strange dream

I dreamt last night that J at the prison gave me a book that was a compilation of fourteen narratives of crimes committed by men from this particular prison, past and present.

I sat down and read the whole thing that afternoon, and just a few minutes after I'd closed it up, I got a phone call from someone saying his name was Kelle [pronounced Kelly] Jackson and that he had served ten to fifteen years at this particular prison.  He said that when he'd been there, conditions had been horrible and that he'd heard that it had since become an easy place to do time.  He wondered if the state was going to give him some money to compensate for the time he had to do at this prison before it got better.

As I listened, my heart and mind raced because his name was really familiar.  I flipped the book open to the table of contents, dragged my finger down the whole first page, flipped to the second, and there was his name at the top: John "Kelle" Jackson.  (Later in the dream, I kept confusing Jackson with Johnson when I was telling the story to a few different people -- J and M from the prison, a few people who were at the party going on in the backyard of the house I grew up in while I sat reading in the front room [pronounced frunchroom].  I had to keep correcting myself.)

I said to Kelle Jackson, into the receiver of the non-cordless house phone, "Are you kidding me?  The violent crimes you committed, and you think you deserve compensation from the state?"  He corrected me.  He hadn't committed crimes plural, just one crime.  Later in the dream when I told the story to J and M, they confirmed what he's said, reminding me of the key points of the Kelle Johnson chapter I'd read earlier that day.

retreat

In November, I promised myself that when I felt well enough to enjoy it, I'd come back here, my favorite place.

All I want to do is read and write and, as harmlessly as possible, do whatever the fuck I feel like.

I went down to the thrift store to try to get some sunglasses. I lost mine. I didn't like any of them six dollars' worth (which seems kinda high to me), but I did like the way they'd organized their knick-knack department. (Jess.)

On the way, I saw this. Felt kinda pitifully ironic or ironically pitiful or something because I'm reading Missoula.

I also looked at their CD collection. Last week, at the thrift store in my own neighborhood (which is where I lost my sunglasses), the preponderance of Sarah McLachlan, Indigo Girls, and the Goo Goo Dolls made me think my neighbors must be full of White girls.  But the one today had practically the same collection! Now I'm gonna collect data in every thrift I go into.

reading Mary Poppins

"She was wearing her blue coat with the silver buttons and the blue hat to match, and on the days when she wore these it was the easiest thing in the world to offend her."

And tomorrow I want to try to get some time to write about a way that sexism has really been pissing me off lately.  And kinda hurting.   I'm saying this now to create a little accountability for myself to myself.

Eoin's birthday present

run-ons

He felt that he had fallen on the soft and thick cushion while his body, light
and weightless, had been run through by a sweet feeling of beatitude and
fatigue and was losing consciousness of its own material structure, that heavy,
earthy substance that defined it, placing it in an unmistakable spot on the
zoological scale and bearing a whole sum of systems, geometrically defined organs
that lifted him up on the arbitrary hierarchy of rational animals. His
eyelids, docile now, fell over his corneas the same natural way with which his
arms and legs mingled in a gathering of members that were slowly losing their
independence, as if the whole organism had turned into one, single, large, total
organism, and he --the man-- had abandoned his mortal roots so as to penetrate
other, deeper and firmer, roots: the eternal roots of an integral and definitive
dream. Outside, from the other side of the world, he could hear the
cricket's song growing weaker until it disappeared from his senses, which had
turned inward, submerging him in a new and uncomplicated notion of time and
space, erasing the presence of that material world, physical and painful, full of
insects and acrid smells of violets and formaldehyde.

Three sentences from "The Other Side of Death" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the stories in a collection of his that I'm currently reading. These kinds of sentences are common in Marquez's work, and I generally really like anything he's written. But they're so long, WTF. It takes me awhile to sink down into (and I really think that's the best way of phrasing what needs to happen for me to understand his work) his writing. It's just so different from how I use language myself, slow-moving maybe. Any one who knows me well knows that I generally do things as quickly as I can. Sometimes when I'm just washing dishes or getting dressed I get out of breath from moving too fast. (Also, I'm out of shape, apparently.)

I can't articulate exactly why, but this need to adjust my language-intaking-process reminds me of this project that I just did this summer. I'll be thinking some more about this.

Good morning!

I woke up this morning at about 8:30, grabbed my book, and headed out to the hammock in Arianne's yard. I quickly sat down, and quickly flipped the hammock upside down, tumbling off and landing on my ass a yard or so away. Whoopsie-doosie.

not delightful

Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass is a decidedly less pleasant read. Stomach ache.

delightful

I really can't imagine a better afternoon than the one I'm having, curled up in the armchair by the window, thinking about maybe making some French onion soup for lunch, and reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. I love this book. When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, it took me about a month. I liked it a lot, but I could only get into it for short amounts of time. I think that there's something intimidating about Marquez's super-long chapters. But I started this book Friday and I only have forty pages left.

