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Went to see [The Laramie Project], a play, at [Playmakers Repertory Company] at [UNC]. It was amazing. Maybe more later, but just wanted to mention now that it's well worth seeing! I really like the idea of how it was written and produced, too, with Moises Kaufman and the [Tectonic Theater Project] going to Laramie and interviewing the residents there for material; the play is mainly a concatenation of excerpts from the interviews.

concatenate: v. & adj. § v. tr. link together (a chain of events, things, etc.). § adj. joined; linked.

I'm amazed by the bloggers who are doing the [novel-in-a-month] thing. Especially since they are already writing enough to fill a novel each month. So they're really writing two novels! I could never. I think it's funny that some of these blogger-turned-novelists-to-be have set up group-support blogs like [Writing in the Dark], meaning they'll be writing even more! Phew!

I say I'm giving up English studies, but then I still have moments of feeling excited by what I might do with literature. I think the problem is that what I want to do isn't really literary criticism; it isn't what people in the academy expect, reinforce, and reward. I was thinking in the shower just now that I want to propose a panel for the MLA conference on creative/critical writing (a friend of a friend in the program recently posted a call for papers for the conference, leading me to think about what I might do if I were as far along in the program as she is). I don't mean really a discussion on the difference between "high brow" and "low brow" culture or even "theory" and "fiction." Rather, I'm interested in how what we consider creative writing -- fiction, poetry, etc. -- does social, pedagogical, political, and other work differently or perhaps in the same way that critical theory does. Four books have stimulated this idea: (1) Chu T'ien-Wen's [Notes of a Desolate Man], (2) Lawrence Chua's [Gold by the Inch], (3) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's [Dictee], and (4) Maryse Condé's [Windward Heights].

(1) I haven't really read Notes of a Desolate Man, but I started it a couple of years ago. I was turned away then by the narrator's explicit engagement with the theories of Lévi-Strauss and Foucault because I was unfamiliar with them. But now that I think about it, there's something very interesting about a novel with characters who live in a theoretical world. They see their lives through the lenses of structuralism, post-structuralism, etc. And I think in some way, that's how I see the world, even though I don't understand the different theories very well. My question here is, what do we make of a novel that speaks theory?

(2) I'm still working on my master's thesis on Gold by the Inch. My paper at this point relies heavily on a few things like Marxist understandings of exchange and fetishism and theories of globalization in Southeast Asia. And I find myself asking why it's so important to retell these theories of personhood and economic flow when they are already so embedded in the novel itself. (Susan Sontag wrote back in the Sixties an essay called "Against Interpretation" that argued that interpretation is really just a restating of the content of a work and that critical writing should focus instead on elucidating the structure and mechanics of art. I don't know if I completely agree with Sontag, but I think her definition of interpretation is in some ways useful to understand what I'm doing in English studies.)

(3) I wrote a convoluted and truncated paper on Dictee last semester. I wanted to understand why it is such a central text for the Asian American Studies scholars who published widely in the 1990s. It is a peculiar text because it is not a novel. Cha was an experimental artist, a performance artist, an avant-garde artist. Her book is powerful because it lacks the usual conventions of narrative, even down to the level of syntax and sentence. So how is it that this book holds so much critical importance for these scholars? Why have they chosen it as a cornerstone for a new canon of Asian American literature? In the collection of essays on Dictee, Writing Self, Writing Nation, four of these scholars (and one visual artist) commented on Cha's text, reading it for what it said about Korean / American history. But what can we do with how Dictee functions outside the sphere of materialist readings?

(4) A nascent project for this semester is perhaps the most overt catalyst to my thoughts on creative vs. critical work. I read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights for a class and remembered a book I had started a couple of years ago called Windward Heights. I had picked up Maryse Condé's book because I had heard about Condé and was interested in her work and because the book was a rewriting of Wuthering Heights, one of my favorite books. As I started re-reading Windward Heights a couple of months ago with the intention of writing my seminar paper for the class on it somehow, I realized that all I was doing was describing an anti-colonial project of Caribbean literature as manifested in Windward Heights. But I wanted to think about why Condé explicitly was rewriting Wuthering Heights. Is it a kind of interpretation? An homage? A satire? An interpretation? And if it is an interpretation, what makes it different from what literary critics do in interpreting Wuthering Heights? What is the relationship between the two novels? Why does Condé choose Wuthering Heights? How is it commenting on the novel? What does Windward Heights do that Wuthering Heights doesn't?

