I was really inspired by a video that Joe Holmes (Plus2Joe on YouTube) posted the other day about SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and the way that blue feelings seem to seep in along with the mists and rains of winter, for no apparent reason. Here in England, it's now getting completely dark by about 4:30pm, and personally I find that the less light I get exposed to, the less I get out of the house in the sun, the less warmth in my bones, the less energy I feel and the easier I get sad (or SAD).
So, as Joe suggested, I thought I'd share some things that help me. This is sort of also a reminder to myself to keep doing these things, because sometimes I think all I really want to do is curl up under my down comforter to keep away the cold and the dark, but actually I end up feeling better if I resist that urge and do something else. Not that curling up and getting cozy isn't a great option on a cold winter night. It's just good to remember that it's one of many great options. And, personally, I find that if I stay in too many days in a row, I get cabin fever. So, here's my solutions to the winter sads. Please share yours in the comments! I'm always looking for more fun things to cheer things up.
1. Staying warm. It's chilly! If my logic holds, then summer warmth is part of what makes summer so nice, so staying warm in winter should help. One of my favorite ways to keep warm is drinking hot spiced beverages, which have the added benefit of being yummy.
2. Going outside. Even though it's cold. Even though it might rain. I have to keep reminding myself of this. Because fresh air really does feel good to breathe.
3. Eating right. I don't know about you, but I feel 100% better all around when I eat fresh, healthy food. And things like whole grains and protein-rich foods give you more energy, which I find is always in shorter supply during the winter. Eating healthy can also go along with cooking for yourself, which is really fun and a great study/work break.
4. Eating delicious. This is not mutually exclusive with number 3, and they're both important. Delicious for me can be anything from a rich homebaked cake to a super juicy pear (they're in season and deeeeliiiciouuuss!). For me, eating something really tasty or giving into a craving for chocolate can turn my day around.
5. Being creative. Working on and completing a creative project is one of the best feelings I know of, so if you're anything like me, then be sure to fill your winter with crafts and projects and artsy stuff. It can be baking bread or sketching or knitting a scarf or participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is this month - I'm not doing it this year, but I'm really hoping to next year; google it if you don't know what it is, cause it's pretty cool). Whatever makes you feel productive and absorbs your attention to clear your brain of whatever's puzzling or worrying you at the moment.
6. Keeping fit. SO important. Not because I think everyone should be atheletic gods and goddesses, but because it makes you feel better and gives you more energy. So far this winter I've been pretty good about doing some regular stretching and keeping supple, but I'm going to work on getting some more aerobic exercise to add some endorphins to the mix.
7. Watching feel-good movies. I especially like re-watching favorite movies and old classics. And I LOVE going the movies - any time of year, really, but winter's just as good a time as any.
8. Reading feel-good books. Right now I'm reading a lot of books for school (like 2 a week), so this doesn't really apply, but I'm sure it does for some of you.
9. Taking a hot shower. Can work wonders. Imagine you're in a spa, even if you're not. It's a nice feeling.
10. Letting your skin breathe. This might sound silly, but in winter, if you live in a cold place, you tend to wear lots of layers of clothes, and your skin might not see the light of day for days. I think it's especially important when it's cold to take care of your skin, give it cream and warm water and let it breathe for a minute after you step out of the shower before you muffle yourself up again.
11. Talking to people. You know that introvert/extrovert thing, when introverts get energy from being alone, and extroverts get energy from being with people? I don't know if it's true, but I find I need a mix of both. Sometimes I just need to get some energy reflected back from other people in order to reboot my own system.
12. Playing with cuddly animals. Sadly, I have no cuddly animals available to me at the moment, but if you do, go play with them! I find that a little encounter with a neighbor's cat on the way to school or a moment petting a dog who runs up to sniff at you before its owner calls it back, can make my day a little brighter.
13. Planning it out. Make a schedule of fun things to do so that you can look forward to them, whether it's deciding in advance what movie to watch when you get home from school/work or making a date with a friend to go out. This also avoids the problem of just keeping on working or wasting all your free time trying to decide what to do for fun.
14. Making yourself pretty. I find I always seem to make more of an effort with my outfits when I'm feeling sick or tired, partly because it makes it less noticeable, but then I also start to notice it less, and I end up feeling better. And then getting home and changing into your cozy pyjamas feels all the more delicious.
