast through a wall. i think about how to arrange the table so that the maximum number of students could have the maximum amount of safety from their rabid peer(s). i plan out how many desks i could cram against the door, and what position they would need to be in to most effectively slow/stop bullets.

and then i start to think about how useless these things would be if one of my own students was the shooter. i think about how useless it would be to even bother sending my students running down the hallways, because hallways are straight. a jump from the third or fourth floor would be better than a bullet... maybe. i don't know. there would be only one real option to protect my students if one of their immediate peers launches such an attack. i'd like to think i could fling myself in the way to somehow stall the inevitable, but the reality is that i'd freeze. i'm just sure of it. i'll be worthless as a protector of these kids.

and last of all i start to think about what kind of sick world we live in where i even have these thoughts. were these shootings just hushed up a lot eariler or have there been a lot more of them in recent years? what kind of sick society can't protect its individuals to the extent where there are students capable of these actions?

in case people were wondering, this is why i don't own a television.

love, love and peace.

life lessons

it's not every saturday you learn an actual, honest-to-goodness life lesson, but i've learned more than one today. and i simply must share.

life lesson one: i am an intellectual snob.

life lesson two: it's in everyone's best interests if i stay away from the rest of jack ketchum's novels.

life lesson three: it's never wise to depend on your instructors to have good taste in reading material chosen for a class.

life lesson four: there are times when it is just plain the better course of action to devote yourself to saying very little in class, esp when the alternative is proclaiming a textbook to be violence porn with no merit or redeeming traits. (note the use of traits here rather than qualities. i refuse to attach the concept of quality to this novel, even in the negative sense.)

those are the lessons i've learned today. i did not know these things at noon. i was starting to realize them at 1:00, and i'd gotten the gist of them by 2:00, but by 3:00 i had come to accept these lessons as hard, cold facts delivered from God above directly into my brain with no human interference. call it a light bulb experience if you feel the need for a cliche.

yes, really, this novel took all of 3 hours. or most of 3 hours. i spent some of that time pouring myself a tall glass of water, and another little bit of that time rolling my eyes/sighing in disgust/scribbling tacky commentary in the margins. the book is probably three times longer than Bend Sinister. BS took me fully 12 hours to read, and certainly wasn't a sigle-sitting book. it was great. the novel inspired all the horrified/sympathetic emotions and moral questioning that JK's novel attempts, in fewer-but-better-chosen words. and it does it with taste and zest and all sorts of mind-boggling twists. ketchum's novel is a pointless rehashing of child abuse that i think he probably enjoyed writing.

it isn't a case of violence helping to tell a story. it's a case of a story (more bare-bones plot arc than story, even) serving as a framework on which to hang the glorified violence. anyone who knows me can tell you that i am not all that easily disturbed by violence. my mind can almost always come up with worse, and i only add the almost on principle. i've never failed to provide worse, more gruesome pictures and events than the thing i'm reading. but i'm sure it'll happen some day. thus the "almost."

and perhaps this is just a fluke, and ketchum isn't one of those writers. still, after reading the afterward by the guy himself, i know the writing itself isn't going to be any better in a different book. i doubt the plot will. yikes.

really, the only point of including something on a reading list is so that students can read it, gleen information from it, use it in their analysis of other course-related materials, and perhaps even emulate it. in the last case esp, i may just leave off at "dear God in heaven, get me out of here."

instead, i'll pretend that the one-up-manship won't include the items on our reading list, and that i won't be subjected to peer-crafted violence porn in addition to the already present traditional porn.

and here's the point where it becomes my best interest to simply discontinue the post.

love, peace, and escapism

"hope" or "light at the end"

meeting went well. lots of coping mechanisms running around my mind. reaffirmation of my sanity.

and let's just say that, in the end, i can surround myself with an airtight plastic bag and twisty tie to avoid the mold contaminating the rest of the bread loaves in this barrel.

am determined not to come out of this experienced scarred and bitter. i went through two years of a similarly poisonous environment earlier and suffered for it in the end. not this time. i will not let it get me. i have options, and i'm using them.

i did try to engage. i tried to show them how things could be done. i really did put in the effort. i can still help my students and i can still improve my own work. so that's where my effort will go. as for my peers, well, it's just one of those times when you can't hope to help/change/improve others, and so shake off the dust and all that. it isn't worth the downward spiral.

self-protection is not selfish.

love and peace (and a dose of distance, as has worked in the past)

ah, tuesdays

i have discovered the day. every semester has one. the day of the week that is just, statistically speaking, worse than other days. it changes from semester to semester as classes and other scheduled duties shift around, but there is always a day. a Day, even, if we were to honor it with a capital letter of doom.

my Day is tuesday this time around, and it is living up to its Day-ness.

very little has gone especially right toDay, and a few things have gone not-right. that’s all okay, though. toDay is almost over, and a new day will start tomorrow. in fact, i’m all set up to meet folk(s) who can give me some pointers in how not to strangle classmates, so the chances of my becoming famous in the criminal section of the newspaper are slim. still, please everyone try to understand an original before imitating it. yes?

why have i blogged about this tuesday in particular? i lied in class today, saying that i liked part of this story that ... well, let’s say i didn’t actually like. and i suppose the smile i wore was a nonverbal lie, too. because i certainly didn’t appreciate the goings on, but while a grimace would have been more appropriate, it didn’t seem the thing to do. i’ve always disliked it when there’s a person in a group who ruins everyone’s day, and i don’t want to be that person.

that’s okay, though. now i’m home, and even though my second attempt at making some goddamned meat pies has blown up in my face and the eggs are off so i can’t even use the rest of my meat pie filling to make an omelet, that doesn’t change the fact that i’m home. here, i can breathe and remember that a whole 6 more days separate me from the next Day.

ah, tuesdays.

love and peace