In some ways, I want to figure out what the differences are between an artist, a critic, and a theorist. Obviously, their (overlapping?) roles can reside within the same person, but how much can we blur the boundaries between the work they do? What does it mean to be a cultural worker (a term I take from the strange but thought-provoking collective, [Critical Art Ensemble])? Is a literary critic an artist, too? Can't an artist say some of the same things theorists do?

ineluctable: adj. 1 against which it is useless to struggle. 2 that cannot be escaped from.

Erg.

I think a lot of people who stumble across my blog must think I'm very pretentious. There was that web-article on weblogs that described my blog as intellectual curiosities, implying I write as a sort of mental masturbation. But really, I'm such an unassuming guy and I'm so shy, too. Pretention is the last thing from my mind, though perhaps I am guilty of indulging my thoughts too much here. Then again, isn't that what a journal is? And as much as blogs are fusions of weblogs and journals, isn't that what blogs are?

[Hee hee.] Hair humor.

I never mentioned here that I cut my hair really short again. Tuesday, I just couldn't stand the feel of hair moving around, brushing against my neck and ears. So I took out my electric razor after class and cut it almost all off; all that remains is an even layer of hair about two centimeters long. Ah... short hair bliss. It's soothing to rub my hand across my hair. It's like a brush! (Joe calls me brush head.)

Ok, so I think I've finally decided that this isn't going to work. I just don't have a strong enough grasp of what it means to be an academic in English studies. I had a short discussion with my officemate about the comprehensive exams we took in August. There was a town meeting about the exams for the new students in the program because when we took the exam this year, there was a lot of confusion about the structure of the exam. We were told it would have certain kinds of questions and be divided a certain way, but it was all different. So, clearly there is a lack of attention on the part of the faculty in designing the exam, and as we suspected, a lack of consensus or even understanding about the purposes of the exam. In any case, the town meeting was supposed to sort of clarify the purpose of the exam.

I looked at the comments I received on my exam earlier this semester. They were not very good. I was recommended to continue on to the PhD level, but not enthusiastically. In effect, the exam committee thought I was sort of an imposter, someone who read literature, but didn't do it quite in a scholarly way. And I just don't think I understand what that "scholarly way" is. Is it a stylistic thing? Is it a perspective? Is it something about the content of writing? I just don't know. And I don't feel like it's worth my finding out anymore.

Of course, that means that over two years later (after graduating from college without a clue what I would do with my life), I'm still no closer to figuring out what kind of career I could undertake. In the past, I had been fairly optimistic about that search. I structured the pursuit as an end in itself, believing that the concept of becoming was the important thing. As long as I continued to think about what I could do in this world, what work would satisfy my existence, I would be fine. But now, I'm not so sure. Maybe because I feel like I should've found at least something by now that I can do. I just feel wholly incompetent. And at the same time, like I am simply running away from everything that requires determination, persistence, and patience. Is that why I ran away from a medical career? Could I just not envision the long haul of medical school and residency? Am I doing the same thing with a career as an English professor? Am I just unwilling to do the work to become fluent in literary studies? I wish life came with an instruction book. But then, would I even follow it, or cast it aside as constrictive? I think that's my main problem: at the same time that I want answers, I don't want them as explicit instructions. I want to make my own answers, but I don't know how.

