The 10th Muse- My last Blog

So here we are, the last week of classes and I'm only at 9 blogs. I confess that this is partially because I've been mocked for each of my last two blogs so far and thus it's a little hard to want to write more, but on the other hand I thought if I'm not going to write a ton of blogs let me give them each meaning. And so I assigned them each a muse.
1st blog: Calliope (Epic poetry)
2nd blog: Thalia (twisted comedy)
3rd blog: Erato (erotic poetry)
4th blog: Euterpe (lyrical poetry)
5th blog: Polyhymnia (sacred hymns)
6th blog: Urania (astronomy)
7th blog: Melpomene (tragedy)
8th blog: Terpsichore (music and dancing)
9th blog: Cleo (history)
I won't tell you how these muses fit with my blogs because you will assign them meaning even if I do tell you and you will see your meaning as more profound and better than that given by the author because that after all is what English Majors do.
I called this class a cult a while back and I will never recant that label. The cult of Sexson is strong in room 1-115 in Wilson hall MWF from 11-12. The cult is one that accepts Dr. Sexson's ideas and does not let them go even if they have faults in them. I think that although I have at times belonged fully to the cult there is one thing that I cannot accept and that has put a barrier between me and the other faithful members of this cult. I cannot accept that literary experiences are more important that real experiences. I know that Dr. Sexson will disagree and make me feel like a fool again for even saying such a thing but bullshit. Yes there are thousands of things that you can experience through literature; that is valid. Yet those things are missing one crucial piece and that is all of the little experiences that no one thinks are good enough to write about. No one can describe the feeling of waking up after a 7 month winter to the smell of rain. They can describe how much you wanted the rain and how it smells but they cannot make you feel that joy of knowing spring is here. I do not think that a person can get the same internal experiences from literature that they can from real life. And if we're living in a matrix and someday someone wakes me up with a blue pill fine then I will be awake and experience fully all of the things that world and if that proves to be a false reality so be it but I will have memories of the places I have been because I could describe them to you not because I've read someone else's descriptions and emotions but because I have felt and seen them. I know that some of you will go back to reading FW will a shrug and the idea that this is what the smartest man you know considers to be highbrow and intelligent. Well FW is indeed great. The flow of it's poetry and prose is fantastic, and while I don't think Joyce got everything he certainly got a lot in. It is glorious and beautiful but then so is the world. I find that as I read FW from beginning to end and end to beginning, page by page, I could put so much more into the pages that related to something I had seen or done. The beauty of experiencing literature is not that you get to experience more it is that you can relate the literary experience to your own and thus understand even clearer what the author is saying. And so from one cult member (for I never was able to give up the cult even though it ruined my day some days) to another I beg you go out and experience things in the world around you. Literature can only take you so far without reality to help you bridge the last gap.

Ground Hogs Day

Dr. Sexson asked us to treat one day like Billy Murry treats Ground Hogs Day, ie remember every single detail.