15. Listening to happy music. Sometimes when I'm tired I lean toward calm, soothing music, but sometimes the best thing is a really upbeat song that just makes you want to dance. Make that listening to happy music and dancing to it. I most especially recommend "You Make My Dreams" from the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack.
16. Laughing. You wouldn't think I'd forgot to do this, but I mean laughing hard, uncontrollably, whether in a giggling fit with your friends or while watching a funny movie or a stand-up comedy show.
OK that's all I can think of. Is it this cold and dark where you are? And what do you do to cheer yourself up?
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Rainy day/Literature/Fireworks
Today is finally a legitimately rainy day. No playing around with sunny spells and sudden downpours (because if that's how you defined a rainy day, then every day in England would be a rainy day). Today is the kind of day where you wake up to a steady patter of rain and know that you're just going to stay cozied up inside and drink hot chocolate. Speaking of which....
Ok, back now with hot chocolate in hand. Anyway, the best thing about today was that I had something to do with my time cooped up indoors. My first real piece of work for my courses (aside from reading) has come more than half-way through the semester - a quirk of the English education system has all the work come at the end. And although it has been wonderful and luxurious to spend the last six weeks simply reading novels, it is so good to be getting back to a different, more active kind of work. I think I needed the break of the summer and the first half of the semester to make me realize how much I love sitting down with an analytic project and digging in.
This particular project is a presentation on Lolita for tomorrow's class, in which I'm focusing on Nabokov's representation of America, particularly American femininity, landscape, and storytelling. Lots of fun, right? Well, of course I think it is, for several reasons.
First, I like writing or talking about books in ways that feel new, or at least not mainstream. All I had ever heard about Lolita before reading it was that it was a scandalous novel of pedophilia with a bizarrely-named narrator. Instead, I found it to be a fascinating glimpse of the immigrant's vision of America - a panoramic view of Hollywood, roadside attractions, motels, comic books, suburban lawns, and 1950s slang. But Nabokov also transcends the outsider's vision and digs deep enough to offer an American novel that is richer than most foreigner's and some native's attempts at the same thing.
Second, I love love love the moment when you find a perfect quote to support your argument or discover a sudden resonance between your ideas and another critic's interpretation of the same book. When I initially think up some crazy idea about a novel, I must be filled with some kind of subliminal doubt that can only be erased by finding reflections in the words others have written. And I'm always surprised by the accuracy of those reflections.
Third, I like writing. I like putting my thoughts into words. Especially thoughts about books. This may be a bit obvious, since I'm going to the trouble of getting an advanced degree in literature, but I find that analyzing books (certain books, at least) makes them more interesting and enjoyable.
So yes, I think I can use the word 'fun' in the same sentence as 'Lolita,' as weird as that seems. In fact, this has been a great weekend overall. I spent Friday (which I have had free from classes for so many years that I now count it as part of the weekend) reading the entirety of Lolita, which was difficult but satisfying. Saturday was devoted to trawling through various scholarly articles about the book and gathering my own ideas into a semblance of a thesis statement. Today I put it all together into a presentation. And I interrupted the work last night to go see the Guy Fawkes night fireworks with my housemates, which was wonderful in a roasted-chesnuts-country-fair-bright-lights-pop-music-candy-apples-freezing-toes-warm-fuzzy-feelings kind of way. I wish I had pictures of the fireworks to show you, but it was too dark. Hope you all had nice weekends, too.
Ok, back now with hot chocolate in hand. Anyway, the best thing about today was that I had something to do with my time cooped up indoors. My first real piece of work for my courses (aside from reading) has come more than half-way through the semester - a quirk of the English education system has all the work come at the end. And although it has been wonderful and luxurious to spend the last six weeks simply reading novels, it is so good to be getting back to a different, more active kind of work. I think I needed the break of the summer and the first half of the semester to make me realize how much I love sitting down with an analytic project and digging in.
This particular project is a presentation on Lolita for tomorrow's class, in which I'm focusing on Nabokov's representation of America, particularly American femininity, landscape, and storytelling. Lots of fun, right? Well, of course I think it is, for several reasons.