I mean, there's something absolutely compelling about a passage like this, in which the perpetually-constipated protagonist shits his pants because he's so surprised by the sudden responsiveness of the object of his fifty-plus years' unrequited love:

Florentino Ariza thanked her, bid an urgent farewell with his hat, and left without tasting the coffee. She stood in the middle of the drawing room, puzzled, not understanding what had just happened, until the sound of his automobile's backfiring faded at the end of the street. Then Florentino Ariza shifted into a less painful position in the back seat, closed his eyes, relaxed his muscles, and surrendered to the will of his body. It was like being reborn. The driver, who after so many years in his service was no longer surprised at anything, remained impassive. But when he opened the door for him in front of his house, he said:
"Be careful, Don Floro, that looks like cholera.

I really lead a charmed life.

I can't BELIEVE I forgot that I love reading.

I'm an English teacher for Chrissakes. It's just so easy to not read books when I spend all day reading emails, worksheets, student essays, blogs, news articles, message boards, my Google reader, Facebook, body language in my classroom.

In the last two weeks, though, I've read this:(Holy cow.)

this:

(Tres compelling.)

this:

(Kinda dumb and kinda awesome.)

this:

(Inspiring.)

and this:(Challenging. As in I feel like I better do something.)

Now I'm getting started with this:(Required reading for my summer course!)

All excuses accounted for, I seriously don't know why I let myself get out of the practice of reading all the time. Shameful. These last two weeks, I've found that my books have woven into my thought processes even when I'm not reading; I'm making all kinds of connections between what's on the pages I'm reading and what's being said, written, performed, resisted in my classroom.

I mean, duh. This is what I ask my students to do all the time. Why the f did I think I was exempt?

what a good blog

Susan introduced me to this teacher blog a little while ago with this post, which, basically, blew my teacher mind: (Click photo to see post.)

And I really like today's post, too. I like that if you look closely, the blogger seems to share my aversion to Jim Burke.

things swirling around in my brain right now:

1. Susan is almost 7 hours into her drive. Suckerrrr. Except it's really cool that she's moving so far away, and I'm going to miss her.
2. I need to reply to Didi and Wendy, but I have so much I want to tell them, so I don't know where to begin.
3. I left my phone in Matt's car which simultaneously sucks and is awesome.
4. Whoa. I'm starting school in 3 weeks.
5. I'm SO excited to spend my afternoon reading English Journal (There's an article called "Teaching Ethnography: Reading the World and Developing Student Agency." And how good does, "Walking the Talk: Examining Privilege and Race in a 9th Grade Classroom" sound? So good.)
6. I also continue to be enthralled with How to Interpret Literature. Just about to head into the chapter on Marxist theory. Yessssss.
5. I want to make a poster for my classroom that asks these questions that I found in an EJ interview with Linda Christensen, social justice educator extraordinaire:

key questions:
Who benefits?
Who's marginalized?
Why is a practice fair or unfair? How could it be different?
What kind of society would I like to live in, and how could I get there?

6. Bobbie Fein is so cool and hilarious.
7. How the hell am I going to pull off this move next weekend with no vehicle?
8. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't want to pack.
9. The Cranberries are so underrated.
10. I wonder when Michael's coming home.
11. I hope my teaching certificate comes in the mail soon. Really soon.
12. I am so happy I started using Google Reader.
13. I'm feeling a major life shift coming on, and I don't really know how to feel about it.
14. I don't know what to do with myself right now.
15. I want someone to tell me what to do with myself right now.
16. How can I justify showing Do the Right Thing in my World Studies classes? Can I?
17. I want to start reading Sherman Alexie's blog, but it's overwhelming. I don't know where to begin.
18. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to quickly inject all of the thinking that happens when you read something into you so that you could "have" all the reading that you want to "have." Except that you don't "have" reading; you read. It has to be a process, and it has to be an effort, otherwise we wouldn't even think it was cool, and we certainly wouldn't want to be injecting ourselves with something uncool. Now would we?
19. I've probably been called "Ms. Burrito" for the last time. Sad. I hope the kids arrive safely back in Texas this weekend.
20. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I think I'll look at this:

WARNING: nerdiness below

Currently, I'm re-reading a textbook that one of my favorite professors wrote for a course I took last fall. This guy is just an AWESOME teacher. The book is called How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, and isn't even half as boring as it sounds. I dare say it's funny in places. I really like the way that he almost neurotically covers a point so as to minimize reader confusion. For example,