This morning I worke up. My first thought was a feeling to digust and telling myself to wake up. I know that my dream was repulsive and I don’t wish to recall it. I roll over moving my polka-dot sheets and the star and bubble red, green and blue covered fleece blanket the my mother made me. I prop myself up on my forearm and lift my head off my blue pillow case covered pillows. I look at my clock sitting on my bed next to my cell phone, it reads 6:00 which was alarming at first before I realized I didn’t have to be up till 7 which ment my alarm was set for 6:41. I lay back down thinking to go back to sleep for 40 min but cannon get the repulsive dream ou of my head so I decide that I will get ahead in some of the things I have to do. I swing my feet out of bed and reach down to the shelve-like appendage below my bed and pull out my hair brush. I brush my hair, stand up, and walk across the ridiculously cold linoleum floor to my computer. I shake the mouse and wake up the computer, click the minimize button on iTunes, Microsoft Word, and My Pictures Folders. I lean on my black and metal chari to get my feet off the floor and click to open Google Chrome. When my homepage comes up I click a link to Facebook, open and new tab and click open the weather. I open Bozeman Weather and look at the hour by hour forecast and decide to ear a polo shirt, jeans and Chacos. Closing that tab I look at my Facebook. There are no new messages and no new notifications. I scroll down but see no new stories that I want to read. I ‘poke’ my sister and stand back up. I walk over to my closet, get my shower stuff and get ready to shower. I walk out of my room to the bathroom and shower. When I get back to my room I put my shower things back in my closet, turn on my iTunes to the MSU ’08-’09 playlist. I moisturize my face and smooth/gel my hair. I put on my jeans and turquoise polo, realize that it no longer fits so I take it off throw it in my “donate pile” and put on a brown t-shirt that reads “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute.” Once I’m dressed I make my bed and spread out the posters and bathroom readers that I need to put up as part of being an RA. I grab my binder covered in tape-bubbles and begin to distribute tape. I put 4 pieces of tape on each page one in each corner. Once all that pages spread out have tape I hang all of them up. In the bathroom I take down the old readers, put up the new ones and on my way back to my room threw the old ones in the recycling bin. I then repeat this process until all of them are hung. Once the poster were all hung I have ½ till I need to go to breakfast so I go back to my computer and got my notebook and 3 different colors for my Triples Fineliners that were different from the surrounding bio notes in the bio section of my notebook. I navigate to www.homepage.montana/~wcross and catch up on the bio notes I had missed last week. After I copy the notes I check my e-mail, nothing new. I then notice that I was going to be late, so I put my notebook and my pens in my backpack. I pull out my shoe drawer and grab by Chacos, and then put them on. Grab my green PV Staff hoodie and put it on and pick up my backpack. I lock my room and head downstairs. At the front desk I move my sunflower magnet from the In column to the Out column and I walk out the front doors into Roskie Wind Tunnel and behind me Roskie explodes into a fiery ball of doom. Ok not really but I’m sick of writing and I’m sure your sick of reading. 

Reality vs. Imagination?

There is a musical written, as it would appear, for kids, yet I find that it holds the answer to one of the questions that has burned me the most over the length of this course. I find the importance of what is real over what is imagined should be given the utmost attention. However, in this “children’s” musical, Seussical the Musical the opening song is titled “Oh the things you can thing” and from there the musical becomes a celebration of imaginings becoming reality. Jojo (the main character) imagines the entire story including pulling the narrator “out of a hat.” His imaginings, his “thinks”, bring reality of imagination. It would seem then that Dr. Sexson’s story of his experienced-based friends is right and that by reading literature we can still experience life. Yet, many of his “thinks” only manifest themselves because of the real experiences he has. To me this suggests that though the musical allows it’s audience to experience a lot of things ultimately the real experienced are at the base of everything. I think this means that for some the experiences that they get through literature and most important because they get to experience more things. For other thought their role to have real experiences and “think” other experiences to share. Both roles are important in the cycle of literature. One is the day and the other is the night. Both real experiences and literary experiences are necessary for the furthering of literature and the reverence with which it is treated. I will say however that for those outside the bubble that is called the English Department very few will ever have a meaningful experience out of literature. 

Treasure?

I’m sure that if I actually post this it will cause a stir because I unlike most of you (guessing from class discussion) did not think that The Alchemist was cheesy. I thought that it held an excellent message. I think that we must remember as English Majors that not every piece of writing is written for us. The Alchemist is a lowbrow book written for the lowbrow masses. The lowbrow masses don’t need to be stimulated to find the connections between literature and other literature. The lowbrow masses need direction in their lives. LRES majors don’t need to know that FW is all-encompassing. Engineers don’t need to understand plurosis and kenosis. And if you are thinking as you read this ‘well they should, then everyone would be enlightened’ you are kidding yourself. The Alchemist was written to make people see that their ‘personal legend’ is ok to follow. That it is acceptable to set out, experience, and find the treasure of themselves. It is the English Majors that have a problem with this because they “get more experiences out of literature than you could ever get from travel.” (I cry bull but that is beside the point) We as English students have a way of looking down on our noses at people who don’t understand literature, or don’t create literature to our level. It made me chuckle in class today because people had such a problem with Santiago having to go back to the tree to find the treasure. The point is that the money is not his treasure. More than once he had in his possession a sum equal to his treasure. The treasure was the experience. The treasure was seeing things to know they existed, and finding out what really mattered. This cult rather disgusts me because we are so stuck in how highbrow we are we forget that not every piece of literature has a secret meaning, not every story means something else. Sometimes things aren’t written for us, they are written for people who just need a little motivation. Santiago’s experience was a treasure to millions of people because it inspired them to go live. This class found it annoying and cheesy and overt. Well duh it was written for people who need things spelled out clearly for them. So shut-up and enjoy the treasure you’ve found in your intelligence, instead of trying to please the cult and make yourselves into totally asses.