First, I like writing or talking about books in ways that feel new, or at least not mainstream. All I had ever heard about Lolita before reading it was that it was a scandalous novel of pedophilia with a bizarrely-named narrator. Instead, I found it to be a fascinating glimpse of the immigrant's vision of America - a panoramic view of Hollywood, roadside attractions, motels, comic books, suburban lawns, and 1950s slang. But Nabokov also transcends the outsider's vision and digs deep enough to offer an American novel that is richer than most foreigner's and some native's attempts at the same thing.
Second, I love love love the moment when you find a perfect quote to support your argument or discover a sudden resonance between your ideas and another critic's interpretation of the same book. When I initially think up some crazy idea about a novel, I must be filled with some kind of subliminal doubt that can only be erased by finding reflections in the words others have written. And I'm always surprised by the accuracy of those reflections.
Third, I like writing. I like putting my thoughts into words. Especially thoughts about books. This may be a bit obvious, since I'm going to the trouble of getting an advanced degree in literature, but I find that analyzing books (certain books, at least) makes them more interesting and enjoyable.
So yes, I think I can use the word 'fun' in the same sentence as 'Lolita,' as weird as that seems. In fact, this has been a great weekend overall. I spent Friday (which I have had free from classes for so many years that I now count it as part of the weekend) reading the entirety of Lolita, which was difficult but satisfying. Saturday was devoted to trawling through various scholarly articles about the book and gathering my own ideas into a semblance of a thesis statement. Today I put it all together into a presentation. And I interrupted the work last night to go see the Guy Fawkes night fireworks with my housemates, which was wonderful in a roasted-chesnuts-country-fair-bright-lights-pop-music-candy-apples-freezing-toes-warm-fuzzy-feelings kind of way. I wish I had pictures of the fireworks to show you, but it was too dark. Hope you all had nice weekends, too.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Thoughts on the perfect party
At the perfect party...
...everyone dresses up, whether in a silly costume, their softest pyjamas, or their best evening attire.
...there are enough seats for everyone, but no one stays sitting in the same seat the whole time.
...you meet new people and catch up with old friends.
...everyone is free to enjoy a drink or two, but no one feels pressured to get drunk.
...the guests compliment the hostess/host not only by saying the the food, but also by taking second helpings.
...one or two couples or groups arrive on time, and a few more later in the evening to add new energy to the group, and everyone leaves by midnight.
...there aren't too many dishes to do, and you can chill out after everyone leaves by standing at the sink letting the warm water run over your hands and carefully stacking clean dishes in the dish drain.
...no one talks about religion or politics.
...there are multiple spaces in which people can wander and plenty of nooks, balconies, gardens, sofas, kitchen counters that people can group easily around.
...one of the guests is a great photographer and snaps pictures of the evening for future nostalgia.
In other news, Happy Halloween! Hope you all get to attend or throw perfect parties today.
...everyone dresses up, whether in a silly costume, their softest pyjamas, or their best evening attire.
...there are enough seats for everyone, but no one stays sitting in the same seat the whole time.
...you meet new people and catch up with old friends.
...everyone is free to enjoy a drink or two, but no one feels pressured to get drunk.
...the guests compliment the hostess/host not only by saying the the food, but also by taking second helpings.
...one or two couples or groups arrive on time, and a few more later in the evening to add new energy to the group, and everyone leaves by midnight.
...there aren't too many dishes to do, and you can chill out after everyone leaves by standing at the sink letting the warm water run over your hands and carefully stacking clean dishes in the dish drain.
...no one talks about religion or politics.
...there are multiple spaces in which people can wander and plenty of nooks, balconies, gardens, sofas, kitchen counters that people can group easily around.
...one of the guests is a great photographer and snaps pictures of the evening for future nostalgia.
In other news, Happy Halloween! Hope you all get to attend or throw perfect parties today.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
October Things
N.B. Further inspired by Kristina Horner i.e. italktosnakes and her 'Things I'm Into' videos, I'm gonna try to categorize these monthly posts a little more and make them less random. If you haven't already, go check out her videos. Here's a link to the latest 'Things I'm Into.'
