from May 3, 2007
... can fight the system not by attempting to confront it directly (to take arms against a sea of troubles, which will end only in defeat) but by refusing to participate at all. Choosing not to participate (that is, refusing to perpetuate the system even to the extent that fighting it would) is the only adequate response.
If it’s adequate.
It could be that it’s inadequate even as it is simultaneously the only option that exists.
May 4, 2007
I get the whole senioritis thing. I do. But I don’t accept it as this kind of blanket nonsense excuse for whining inactivity. Again, if you choose to do nothing (with an hour, with a class, with an opportunity, with your entire damn life), then so be it: you’ve chosen to do nothing. Congratulations.
But, then, goddamnit, just shut up about it. Don’t whine. Don’t wheedle. Don’t whinge. Don’t offer excuses and piddly blah blah blah that you think rationalizes or excuses away your lack of action, your lack of engagement with what is in front of you.
Right?
As if I’m not guilty of this myself. But, I think I’m getting better at simply acknowledging when I’m wasting time, or doing nothing, or procrastinating, or attempting to foist responsibility rather than trying to…
***
That’s where the page ends, right before I started writing about Catch-22 again, which my last bunch of classes read a little later in the year than the current crop. This year, I managed to make it part of a trifecta of Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Hamlet. Which I like. Which makes sense to me.
That said, I found some humor in the page that flipping open the journal gave me. Not in what was said, necessarily, but just in that awful, self-serving, ultimately whiney complaint about, yes, whining. Humor of the not-funny variety.
Particularly not-funny, I guess, in light of how I stayed up all night Sunday working on my National Board entries, stayed home from school on Monday to continue working on those same entries, and still would have failed to meet the deadline if the local post office didn’t have one of those nifty automated package mailing machines that allowed me to postmark my box o’ procrastination at 7:43 on Monday night and still have it count as March 31. Much of which could have been avoided by working as much on it throughout the year as I should have, spreading the hours out over several months rather than into two days of Spring Break and the 48 hours before it was due.
Showing posts with label Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journal. Show all posts
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Random Journal Page
I wanted to get a post in today -- lest I let slip another two months -- but only have a few minutes before a department meeting. So, I thought I would offer a re-run. Not a post, but a random page from a journal. I grabbed a notebook from the wardrobe in my classroom (turned out to be the fall/winter 2005 journal) and opened to a random page. Here you go:
demand of the universe that it provide answers, that it unmask itself and reveal its meaning, even if "there's naught beyond," even if its meaning is, in fact, meaningless.
"Time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more... All loveliness is anguish to me." (37)
Now, Ahab has his reasons for feeling this and while might not relate completely to those reasons, I can certainly relate to the feeling itself. That sunrise that once spurred us becomes the sunrise that leaves us squinting and bleary becomes the sunrise that leaves us indifferent. And it's where he goes from there that is so marvelous:
"Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power." (37)
It's Prufrock. It's self-justification and self-abnegation rolled into one messy nautical package. He is damned, he says. Damned in the midst of paradise. Damned in the midst of that which he used to love so strongly. Damned in the midst of a universe that used to make sense, that used to present more answers than questions, that used to order itself in a perfect, aesthetically
And there the page ends. Sorry for the pretension of having it be about Moby-Dick (a classtime writing assignment, I'm sure), but once you decide to excerpt a random page, you can't go picking and choosing what the random page will be.
demand of the universe that it provide answers, that it unmask itself and reveal its meaning, even if "there's naught beyond," even if its meaning is, in fact, meaningless.
"Time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more... All loveliness is anguish to me." (37)
Now, Ahab has his reasons for feeling this and while might not relate completely to those reasons, I can certainly relate to the feeling itself. That sunrise that once spurred us becomes the sunrise that leaves us squinting and bleary becomes the sunrise that leaves us indifferent. And it's where he goes from there that is so marvelous:
"Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power." (37)
It's Prufrock. It's self-justification and self-abnegation rolled into one messy nautical package. He is damned, he says. Damned in the midst of paradise. Damned in the midst of that which he used to love so strongly. Damned in the midst of a universe that used to make sense, that used to present more answers than questions, that used to order itself in a perfect, aesthetically
And there the page ends. Sorry for the pretension of having it be about Moby-Dick (a classtime writing assignment, I'm sure), but once you decide to excerpt a random page, you can't go picking and choosing what the random page will be.
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