. . .

#3

About the body of the Father--which is about your body, too--almost all of both of you is immediately taken up into my father's metonymical body where the triunal integration of you--God, Priest, Father--is dismembered into parts of him that still stand in for entire fields of me where I am missing.

My father is missing.

So I keep asking, though not aloud, do you know what you are doing? The father as signification and as the end of signification, as law and as the end of law, the father's name, the father's no: he is so unwieldy. And so often absolute. Entire fields cleared, every limb of him erected in his stead--monuments, dwelling places, towers--where else am I to put you but in the places he prepared? And in such close quarters?

***

. .

week nine

Questions to a monk from a poet #2:

And do you account for the pervasiveness of secular skepticism, or is enough to encounter it among your parishioners as you do other cries for help, other ailments and woundedness, from the bulwarks of the monastery where certitude is the protected path to the sacred? Is there anyone among you who can speak to the skeptic from the inside out, not as a believer who has always believed, but as a believer who chooses to believe despite a longstanding, still-encroaching experience and education of doubt?

The believer who has always believed, I think, often finds such skepticism morally loathsome, philosophically untenable or "ideological," impractical, delusional, demonic (in the sense that it inverts divine logic: i.e. Reality for realities), and diseased. And yet, this is precisely the viewpoint, rhetoric, and feeling of most unbelieving, altruistic, politically liberal, educated parents, teachers, and artists I know towards Catholicism and the Church, or at least towards fundamentalist Christianities: that Christianity as it is (and has been) lived out is ethically problematic, philosophically untenable, far too ideological, impractical, delusional ("brainwashed"), demonic (in the sense that it distorts the good to appropriate it for its position and power, i.e. the exclusive "tyranny" of objective moral and philosophical Reality versus the inclusiveness of diversified views), and, yes, diseased.

I'm watching such terms get wielded all around where the stakes seem very high and where the conversation dissolves into positioning and sometimes educated name-calling (aren't we all of us ideologists?), and I wonder if it is (or isn't) the Christian response to take very seriously--philosophically as well as theologically--the formidable intelligence behind contemporary secular skepticism. --Not Marx: that's old hat and you've been doing it since Vatican II while the rest of the world has stretched the usefulness of Kant and Marx and Freud and Nietzsche into the politically invested, language-oriented psychoanalytics of Kristeva and Lacan, or into Derrida's deconstructed canons, or into Foucault's archeologies of history. These are brilliantly compelling ventures into the post-Enlightenment aftermath where it seems what we have left to us is a self-sufficient righting of the world. In some ways we've become kinder for it. And we like to think we are global thinkers--even if we're not--so monasticism strikes the secular world as quaint, romantic, sheltered, and old-worldly. I know it isn't, you know it isn't, but I'm not sure I can explain: in what way is monasticism's purpose and meaning contemporary? Is it really enough to revert to medieval thought--Aristotle, metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas--without engaging it in all these theoretical territories (risen and influential since Vatican II) if you're to talk to the secularists who live here?


***

. . . . . . .

. . . . . .

Someone asked: will you write about the monastery?

***

(I do have questions.)

***

#1

That great artifice is deeply significant in monasticism's accomplishment and determination. That here, precisely, is the hinge. For art is nothing if not intensely intersubjective, nothing if not unbelievable. And this incredulity--my incredulity--doesn't bother you a bit. Reality is real: what's more, it's the stuff art is made of, you say. So for me what sticks in the swing of the door are the many allegorical fixtures you become, within from without. For such art is safeguarded on all sides by tradition, authority, definitive meaning, the production of the question that always contains within it the objective answer. Why is the rosary worn on the left side? Why the sash, the leather belt? The scapular? The sandals persisting through Midwestern winters? Why do you shave your heads and wear your hoods? Your lives are symbols. And you would agree with me: at the center of the symbol is absence. You would say: the great absence that is love. I would say: the great absence that is death. Same difference, you would say, winking. But we understand symbols differently. All signs are unreliable on this end. I don't know at all how to get to where you stand on that end.

***

. . . . .

Leaky trash mopping failed. Poor me. Poor my neighbor.

***

Parsing silence every which way. Bracing for more. So that the temptation to say I knew it I just knew it can heave forth on its leash. Someone said, "temptations are finite and extremely predictable--you will run out of them." So the hounds are running. But they love as dogs do.

***

"I fled ... I hid ..."