And then I'm also always feeling like a fake. I feel like I'm just making the gestures of teaching my students in the composition class. I can't imagine that they're really learning anything from me. I feel like I'm not really even a good student in my own classes. As much as I want to think of myself as a life-long student, one of those people who always have to ask questions, I consistently find myself mute in class. I have nothing to say in class. I'm not moved to say anything in class. I'm not inspired or provoked or intrigued to engage other students in class discussion. Even reading material, I don't feel like I read critically enough -- not in the sense of being argumentative or negative about the text, but understanding it not just on the level of what it says, but what its assumptions are, what it responds to, what its critical context is, etc. I feel like I'm just this passive, not-too-astute absorber of information. So sad.

Often in the last month, I've felt that I made a mistake in choosing to go into graduate English work instead of entering the library science degree program. If I had gone into library science, I wouldn't have gotten into debt taking out loans for school (I was offered a couple of fellowships for library science). I would be almost done with school at this point (it's a two-year master's program) as opposed to only really at the beginning of my PhD program (I'm almost done with a master's in English literature, but as a degree it's practically worthless by itself -- you can't really do anything with it that you can't do without). Plus, it's such a practical, career-related degree that I would feel more ready to take on a job in a library somewhere. Instead, I'm thinking it might not even be worth it for me to finish out the master's degree. I probably will try just because I've come this far anyways and I have nothing else to do.

Maybe I need to tackle seriously my desire to write novels. Or maybe I should take up my adolescent dream to be a comic book artist (and writer). Such capricious dreams, though. Of course they're mostly impractical as career paths, even though some people do make a living as novelists and comic book artists . . .

[Polyamory: Ethical Non-Monogamy]. A great introduction / explanation of the concept.

"I go on writing so that I will always have something to read."
- Henri in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion

At some point I need to go retrieve my pumpkin from out front and deliver it to the dumpster out back. So sad to see it go. It's November! EEP!

I've been sort of thinking lately that my life would be so much easier if I had continued on in the medicine-doctor career path. I mean, in some ways there is so much more stability to the idea of "doctor" than to the idea of "professor" (especially a professor in English). There's a reason why my parents pushed me to be pre-med in college and all; medicine is a stable career, a well-defined practice, even if it changes at a tremendous rate each day (new technological advances, etc.). Now that I'm floundering in the slipperiness of trying to define "knowledge" and "discipline" and "fact" and all, I'm beginning to wonder if the seeming arrogance of science-based thinking isn't perhaps necessary to get on in life. Which is not to say, of course, that science is foolish or bad in any way, but that in my experience of how it is taught and how it is used in everyday life to support beliefs and ideas and justify relations between peoples, it seems so simplistic and reductive. I dunno. My mind isn't big enough to grapple with these questions. I'm just glad that there are people strong enough to remain in the sciences while questioning the assumptions of science-based knowledge and its implications in our social-political-moral views.

catarrh: n. 1 inflammation of the mucous membrane of the nose, air passages, etc. 2 a watery discharge in the nose or throat due to this. catarrhal adj.

Eventually, I want to fade into the background of things. I want to be a wallflower; I want to blend into the wallpaper, the shadows, the glare. After class today I was talking to a friend on the dark street. The professor strolled on by a few minutes later and made a comment about my never talking in class. Oops.

It's Halloween! My pumpkin is outside on the mailboxes, smiling back at my apartment. I had to use one of my duck candles. I suppose it's worth it to see the glow of the orange-yellow fruit.

thenar: n. Anat. the ball of muscle at the base of the thumb.

Hmm. Right, so I zonked out last night at nine. I had a very full dinner and a glass of shiraz at [Cafe Parvaneh]. I could barely keep my eyes open afterwards! It was so delicious, though. Too bad I was literally knocked out by the overindulgence.

I've been on a book-buying spree this last week. Since the purchases I mentioned [last Thursday], I've gotten Rosemary Hennessy's Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, Lauren Berlant's The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, and Susan Oyama's The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Eep. They're all books I've had on my to-read list for ages. A couple of them I've had checked out of the library for quite awhile, too. My reading rate during the semester is atrocious, unfortunately, except for books assigned for class and articles directly related to papers I am writing. Even then, I can't read nearly as much as I want. But now I have them in my possession, so I can read them whenever I want without worrying about due dates and such.