Food:
Since the weather keeps getting colder, baking has become a big thing in my house. I absolutely love cakes, muffins, cookies, tarts, pies, mousses, scones, biscuits, breads, and anything else you can think of that contains flour, eggs, butter, and sugar. But I also love the process of baking, the sense of accomplishment that comes from turning raw ingredients into a finished, delicious whole. It's especially lovely at this time of year because ingredients like apples and pears can be incorporated and the winter spices are coming into their prime - who doesn't love a splash of cinnamon, nutmeg, or clove? I'll try to report here if I try any particularly amazing recipes. For now, I'm planning what to bake for the Halloween party my housemates and I are throwing.
Entertainment:
Again, the days are getting shorter and colder, so I've been hunting for some good ways to while away the long dark evenings. Since I spend all day reading, I'm less tempted by novels, although I've started reading some poetry and short stories for a change of pace in the evenings. But my favorite two evening activities these days are knitting and watching web series.
I just took up knitting, with the intention of making myself some warm accessories in time for winter, and I've found it to be the perfect accompaniment to watching movies and TV. Or, even better, a web series like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, or the LBD. I just caught up on the first 50 or so episodes of this series, and I can highly recommend it to any fan of Jane Austen or to anyone who could sympathize with the struggles of a group of young women making the transition from school to life and juggling family, romance, sex, careers, friendships, and creative aspirations.
If you haven't heard of it, here's a brief run-down. It's basically the first ever adaptation of classic literature to a vlog format, and the creators happen to have chosen the wonderful Pride and Prejudice as their classic book. They've done an amazingly inventive job so far of updating the story to present-day USA and adjusting it to fit the format of short video blogs featuring Lizzie Bennet and her sisters and acquaintances.
But my favorite part about this show isn't the great comic timing and convincing acting from the four young women stars (Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, and Charlotte) or the way they take turns impersonating other characters, who never actually appear on screen but whom we see hilariously filtered through Lizzie's sarcastic gaze, in such a way that we see Lizzie's flaws at the same time as sympathizing with her trials. No, my favorite part is the way that the writers have updated the challenges facing young women in Austen's era to those facing young women today. These girls are not just about finding husbands (although Mrs. Bennet, predictably, is). They're also looking for jobs and outlets for their passions and artistic impulses. The best moment of the series so far (aside from some utterly hilarious Darcy impersonations by the various girls) was when the odious Mr. Collins, instead of proposing marriage, proposes a business partnership - an offer just as life-changing and difficult to manage as marriage would be for the original Elizabeth Bennet.
Actually, though, I have to revise this and say that all this comes second to the real best part of the series, which is that the 5th Bennet sister, Kitty, is reincarnated, in this version, as the family cat. Kitty Bennet. Best idea ever.
Fashion:
One of the best things about October is the way it makes you completely reevaluate your wardrobe and gives you a different perspective on all the various odd bits of clothing you own - because what better place to look for a Halloween costume than in your own closet? I'm currently debating a few costume ideas (last-minute, I know), but whichever one I choose will come mostly from elements of clothing I already have. As much as I would love to sew something elaborate and amazing, I don't have the time, so I'm contenting myself with re-imagining things I own and possibly picking up a few fun accessories to give old clothes a new spin.
But of course October also brings wonderful everyday fashion options, like pairing up a bunch of autumnal colors or nestling into a chunky scarf or a warm coat. I find that bright colors and warm layers make the cold and the grey skies infinitely more bearable, and I certainly need lots of brightness and warmth to survive the cold snap that just descended on England. Brrrrrrrr.
Food:
Since the weather keeps getting colder, baking has become a big thing in my house. I absolutely love cakes, muffins, cookies, tarts, pies, mousses, scones, biscuits, breads, and anything else you can think of that contains flour, eggs, butter, and sugar. But I also love the process of baking, the sense of accomplishment that comes from turning raw ingredients into a finished, delicious whole. It's especially lovely at this time of year because ingredients like apples and pears can be incorporated and the winter spices are coming into their prime - who doesn't love a splash of cinnamon, nutmeg, or clove? I'll try to report here if I try any particularly amazing recipes. For now, I'm planning what to bake for the Halloween party my housemates and I are throwing.
Entertainment:
Again, the days are getting shorter and colder, so I've been hunting for some good ways to while away the long dark evenings. Since I spend all day reading, I'm less tempted by novels, although I've started reading some poetry and short stories for a change of pace in the evenings. But my favorite two evening activities these days are knitting and watching web series.