***

week eight

which began Monday, obviously, but I've begun loosing track of time, all weekend preoccupied, today preoccupied, with waiting, with having my head screwed back on straight for me. A friend said: at times you build, but then there are the times you are built. Days of forging. It seems the real boredom of intense busyness is that so little shifts into significant form. So little progresses in the force of days. So that a sudden pause seems important, even if it is all this involuntary dreaming, just that. "You think you understand. You don't understand." Leaves in wind and light. I still don't understand light.

***

. . . . . . .

. . . . . .

HMV

***

To keep the law in order to become its keeper. In order to invert its order. To make an image of the law and to put the image into practice. To make a practice that intentionally justifies, autonomizes, privileges, references, and adores the self in the name of law and in the name of its authority. To divide practice from intention, work from meaning, so that work is the object, is the intention, is the end. --Is the work of self identity claiming to be work that seeks to identify Other. And to activate in the world the significance of this end where there isn't any. Not: I will not serve, non serviam, but: I serve myself in the image of serving you.

***

. . . . .

Hegel again:

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or “recognized”.

***

Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as an other being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other.

Φ 180. It must cancel this its other. To do so is the sublation of that first double meaning, and is therefore a second double meaning. First, it must set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to become certain of itself as true being, secondly, it thereupon proceeds to sublate its own self, for this other is itself.

Φ 181. This sublation in a double sense of its otherness in a double sense is at the same time a return in a double sense into its self. For, firstly, through sublation, it gets back itself, because it becomes one with itself again through the cancelling of its otherness; but secondly, it likewise gives otherness back again to the other self-consciousness, for it was aware of being in the other, it cancels this its own being in the other and thus lets the other again go free.

Φ 182. This process of self-consciousness in relation to another self-consciousness has in this manner been represented as the action of one alone. But this action on the part of the one has itself the double significance of being at once its own action and the action of that other as well. For the other is likewise independent, shut up within itself, and there is nothing in it which is not there through itself. The first does not have the object before it only in the passive form characteristic primarily of the object of desire, but as an object existing independently for itself, over which therefore it has no power to do anything for its own behalf, if that object does not per se do what the first does to it. The process then is absolutely the double process of both self-consciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as itself; each itself does what it demands on the part of the other, and for that reason does what it does, only so far as the other does the same. Action from one side only would be useless, because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both.

from Phenomenology of the Spirit, "Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Master and Servant"

***

And beside the minnows, a bourbon bottle half filled with water and sand burbled in the lake wake and glittered in the glittering water. Its back label curled and bleached in the sun and its front label sloughed into the moss.

***

. . . .

Can't change the direction for nothing:

(believing is a right brain function)

***

Meanwhile I'm to take portraits this week and I live with a cat.

***

. . .

Longing for the road. This road somewhere in Texas. Someone said, "Burn out is all ego--when the work is all about yourself, the ego implodes. It's not sustainable. If it's not about you, you get tired, yes, but not burned."

***

& eight months today

***

"Ever since you said Yes, time has broadened your horizons, giving them new and brighter colors and making them more beautiful every day. But you have to continue saying Yes." --Josemaria Escriva, Furrow

***

Had the students over for pizza and workshop on Sunday night. Discover this morning the pizza place charged the sixty bucks to my account not twice but three times for a grand total of two hundred dollars in real money. The real catastrophe is that I may not have time today to call them and straighten it out.

***

. .

week seven of eleven

And the work day started mean and fresh at five-thirty this morning with a big ol' conflagration. Not to mention I have a midterm exam today. In a class in which I'm not keeping up with the learning curve. The likes of which I haven't done in 13 years.

I discover lately I can memorize long sequences in Latin, and I don't even know Latin. Repetition: the key to trauma is also the key to memory.

***

. . . . . .

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:

***

]redux[

While love was made in likeness the question grew. It became the size of all things that inserted their fists to the elbow, and it nearly choked to a close for all it liked. At last it resorted to the fist of its own hand, which it forced into the depths of its cleft, and there it rested and held itself open, and there it expanded, impaled on its own limb, and was plunged. So it was the wounded rooted around in the wounded looking for resemblance. It was like reaching into reflection, the lake rippling into glass that shook to pieces overhanging trees and sky. It was like listening for avowals in the echoes from the cliffs: millions yawned open, unanswered. The size of the scattered and the size of the mute were too many to feed into the mouth of the question. How could they all be fed? The lake shivered in the breeze, the soul lost sight of its reflection, and the minnows nipped and prattled at a fisherman’s castoff catch. Entrails, gill skin waved in the current like a soft shroud over the carcass and the minnows plunked mouthfuls from the open flesh. Their mouths made a sound as they broke the surface, a gasp, a puncture, and the soul thought it sounded like hunger.