Beckett’s Eyes

In class we looked at a picture of Samuel Beckett. WE discussed how he looked Kafkaesque and a little creepy. Yet, in his eyes I saw someone I knew from my childhood adventures on my friend’s ranch. My friend’s grandfather was the oldest cowboy I could remember ever meeting. His name was Mr. Valentine and his eyes matched Samuel Beckett’s or rather Beckett’s eyes matched his.

They both have a depth and tiredness that lends them the illusion of knowing more about the world than they could ever shear with anyone else. This wisdom of the world gives both these mend the power to disillusion those around them. They are able to enlighten those around them to reality even though reality is at times dull and dim. Beckett uses this power of disillusionment to remind us that the writer is simply creating whatever story he wants to and can at any moment remind the reader that none of it is real. Beckett reminds his readers that while it is nice to read stories and literature they are just stories and not to read to deeply into them. Mr. Valentine used this power when the greenhorn ranch hands got too full of themselves and forgot what working on a ranch really meant. I was often one of these greenhorns and unlike Beckett Mr. Valentine never told us straight up that reality sucks but we can’t ignore it. Beckett tells us “it was not midnight, it was not raining” but Mr. Valentine never told us working on a ranch is more that riding a pretty horse over the range. His favorite way of grounding us was to assign fence duty (riding the perimeter in the sketchy ranch truck and replacing any bent or broken fence posts and restringing wire) or work on weaning calves (he knew that the cries of calves half starving and ripped from their mothers was enough to sober us to reality).

Beckett’s eyes are those of someone who knows too much and has the unfortunate duty of sharing it with those around them running the bright, happy, illusion. 

The Way It Is Written

I realized today something very important about Finnigans Wake. I was reading something lowbrow which I’m not sure is allowed anymore by the cult, but whatever. I was rereading actually. I was rereading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (ironic now as I’m typing this so much after it was written that this book was brought up so often). I’ve read this book more that is probably healthy yet I continue to enjoy reading it. I realized that it is no necessarily the story that I enjoy (though in this case I do really enjoy the story) it is rather the way it is written that I enjoy. I enjoy the way the words flow off my tongue (perk of having my own room since I was younger, I always get to read aloud) and the way the sentence in and of themselves separate and then join together. I realized it is this ebb and flow that I work for when I write and that my subject does not always matter. I think that if I am going to be able to finish and restart FW this year this is the aspect I will leap upon. The fact that read aloud FW is a beautiful and glorious ebb and flow of language. Full of double meanings it lets me understand that what is actually happening might be Joyce’s secondary objective and that is how I will begin again the Book of the Night.

Iff The Water Genie

In a far away, distant, foreign place, country, there is a wonderful, grand, perfect, place. It has flowers, booms in all colors, petals will sweet fragrance.  In the meadows, leas, open land there are wild horses, which run, gallop, play in a mosaic, mix, myriad of colors. The horses form the perfect blend, combination, amalgamation, of playfulness, liveliness, mischievousness and power, strength, vigor. In the forests, woods, there are trees, ferns, vines, vegetation, undergrowth, overgrowth making them dark secret places with birds and other animals. One of these birds is the Colorado Mt. Lark. It has a brown, speckled, dirty back and body and a tan, white, eggshell front. It’s beak, mouth, pie-hole is yellow and it likes to eat slurppy worms.

Why am I in this Class?

