Friday, April 19, 2019
The Telling
The telling.
That's what I like best about anything: stories, essays, novels, plays, epics. That's what I love.
How the makers create meaning sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, word by word, and sometimes morpheme by morpheme. There's a wonderfully erotic ee cummings poem about bodies that has the phrase "I like its hows" and I'd apply that to every story, every essay, ever offered up to its readers.
The hows. The telling.
I only wish I'd figured out in grad school how to craft that focus into an appropriate project.
Some might find that a shallow approach to literature, but there's a world of interest in that surface interface between teller and told, between player and audience, between maker and you.
If you want to dive deep, you have to start at the surface and return to the surface. There's more there there than we are often taught to understand and appreciate. (And, frankly, most misreadings arise from lack of attention to detail, to the foundation, to the surface interface I'm calling attention to, to the there.)
Luckily, teaching intro to literature and intro to non-fiction at a community college allows me to delve so much into the telling on a daily basis.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
A Ridiculous Injury
This early afternoon I was in too much of a hurry, rushing from a classroom down a hill via sloping walkways punctuated by steps and walkways and steps. I felt I needed to hustle to get materials from my truck in the lower parking lot beyond the soccer field before my office hours.
So, I was rushing downhill, not really watching my footing, and right before the second set of steps my right foot came down on a small pinecone that turned under my ankle and my ankle turned with it, rolling. I had such momentum going forward, a heavy pack of books on my back and another bag of papers and files on my shoulder, that I could not just stop. Instead, gravity was sending me forward without any gravitas whatsoever. I was going to fall, but falling down the set of steps seemed too fraught--I feared for my teeth and my skull, so I leapt and ran, lunging and launching myself even as I dropped one bag.
I "ran" down the steps, barely keeping my feet, that ankle protesting, ran down the steps and the next ramp--impossible to halt until I had run out all that momentum, had jumped a flowerbed, and had landed, sprawling on the sloping lawn. So lucky in this mild misfortune.
Luckily, the wind was not blowing, so the papers that had fallen and scattered from that bag had not gone far. One witness to my running-fall insisted on helping me gather the materials, insisted on telling me where the Health Center was. I hobbled to my office time, late now.
Hours later, after ibuprofen, I am icing the ankle again and, also, icing a dram of rum.
I had to hurry, you know?
4/19/19 Further reflections:
The whole thing felt like one of those dreams in which gravity doesn't quite exist, dreams in which we run and leap and find ourselves too far from earth, too far from safety . . . and then gravity returns. It was both hilarious and humiliating, both scary and beyond fear or thought. I am glad I kept going, you know, for anything less would have resulted in injury, serious falling, and the strain on my ankle is from that first rolling. Lucky me, seriously.
Also, when I limped past the scene of the crime this morning, I was chagrined to find that the whole thing -- from pinecone to lawn-sprawl -- only comprised about ten yards of territory. And, the second "ramp" was actually flat pavement, though leading to another flight of steps, which made the flowerbed hop (not "vault," as I first wrote) and lawn-roll mandatory.
P.S. About three weeks ago, I strained the other ankle by not paying sufficient attention, so there's a lesson for me, for me.
So, I was rushing downhill, not really watching my footing, and right before the second set of steps my right foot came down on a small pinecone that turned under my ankle and my ankle turned with it, rolling. I had such momentum going forward, a heavy pack of books on my back and another bag of papers and files on my shoulder, that I could not just stop. Instead, gravity was sending me forward without any gravitas whatsoever. I was going to fall, but falling down the set of steps seemed too fraught--I feared for my teeth and my skull, so I leapt and ran, lunging and launching myself even as I dropped one bag.
I "ran" down the steps, barely keeping my feet, that ankle protesting, ran down the steps and the next ramp--impossible to halt until I had run out all that momentum, had jumped a flowerbed, and had landed, sprawling on the sloping lawn. So lucky in this mild misfortune.
Luckily, the wind was not blowing, so the papers that had fallen and scattered from that bag had not gone far. One witness to my running-fall insisted on helping me gather the materials, insisted on telling me where the Health Center was. I hobbled to my office time, late now.
Hours later, after ibuprofen, I am icing the ankle again and, also, icing a dram of rum.
I had to hurry, you know?
4/19/19 Further reflections:
The whole thing felt like one of those dreams in which gravity doesn't quite exist, dreams in which we run and leap and find ourselves too far from earth, too far from safety . . . and then gravity returns. It was both hilarious and humiliating, both scary and beyond fear or thought. I am glad I kept going, you know, for anything less would have resulted in injury, serious falling, and the strain on my ankle is from that first rolling. Lucky me, seriously.
Also, when I limped past the scene of the crime this morning, I was chagrined to find that the whole thing -- from pinecone to lawn-sprawl -- only comprised about ten yards of territory. And, the second "ramp" was actually flat pavement, though leading to another flight of steps, which made the flowerbed hop (not "vault," as I first wrote) and lawn-roll mandatory.
P.S. About three weeks ago, I strained the other ankle by not paying sufficient attention, so there's a lesson for me, for me.