***

. . . . . .

. . . . .

The frustrating thing is hours in the dark to make light when the light's gone out of it and everything is middle gray.

***

13

***

. . . .

"There has to be a grown up who knows what's going on around here."

"Yeah. There has to be. But I don't know who that is."

***

8

***

. . .

Someone said, "this Indian summer? It will come back again," and I wondered one more time: is this a quality of the Indian, that it returns predictably but unexpectedly, and with a gift of warmth and light it takes back again? Because it does not give? And this is indigenous--is that what we're saying? At least that's what I hear. So it resonates in my head with terms more openly hateful, "Indian giver," say: "don't be an Indian giver" from the mouths of babes and a grownup or two when I was old enough to recognize in it the same adult rage you hear in the child's rhyme:

So so suck your toe
all the way to Mexico
riding on a buffalo
dirty dirty Eskimo
stick your head in a toilet bowl
because my mother told me to pick the very best one so you are not going to be it for this time:

Who is, then, going to be it?

***

The term Indian summer has been used for more than two centuries. The earliest known use was by French American writer St. John de Crevecoeur in rural New York in 1778. There are several theories as to its etymology:

• It may be so named because this was the traditional period during which early North Americans First Nations/Native American harvested their crops.
• 
  
• In The Americans, The Colonial Experience, Daniel J. Boorstin speculates that the term originated from raids on European colonies by Indian war parties; these raids usually ended in autumn, hence the extension to summer-like weather in the fall as an Indian summer. Indeed, two of the three other known uses of the term in the 18th century are from accounts kept by two army officers leading retaliation expeditions against Indians for raids on settlers in Ohio and Indiana in 1790, and Pennsylvania in 1794.

• It could be so named because the phenomenon was more common in what were then North American Indian territories, as opposed to the Eastern Seaboard.

• It may be of Asian Indian origin rather than North American Indian. H. E. Ware, an English writer, noted that ships traversing the Indian Ocean loaded their cargo most often during the Indian summer, or fair weather season. Several ships actually had an "I.S." on their hull at the load level thought safe during Indian summer.

The term is also used metaphorically to refer to anything that blooms late, or unexpectedly, or after it has lost relevance.


***

Wonder: what role does it have: it imposes itself on me: what is it about amazement that awakens the question? What is it about the beauty of a face that awakens the question in me?

(notes from Br. Thomas on three wisdoms)

***

11

***

. .

She rests.

***

2

***

week six

16.

***

. . . . . . .

It's eighty some degrees and sticky. The trees wilt and yellow. I look for color and find it in the shady undergrowth or on a few high branches facing wind; otherwise the green world browns in this still heat, and my limbs swell, and the crickets and flies continue to breed. The sky is not right. It is bleached with a pale haze and cloudless though this is the season of crisp blues, brash blues, overcast violets that make the grays of the branches their deep wet blacks. Only the light is predictable. It slants into shorter days. The leaves fall still green.

***


hours on the clock this week: 68 and counting

***

G.C. made it to Galesburg.

***

. . . . . .

And today I'm off to Bloomington with three students who will give their first conference presentations, stuff they wrote for the Spring Shelley Circle course. They'll be waiting by the curb by 6:30 this morning with their books and papers. Maybe they'll wear their best clothes. Here I am trying to put clothes on hangers to get order into one corner of the house. But there is no time for order. Insomnia woke me around 1 this morning. It's hot in here, it said. And: why don't you spend this time worrying instead of sleeping?

***

From Dante to Hogwarts: IWU to host MUSE Undergraduate Literature Conference

September 27, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University will offer 35 students from 19 academic institutions the opportunity to present undergraduate work in literature during the third annual MUSE Undergraduate Literature Conference on Saturday, Oct. 6, with registration beginning at 8 a.m. and the first of three sessions to begin at 9:00 a.m. in the Center for Natural Science (CNS) (201 Beecher St., Bloomington).

Wendy Wall, chair of Northwestern University’s Department of English, will deliver the keynote address titled “At Home with Shakespeare” at 12:30 p.m. in CNS E101.

The conference, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by IWU’s Alpha Eta Pi chapter of the international English honor society Sigma Tau Delta (STD) with the assistance of Illinois State University’s Lambda Delta chapter of STD and IWU’s Department of English.

Expanding significantly after its first two years, MUSE features students from IWU and ISU in addition to students from as near as Knox College and St. Francis University to as far away as the University of Pittsburg and the University of Montenegro.