I haven't written in my blog very much recently because I am confused about what to write. Everyday when I go to class I find myself more and more confused, not by the material but rather by most of the other people in the room. I find myself thinking that they are obnoxious and elitist, which is how low brow views highbrow. Yet, I wouldn't call myself lowbrow necessarily. I find that I do not struggle to understand concepts in this highbrow cult oops I mean class or with the texts we are reading. I struggle with FW but then who doesn't?
My confusion stems from this: why am I better than other people who aren't highbrow? Or if I am not highbrow why are all of you better than those who are lowbrow? Why is getting addicted to literature better than getting addicted to meth. We are all destroyed either way.
I love reading and I am very much so addicted to literature, recently Samuel Beckett. I get lost is the readings of this cult, oops there I slip again I mean this class. I often see the incredible coincidence of these texts in the world around me and thus I assign more meaning to these worldly things. Yet these things do not make the world more inspiring to me. There is still so much that cannot be included even in a piece of literature that includes everything like FW. I cannot say that, although I've been somewhat addicted to these texts, I've ever not been able to walk away if I could go outside instead. Why be trapped in an addiction of fabulous ideas and wonderful life connections. What is the point of understanding of partially understanding the mysteries and ideas shown in the highest texts if you don't have your own experience to connect them to? So what if I've read FW or Samuel Beckett? I'd rather be able to say "I have lived."
My ultimate questions are: What is so highbrow about reading literature when you could experience it yourself? Why is reading highbrow literature better than living life? What is the point of sitting and reading someone else's view on the world and society when you could go out and see it for yourself?

The Language of the Dude

The demonic language or what Professor Sexson calls "dude language" is far more prevalent in our culture than the high brow language that we find in Finnegans Wake. It is hard sometime to even get the "dude speakers" hear you as you speak with big vocabulary words. Intrigued by this I decided to listen in on some of the residents in Roskie Hall while they were playing the all popular COD-MW II (Call of Duty-Modern Warfare II). As I was walking down the hall toward their rooms I heard two friends, we'll call them "Forrest" and "Ryan" having a brief conversation:

Forrest: Ahhh, wha'ed you do that for man, I'm on your freaking team.

Ryan: Sorry brother, my bad couldn't see you.

Forrest: Douche, hey watch behind you

(sounds of rapid fire)

Ryan: Got the bastard, thanks for the heads up man

Forrest: Man I've got so much homework

Ryan: F*** it, you can do it tomorrow

(sounds of rapid fire)

Ryan: F my life, this game f***ing sucks man

Forrest: That douche is totally just squat killing (not totally sure on this one)

(knock on the door from me)(more rapid fire)

Ryan: Yeah

Me: Hey guys could you keep it down a little bit it's quite hours

Forrest: Oh yea sorry dude we'll shut the door

It makes me wonder am I really a "dude" but beyond that what would Joyce think (WWJT)?

I think he would laugh and go back to cackling evilly over Finnegans Wake (which is the laughter I imagined when Dr. Sexson said he laughed as he wrote it.

New Blog or Old Blog

As I set up this blog for this class I find myself thinking, haven't I done this before? and the answer in more than one ways is yes. This is the second blog I've set up for Lit 436 but I'm also pretty sure that I have done this same blog before. I decided to get fancy and as I set up my own personal settings I decided to start my blog with a picture of a sunset, or is it a sunrise? You might never know. Is the sun just rising out of it's nightly underworld journey or is it just beginning that arduous task. It made me laugh because it doesn't really matter the picture is beautiful either way and if what we've been talking about in class is true then it doesn't matter where in the cycle I start because everything is circular and everything is repeated. Every ending is a beginning and every beginning is an ending. That's a line in a song I think, called "Closing Time" by Semisonic check it out. My favorite line comes at the end of the second verse "Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end" it's also quite fittingly at the very end of the song. They also say that closing time is "time for you to go out to the places you will be from" yet another beginning coming from an ending. The Eternal Return shows us that everything returns to exactly where it once was. Everything returns to it's own beginning at its end. SPOILER ALERT: the seven book Dark Tower Series by Steven King (READ IT!!!!!!) is close to Finnegans Wake it that the last lines of the last book MATCH the opening lines of the first book driving the reader almost insane. The Eternal Return shows that we continually circle through the motions of our lives and the reset button is what we are striving for though we don't know it. Steven King does imply by a slight change that it is possible to get out of this eternal cycle and that is what Nietzsche would call "being." So even though I can logically defer that I have set this blog up before it kinda feels like the same thing over and over again maybe with slightly variations but not really.