So much work to do! As always. Need to prepare for library orientation for my students. Even though a librarian will be giving the orientation, I have to come up with something to tie the orientation into the class. Which means I have to sit down and come up with plans for this last unit. At least it's almost over!

Poor Joe. He's sad. But he's brave. He's so brave always. I admire him for what he has done and what he continues to do with his life, even though it is so hard sometimes to deal with people's reactions.

(Alliterate me: Parvenu Paul pickled peppers patiently, surpassing staid Sal's supermarket sales?)

parvenu: n. (fem. parvenue) 1 a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth or position. 2 an upstart. § adj. 1 associated with or characteristic of such a person. 2 upstart.

Think, Paul, think. I need to go get myself a thinking cap. I have plenty of hats, but none that stimulates my thinking. (This past Saturday on X-Men Evolution, Kitty Pryde bought a ziggurat-like hat to help her think. Maybe I need to find one of those... She had to give it up, though, because it gave her flat hair. I always get awful hat-head when I wear hats, too, because usually my hair is poofy.)

Someday, I might become an amanuensis. In fact, I used to like to copy out by hand stories I liked. Gimme your manuscripts!

amanuensis: n. (pl. amanuenses) 1 a person who writes from dictation or copies manuscripts. 2 a literary assistant.

Yay! Carved pumpkin now sitting on the window ledge in the kitchen, happily lit by a small votive candle. It's not very visible outside, unfortunately -- the window is next to a bright light by the door to the building and the moon is fairly full out, too (full moon Thursday!). But at least it's there. All I can see of the pumpkin are the glowing features. I can't really see the pumpkin itself from outside.

As I was trying different places on the window ledge, going outside to look and then coming back inside, I noticed how absent the apartment complex is of any Halloween decorations. Oh well. I'm thinking on Halloween night I'll put my pumpkin out on the mailboxes structure.

It's nice to wake up at 9:30 am and realize that I get back an hour so it's only 8:30. Now I just need to make sure I make the most of the morning and the afternoon to do the work I've not been doing all weekend. And then this afternoon I'm going to a pumpkin carving party! I've never carved a pumpkin before. I'm afraid of knives and other sharp objects. Death by stabbing. (One reason why the Halloweem movies were always particularly disturbing for me.)

I saw [Mulholland Drive] last night with some friends. It was straaaaaange. I haven't seen anything else by David Lynch before, but now I sort of understand why my friends in college insisted I would like his stuff. I actually didn't care too much for Mulholland Drive, though. Its oddity is what seems superficially appealing. But it lacks a sustained exploration of that oddity, in my opinion. In this movie, Lynch wants to think about identity and desire. I've been told that he's often used this "trick" -- switch the identity of his characters halfway through the movie. Well, okay. But what of it? By the end of the movie, the shifting identities and names only seems to be a game. There's no idea about what identities mean, if they are really shiftable, iterable, not completely fixed as we often think. Maybe there is some sort of clearer pattern of what Lynch did in changing the identities (one friend last night thought that every time the identities shifted, it was "one over"). But still, what of it? Are his characters all just stuck in a horrendous loop, doomed to replay the same desires between the same few players?

(Oops...burned the eggs I was frying. Need to learn how to pay attention when I'm cooking.)

One thing I could see in the movie was how Lynch was playing with the idea of acting. There seemed to be a consciousness in his characters by the time they switched identities that they were re-acting certain relationships with each other, re-interpreting them. It helps that in the first version of the story, Betty is an aspiring actress who practices a scene with Rita and then auditions the scene with an actor shortly after with an astounding difference. What seems flat, silly, and melodramatic at first becomes passionate, silly, and melodramatic the second time around.

I may be a cynic, but I think part of what was going on in the movie was a desire to have soft-core lesbian porn, too. And ok, yay for liberating female sexuality, but it quickly turned into craziness of women and love triangles with a man and jealousy and stuff.

effluvium: n. (pl. effluvia) an unpleasant or noxious odour or exhaled substance affecting the lungs or the sense of smell etc.