Students will present works of literary analysis and criticism at MUSE that range from classic (“‘Stolen Rolls’ and Different Souls: An Examination of Plato’s Theory of Forms in the Lives of Levin and Oblonsky”) to contemporary (“What’s Wrong With Hogwarts?”) to seemingly bizarre (“‘A Backward Glance’ at The House of Mirth: How Future-consciousness is Necessary for the Creation of Fictional Memory”).

The conference will also feature a panel devoted to post-graduation options for literature students, including information on professional and graduate school opportunities, as well as careers in education.

MUSE’s guest speaker, noted Shakespearean Wendy Wall, received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in early modern literature and culture. Her publications include The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance, and Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama. Lecturing in conjunction with the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Newberry Library in Chicago, Wall has also served as a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. A display of Wall’s works, coordinated by Sigma Tau Delta, will be available for viewing beginning Friday, Sept. 28 in The Ames Library (1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington).

For more information about MUSE, visit the MUSE Web site (http://www.iwu.edu/~sigmatd/conference/), contact Megan Ames at muselitconf@gmail.com, or the English Department at (309) 556-3333. To learn more about Sigma Tau Delta, contact co-Presidents Valerie Higgins (vhiggins@iwu.edu) or Jessica Wiley (jwiley@iwu.edu).

***

Schedule:

8-1 - Registration

9-10:15 - Session I (2, 4, 8, 10)
10:30-11:30 - Panels
11:30-12:15 - Lunch
12:30-1:45 - Keynote - Dr. Wendy Wall
2:00-3:15 - Session 2 (5, 7, 11, 12)
3:30-4:45 - Session 3 (1, 3, 6, 9)

1. Sara Long, Belinda Ruiz, Chris Giugler
2. Yasmin Rioux, Heidi Zull, Emily Toler
3. Peter Bozovic, Dan Kenzie, Jayme Blandford, Renee Scherer
4. Jonathan Peasley, Sneha Subramaniam, Andrew Dorkin
5. Jayme Blandford, Jessica Jacoby, Becky Andert
6. Michael Romain, Molly Franken, Amy Duli
7. Yasmin Rioux, Patricia Jones, Alicia Schofield
8. Caitlin Kerr, Kaye Wierzbicki, Megan Ames
9. Kathryn Tanquary, Alissa Calderon, Kelly Budruweit
10. Jennifer Dempsey, Catherine Barnett, Kathryn Kaspar
11. Valerie Higgins, Lauren Nelson, Brian Egdorf
12. Heidi Zull, Amy Reiman, Jennifer Dempsey

***

# of hours: 13

***

. . . . .

# of hours: 12

***

postcard: Knox College

In preparation for the G.C. Waldrep reading on Monday, October 8th, the Caxton Club will be hosting a reading group to discuss three of Waldrep's poems. The expectation is to create familiarity with the visiting poet's work and to encourage thoughtful questions after the reading. This event will take place in the Alumni Room of Old Main from 4 to 5 this Friday. The readings are available at the Seymour Library on Reserve under File 201 and can be delivered directly to campus mailboxes. Those interested in physical copies should please email lassaf@knox.edu.

Also, all are welcome to Caxton Club on Monday, October 8 at 4 o'clock in the Alumni Room, Old Main, where we are honored to present poet G.C. Waldrep, author of Goldbeater's Skin (Colorado, 2003) and Disclamor (Boa, 2007). Books will be available for the author to sign. Refreshments will also be served.

Finally, do join us on Monday, October 8, at 7 o'clock when we'll kick off the first OFF KNOX open-mic night of the academic year. This event will take place at Mark Holmes' art studio, a short walk from campus on the corner of Simmons and Kellogg.

You'll get three minutes to beat a drum, read a poem, tell a joke, spin a yarn, conjure magic, sing a duet, belt a yodel, perform a monologue, pluck a guitar, improv some improv, a rap, a dance, a tap, a whistle--or anything else you can do for your three minutes of fame. Former participants include students, faculty, and staff of Knox College, as well as students and instructors from Carl Sandburg College and Galesburg High School.

Interested? Contact Chris Astwood (castwood@knox.edu) to get on the advance signup list. Questions? Contact Gina Franco (gfranco@knox.edu or x7087). After the first 10 performances, the floor is open to anyone in the room. Off Knox welcomes everyone in Galesburg and the surrounding communities.

***

. . . .

# of hours: 12

***

. . .

# of hours: 15

***

. .

# of hours: 2

***

week five

# of hours (K wants to know what secret I'm keeping) on the clock: 14

***

I'd get back here if I could stop being over committed for a second.

***