I just took up knitting, with the intention of making myself some warm accessories in time for winter, and I've found it to be the perfect accompaniment to watching movies and TV. Or, even better, a web series like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, or the LBD. I just caught up on the first 50 or so episodes of this series, and I can highly recommend it to any fan of Jane Austen or to anyone who could sympathize with the struggles of a group of young women making the transition from school to life and juggling family, romance, sex, careers, friendships, and creative aspirations.
If you haven't heard of it, here's a brief run-down. It's basically the first ever adaptation of classic literature to a vlog format, and the creators happen to have chosen the wonderful Pride and Prejudice as their classic book. They've done an amazingly inventive job so far of updating the story to present-day USA and adjusting it to fit the format of short video blogs featuring Lizzie Bennet and her sisters and acquaintances.
But my favorite part about this show isn't the great comic timing and convincing acting from the four young women stars (Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, and Charlotte) or the way they take turns impersonating other characters, who never actually appear on screen but whom we see hilariously filtered through Lizzie's sarcastic gaze, in such a way that we see Lizzie's flaws at the same time as sympathizing with her trials. No, my favorite part is the way that the writers have updated the challenges facing young women in Austen's era to those facing young women today. These girls are not just about finding husbands (although Mrs. Bennet, predictably, is). They're also looking for jobs and outlets for their passions and artistic impulses. The best moment of the series so far (aside from some utterly hilarious Darcy impersonations by the various girls) was when the odious Mr. Collins, instead of proposing marriage, proposes a business partnership - an offer just as life-changing and difficult to manage as marriage would be for the original Elizabeth Bennet.
Actually, though, I have to revise this and say that all this comes second to the real best part of the series, which is that the 5th Bennet sister, Kitty, is reincarnated, in this version, as the family cat. Kitty Bennet. Best idea ever.
Fashion:
One of the best things about October is the way it makes you completely reevaluate your wardrobe and gives you a different perspective on all the various odd bits of clothing you own - because what better place to look for a Halloween costume than in your own closet? I'm currently debating a few costume ideas (last-minute, I know), but whichever one I choose will come mostly from elements of clothing I already have. As much as I would love to sew something elaborate and amazing, I don't have the time, so I'm contenting myself with re-imagining things I own and possibly picking up a few fun accessories to give old clothes a new spin.
But of course October also brings wonderful everyday fashion options, like pairing up a bunch of autumnal colors or nestling into a chunky scarf or a warm coat. I find that bright colors and warm layers make the cold and the grey skies infinitely more bearable, and I certainly need lots of brightness and warmth to survive the cold snap that just descended on England. Brrrrrrrr.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
A peek inside the mind of a literature student (...or maybe it's just me...)
I've now spent a little over a month being a full-time student of 20th century literature. As you might imagine, it involves reading a lot of books, but instead of having raced through an impressive number of volumes during the last weeks, I've actually been reading the same book. Have you guessed it? Yes, I've been reading Ulysses. But in about 24 hours, I will have graduated to person-who-has-read-Ulysses (and if I'm aggrandizing the accomplishment, it's only because I need a reward to get me through the last hundred pages).
It's been an interesting experience, to keep reading a book that I don't fully understand for a month - an experience, I suspect, that only students of literature enjoy. Without the certain knowledge that you will have to get up one morning every week and go sit in a room with five or ten other people for three hours talking about this book, it's harder to push through those next fifty pages before stumbling downstairs to the kitchen for sustenance. Part of me is resentful at my professor for thinking it was a good idea to assign this book as the first reading of my grad school career. But another part of me is grateful because 1) nothing I read for the rest of the year will be this hard and 2) reading Ulysses is like a crash course in how to be a literature student, or as Joyce would put it, a "learning knight" (don't quote me on that, because it might not be exact, but there's no way I'm flipping through 800 pages to find that quote again).