"People who misunderstand deconstruction often think that it says there is no meaning... On the contrary, and most characteristically, deconstruction actually multiplies meaning. In a related misconception, people who know little about deconstruction often suppose that it simply means destruction. But deconstruction is not destruction. It can change the way we view things, but it does not destroy anything. It offers more, not less. In deconstruction, there is always more, a surplus of meaning and rhetoric that Derrida calls a supplement... This is not important, but people who know hardly anything about deconstruction say "deconstructionism" or "deconstructionalism." Perhaps they are thinking of analogies to words like "stucturalism." The usual terms are deconstruction, deconstructionist, and deconstructive... Though many deconstructionists, and occasionally even Derrida, use the verb deconstruct (and it has even entered the popular talk of the general public), I think that using the verb deconstruct and referring to deconstruction as an action misses a key point. Since deconstruction refers to a basic principle of all language, we cannot really deconstruct something. If critics want to think deconstructively, then, instead of deconstructing a text, they find the way that it is always already deconstructed. They don't do it to a text. Instead they expose the way that it is already done, the way that a text has always already deconstructed itself." (78-80)

I can't help wondering what he would have to say about this email that arrived in my inbox this morning.

I think the idea is that the meaning of denim is always already multiple: bootcut, skinny jeans, wide leg, jean skirts, etc. I mean, it definitely looks like the models are thinking deeply about différance, or something.

And because I seriously can't get enough of this guy's writing style, here's a little snippet from his chapter on stucturalism.

"I like to give examples and see if my students can tell which are metaphors and which are metonymies. I might pick out a student and say that, in our class discussions, she is a real spark plug. That is a metaphor, because this student is not connected to or part of an engine... But what if my student is a robot? Then "spark plug" turns into a metonymy...

[Then he discusses how structuralists might have exaggerated the usefulness of understanding the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, but that it can sometimes be useful. He ends the discussion with:]

(And for better or worse, referring to metonymies will allow us to describe what we notice in a cool and sophsticated sounding way.)"

Was Moses stoned?

I'm reading a book my brothers recommended about Mormon Fundamentalists called Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Very interesting. I've never heard the following suggested interpretation:

"When Dan became reacquainted with marijuana through his association with Knapp, he says that because he was no longer under the thumb of the LDS Church, 'for the first time I was able to get high with a clear conscience, and perhaps that is why, rather than just experiencing 'the gladdening of the heart,' I began to experience the 'enlivening of the soul.' I began to have what I would call wonderful spiritual insights.' Getting baked, Dan observed, was much like becoming a child and being introduced into a whole new world... I've concluded that the scripture which says, 'Unless you become like a little child, you can't see the Kingdom of Heaven' is another secret reference to getting high; as is also the mysterious account of Moses seeing God through the burning bush." (178)

Maybe it's because I'm currently reading a vampire love story

but when a guy I work with said today that the women getting all dressed up to go see the Sex and the City movie are no different than the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fans who dress as their favorite protagonists for movie premiers, I had a good laugh. Because true that.

"The 'Sex and the City' movie becomes a girls' night out"

died and gone to young adult novel heaven

Steve's brother, a school librarian, very generously brought me -- count them -- thirty books for my classroom library. And since I am not gainfully-employed, at least not in a financially-gainful way -- I've got plenty of little badass volunteer things going on -- I've been doing a lot of porch-sitting and reading.

I don't think I'm going to read all thirty of them (Well, some of them are repeats, which is sweet since students steal books.), but would appreciate any guidance my blog-reader(s) could give.

Here's what I've got:
Slam by Nick Hornby
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
Hurricane Song by Paul Volponi (read this one already)
Bone by Bone by Tony Johnston (this one, too)
Game by Walter Dean Myers
Peak by Roland Smith
Dream Factory by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler
Red Glass by Laura Resau
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (actually, this is the graphic novel of it, done by P. Craig Russell)
The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Blood is Thicker by Paul Langan and D.M. Blackwell (of the Bluford Series)
Search for Safety by John Langan (also Bluford Series)
Someone to Love Me by Anne Schraff (also Bluford Series)
Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks
Noman by William Nicholson
Tough Boy Sonatas by Curtis L. Chrisler (poetry about Gary, Indiana)
Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught
Exodus by Julie Bertagna
Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
The Viper Within by Sam Mills
The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Completely unrelated, I've noticed that I've stopped, for the most part, actually writing on this blog. I mostly just post stuff. I mean, before, I was actually busy. Now, I'm just busying myself with things like ten mile walks to look for new jeans. Although I now have two new pairs of jeans, purchased for a total cost of twenty-five dollars, I know that jeans-buying is not a productive hobby. Especially when compared to rambling on a blog for ALL THE WORLD (i.e. Mom) to read. So expect a higher level of commitment to this-here blog from now on. It's basically all I've got going.

reading aloud + used books = reading used books aloud

I've been thinking a lot today about what's going on when someone reads aloud, and specifically when one reads aloud and other people are listening. It keeps coming up today. In one class, while going through some hypothetical lessons to be taught in correlation with Moises Kaufman and The Techtonic Theater Project's The Laramie Project, a few of my classmates read from the play's Moments. Now, the lesson activity they were reading for wasn't necessarily about giving voice to the words or anything like that. But it was pretty powerful, even as a side note to the objective of the lesson.