Everybody reads (or almost everybody), so when you think about it, it seems every person who enjoys a good book should have the qualifications to study literature. You could make the same argument for science, for example: everyone lives in their body, so they should be, theoretically, ready to launch into the study of anatomy or biology. But that example reveals the flaw in the idea, because obviously the biologist brings a very different set of skills and curiosities to her job. She doesn't just enjoy the workings of her body, she examines them and finds patterns and probes mysteries and carries out elaborate experiments to test her theories. A literature student is no different. He enjoys books, sure, but he also dissects them, picks them apart, and tries to sort out all the pieces so he can fit them back together again. It's like the difference between a person who listens to the radio and a kid who takes apart a radio to see how it works. Both things are pleasurable, both expand the mind, and both increase the scope of human knowledge, but they're very different.
So basically, I've been discovering what it's like to be the kid who takes apart the radio. (Not that I haven't studied literature before, but I've taken different approaches and haven't done it so intensely before.) And what I've discovered is that literature students should be called literature detectives. This idea came out of reading Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 while still struggling through Ulysses. The former is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, trying to discover a secret behind the estate left behind by her former lover, a process which leads her further and further into a kind of paranoid detective work with no clear solution at the end of the book. She thinks she sees patterns, but she's never sure, and neither are you (the reader), because the intricate skein of connections and reflections Pynchon sets out might actually be all inside Oedipa's head.
Over the course of Pynchon's (miraculously short) 120 pages, I started to see weird patterns myself, but not the way Oedipa does. Instead of seeing mysterious symbols scrawled on bathroom walls and miniaturized on postage stamps, I say mysterious symbols printed out in times new roman between the pages of books. It turns out that reading books like Ulysses and The Crying of Lot 49 (or any book, really, when you're reading it like a literature detective does) is a lot like sifting through a dead man's estate with the suspicion that it hides a centuries-old secret and that if you just spend enough time with it, everything will become clear and it'll all add up. You have the dead guy (the famous dead white man author, and variants thereon, because living women of color can be just as confusing), you have the centuries of other literature to which they make cryptic allusion, and you have the words on the page, the endless pieces of paper that may or may not offer clues to the meaning of the whole.
So this is the state of mind of the literature student. I read a chapter of Ulysses and try to sort out the various symbols and references Joyce is playing with. Then, later that day, or the next, I read another book and look for other symbols, other key words, other connections. And for the rest of the week, I can't turn that part of my brain off. I keep doing the detective work everywhere I go. My mind is swirling with character names, images flitting by, memories that I then realize aren't memories, but rather something I read this morning - James Joyce's memories, most likely.
And the thing is that the real world is actually connected to the books I'm reading. Say I have an experience riding the bus or doing my grocery shopping that reminds me of something in the book I was reading the day before, and suddenly that bit of fiction makes more sense and I understand what it was the author was trying to capture about human experience. Or my mind wanders toward lunch as I'm sitting in class and then I realize that that's exactly what Leopold Bloom would be thinking about too, if he were somehow sitting around discussing the novel in which he is a character. These aren't tangible clues, but they are nevertheless keys to the books. When you're a literature student, it makes no sense to keep work and life segregated like food carefully nestled in different compartments of a microwavable meal. Books are better, I find, when their flavors mix with everyday experience, when you allow them to affect your life and visaversa, when you keep an eye out for clues in all sorts of unlikely places (a sentiment I think Joyce, champion of the everyday, would applaud, or maybe just nod thoughtfully at before he returned to writing a really complicated book).
OK, I'm starting to mix my metaphors and it's obviously time for second breakfast. Sorry for the break in regular posts and for the lengthiness of this one. I hope to be sharing thoughts more regularly this week, because as you can see, reading lots of books is giving me lots of thoughts.
It's been an interesting experience, to keep reading a book that I don't fully understand for a month - an experience, I suspect, that only students of literature enjoy. Without the certain knowledge that you will have to get up one morning every week and go sit in a room with five or ten other people for three hours talking about this book, it's harder to push through those next fifty pages before stumbling downstairs to the kitchen for sustenance. Part of me is resentful at my professor for thinking it was a good idea to assign this book as the first reading of my grad school career. But another part of me is grateful because 1) nothing I read for the rest of the year will be this hard and 2) reading Ulysses is like a crash course in how to be a literature student, or as Joyce would put it, a "learning knight" (don't quote me on that, because it might not be exact, but there's no way I'm flipping through 800 pages to find that quote again).