Then in another class, we learned that students with learning disabilities tend to comprehend a text more adequately when they hear it read by a fluent reader than when reading it silently themselves or when they "sound it out." So there's another qualification to the kind of "reading aloud" to which I'm devoting this blog space: Not only am I talking specifically about reading aloud to (a) listener/s, it's also gotta sound good. What does "sound good" mean though?

Later in the afternoon, I happened to catch the first twenty-five minutes or so of a poetry reading by Natasha Tretheway who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Now that woman can read aloud.

But I'm having trouble describing exactly what I think is happening when someone reads aloud to an audience, and does so well*, that I'm finding so exciting.

Whereas in the above paragraphs I was writing about reading aloud, in the rest of this entry I'm going to write about reading books that have been used by other readers**. I'm talking books that have been checked out of the library before I've checked them out specifically, but also books that are purchased "Used."

I'm currently in the middle of reading an essay from a book I got from the library. Actually, I'm reading a copy of the essay that I made today because I wanted to be able to take notes on the text, and it's impolite to write in library books. Except that someone already wrote in this one. And I'm having a lot of fun comparing what s/he underlined to what I think is striking enough to underline, seeing what s/he starred, etc. (The fascinating-ness of comparing our two sets of markings of what's important gets even deeper when considering the topic of the essay, which is a critical examination of evaluation and value; how do we decide that a text is valuable?)

I'm not sure what I make of this either. Other than thinking, "Coooool."



*well: a relative term meaning I'm not sure what
**This sentence is an example of something that writers call a transition***
***This clarification is an example of something writers call a footnote

Here's a t-chart of my weekend:

Is it achy or achey?

recommendations

The speaker this afternoon for the Y's Friday Forum Lecture Series was Nick Burbules who maintains Progressive Blog Digest, and spoke about the ways that the blogosphere fosters citizen journalism and the networking of political activists within a new public space. In incredibly nerdy fashion, I get really excited about the possibilities for blogging. One of the points that Mr. Burbules made was that the radically democratic ethos of sharing and community in the blogosphere necessarily engenders the collection and compilation of local, national, and international news in ways that can make patterns more visible. (i.e. The revelation via the blogosphere's synthesis of local news reports from various states that strange things were happening in United States Attorneys' offices.)

Anyway, he inspired me to (a) run, not walk to the nearest computer to update this thang, and (b) be sure to link to some more of the cool things that I've been checking out lately. Like Andrew's important September 11th post.

Also, I've been reading Paul Monette's Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir. Sooooo incredibly moving. I knew I was in for it in the first few pages when he first introduces Roger, his partner who eventually dies of AIDS, with

"How do I speak of the person who was my life's best reason? The most completely unpretentious man I ever met, modest and decent to such a degree that he seemed to release what was most real in everyone he knew. It was always a relief to be with Roger, not to have to play any games at all. By a safe mile he was the least flashy of all our bright circle of friends, but he spoke about books and the wide world he had journeyed with huge conviction and a hunger to know everything."

Last night, slumped in the armchair in my bedroom, I sobbed as I read the final pages. I looked up this picture of Paul and Roger, which for some reason made the whole story even more real for me.

Paul comes off, in his prose, as a slightly arrogant guy with a disdain for the middlebrow and sort of an odd obsession with all things ancient Greek, but he clearly loves Roger deeply, and the story is as beautiful as it is tragic.

...Now I have to spend the weekend creating a website about the book for use in a high school classroom.

"We're not worthy!"

So I'm down in Urbana for good now, enjoying our sweet new apartment. There was an old plaid armchair in my room when I moved in, and I didn't really want it there. My plan to move it to the living room down the hall, though, was foiled when it didn't fit down the hall. So now, in homage to the Wayne's World skit in which Wayne proclaims, "Aerosmith is in my breakfast nook!" we created a little breakfast nook with a great view of the garbage can.



In the nook, I've been reading Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana, and it's fascinating. Frankly, even thinking about strip clubs used to make me really nervous, but now I'm embarrassed that I was Judgey McJudgerson about them without knowing anything about them.