Everybody reads (or almost everybody), so when you think about it, it seems every person who enjoys a good book should have the qualifications to study literature. You could make the same argument for science, for example: everyone lives in their body, so they should be, theoretically, ready to launch into the study of anatomy or biology. But that example reveals the flaw in the idea, because obviously the biologist brings a very different set of skills and curiosities to her job. She doesn't just enjoy the workings of her body, she examines them and finds patterns and probes mysteries and carries out elaborate experiments to test her theories. A literature student is no different. He enjoys books, sure, but he also dissects them, picks them apart, and tries to sort out all the pieces so he can fit them back together again. It's like the difference between a person who listens to the radio and a kid who takes apart a radio to see how it works. Both things are pleasurable, both expand the mind, and both increase the scope of human knowledge, but they're very different.
So basically, I've been discovering what it's like to be the kid who takes apart the radio. (Not that I haven't studied literature before, but I've taken different approaches and haven't done it so intensely before.) And what I've discovered is that literature students should be called literature detectives. This idea came out of reading Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 while still struggling through Ulysses. The former is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, trying to discover a secret behind the estate left behind by her former lover, a process which leads her further and further into a kind of paranoid detective work with no clear solution at the end of the book. She thinks she sees patterns, but she's never sure, and neither are you (the reader), because the intricate skein of connections and reflections Pynchon sets out might actually be all inside Oedipa's head.
Over the course of Pynchon's (miraculously short) 120 pages, I started to see weird patterns myself, but not the way Oedipa does. Instead of seeing mysterious symbols scrawled on bathroom walls and miniaturized on postage stamps, I say mysterious symbols printed out in times new roman between the pages of books. It turns out that reading books like Ulysses and The Crying of Lot 49 (or any book, really, when you're reading it like a literature detective does) is a lot like sifting through a dead man's estate with the suspicion that it hides a centuries-old secret and that if you just spend enough time with it, everything will become clear and it'll all add up. You have the dead guy (the famous dead white man author, and variants thereon, because living women of color can be just as confusing), you have the centuries of other literature to which they make cryptic allusion, and you have the words on the page, the endless pieces of paper that may or may not offer clues to the meaning of the whole.
So this is the state of mind of the literature student. I read a chapter of Ulysses and try to sort out the various symbols and references Joyce is playing with. Then, later that day, or the next, I read another book and look for other symbols, other key words, other connections. And for the rest of the week, I can't turn that part of my brain off. I keep doing the detective work everywhere I go. My mind is swirling with character names, images flitting by, memories that I then realize aren't memories, but rather something I read this morning - James Joyce's memories, most likely.
And the thing is that the real world is actually connected to the books I'm reading. Say I have an experience riding the bus or doing my grocery shopping that reminds me of something in the book I was reading the day before, and suddenly that bit of fiction makes more sense and I understand what it was the author was trying to capture about human experience. Or my mind wanders toward lunch as I'm sitting in class and then I realize that that's exactly what Leopold Bloom would be thinking about too, if he were somehow sitting around discussing the novel in which he is a character. These aren't tangible clues, but they are nevertheless keys to the books. When you're a literature student, it makes no sense to keep work and life segregated like food carefully nestled in different compartments of a microwavable meal. Books are better, I find, when their flavors mix with everyday experience, when you allow them to affect your life and visaversa, when you keep an eye out for clues in all sorts of unlikely places (a sentiment I think Joyce, champion of the everyday, would applaud, or maybe just nod thoughtfully at before he returned to writing a really complicated book).
OK, I'm starting to mix my metaphors and it's obviously time for second breakfast. Sorry for the break in regular posts and for the lengthiness of this one. I hope to be sharing thoughts more regularly this week, because as you can see, reading lots of books is giving me lots of thoughts.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Autumn!
It's not for nothing that people here insist on calling it autumn instead of fall. Although September was far less glorious than it is back home, October is slowly seducing me with its alternating mists and bright skies, with the soft, chunky layers it forces us to don, and with the glow it lends colors like umber, mustard, burgundy, and sunshine yellow. I've been indulging in strong melted cheeses, deep green broccoli, dense soft pancakes, and pan-friend apple slices. Even the cold is getting more manageable, less incapacitating.
I simply cannot wait for Thanksgiving, but I'm savoring the slow build up to it. I miss the warmth of the sun, but I'm learning to love the heat of the radiator and, of course, the hot cup of tea.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
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