Graphic Novels: Isn't it about time the "underground" surfaced?

Students-- the ones I know are the only ones I can speak to-- seem to really revel in the reading and discussion of graphic novels. One even dared me, well, she suggested I do a course in the graphic novel..."I would take it," she said. Three more chimed in with, "I would too," and "You really should, Dr. X."

The thing is we're so dang busy (see an earlier blog from this week..) assessing ourselves that there is little, if any, residual energy for creative course proposals. Yet I know I could match up the standards to the American Library Association's and to the accreditation body's standards... It would also be a great addition to my 'outside' the canon aggregate of courses.

I "taught" Satrapi's Persepolis last week in a gender studies class; we discussed Maus I in this evening's class. They, meaning the students, have loads to say about both. I had only given them an excerpt from Spiegleman's Pulitzer text, and we could have gone on for hours (a typical lit prof's hyperbole? Me thinks so.) But a goal of the course is exposure--exposure to non-canonical literature, and its omnifarious genres and perspectives.

See, the dialogue doesn't begin in the classroom, the dialogue as I would call it, begins in the brain. Right-brain & left-brain firing synapses to decode the alphabetic and visual texts. Some 'text' or captions are provided, and direct speech makes its way in the cartoon bubble. And although the author-illustrator dictates what you will read and illustrates what she wants you to see--how she sees it, her p.o.v., if you will, it does not necessarily mean that it's easier to read pictures. For example, Satrapi introduces her uncle in a frame; she shows us her elevated view of this man not with her diction but in the halo-like light behind him. We are not told but shown that he is an honorable man--the image is crucial to meaning, on the connotative vs. denotative level.

The culture of the Academy is slow to change...it is not always as open, or liberal as the "right" fears it is...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/small-fry-in-irans-big-picture/2007/04/01/1175366077772.html

The General Public: I'm not 'Judging Amy' or Anyone Else...

I realize I run the risk of sounding like an elitist prig, but I'm really not. After all I was running on the treadmill at the gym today watching TNT's Judging Amy; nothing snooty about that right? Mr. Clean was walking on the 'mill next to mine.

The scene: 30-something Amy has moved out of her mother's house, living in a New Haven ghetto apartment; she has invited a new beau over for wine and dinner.

Septegenarian-Pilgarlic-Harley-Dude (aka Mr. Clean): Didn't they just make love? Why did she put her dress back on if they made love? She should be in a slip or something, right?

ME: Uh, I don't know, think they just had some wine. And the room is really pretty dark...[my voice trails off]

SPHD: I'm mad! She should be like in a slip or somethin' if they just made love.

ME: [silence--my inside thoughts are: "what can I possibly say back to this guy? this is absurd!"]

SPHD: Does she [Judge Amy] like girls? I think she's a female homo.

ME: [stepping out of myself, thinking "am I really having this conversation? If so, where's the transition from his earlier inquires to this crazy notion?!"] Uh, I don't think so. And even if she were, I don't really mind.

The straight Amy dumps her judge-beau who won't go to Spain with her...She sheds a few tears, sniffling--as crying folk are wont to do...

SPHD: Oh, Amy, stop your sniveling! [sic]

The rest of the dialogue was so inane, I cannot waste your time... But according to Mr. Clean, Amy's brother was gay (because he was cute); and her CSO was good-looking guy who "didn't talk like a black guy."

This, my friends, sums up the petty, innocuous, vapid conversations occurring daily in this free nation of ours...

Perspective

Today, less than an hour ago, I was able to stand on the edge of the continent, trace a strand line, expel the day's thoughts, and dissipate into the din of the surf.... The edge of a continent--this continent--where the land mass ends and the green begins.

All cantankerous tendencies dissolved and turned into ellipses. For I was greeted--no, nudged by 4 very sandy-briny dogs this evening...Could they tell--did they know that I had evolved into a cat person---maybe they sensed me teetering on the brink of declaring myself a cat person? (Oh, Kitty Stilts! you could be attacking the beloved's leg right about now...only I'm not there!!) If such categories of cat- and dog-people exist. And if dogs can smell fear, surely they could smell pet-favoritism, no? Well, I rejoiced for these slap-happy mammals---they were making the best of their 49 days; in 49 days, they are banned from this elitist beach.

The outing was my panacea for to-day, which in itself was a diversion (an unwelcomed one?) from the usually long teaching day that is my Tuesday: I had spent the day with my colleagues and we gleaned from administrative imperatives and from educational strategies for assessing our respective programs! (Will you permit me an "oysh!"?) And while I am--I think--equally adept at socializing with my peers and steering impressionable minds, I am not adept at enduring alternating jabs and pricks from one sharp, acidic individual in a sea of potentially thoughtful, highly passionate folks. The vampiric-tactics of this particular person had me volleying saucy repartees...

And dodge the rain of pinpricks I did!

As if this weren't enough to drain my life blood! (Remember--I'm a bookish type of gal, whose people time is generally limited to discussing literature and ideas!) But I found myself in a room of fellow wordsmiths, we had turned the simplest statements of our program's goals and objectives into artful prose. We had transformed "simple tasks" into exercises in frustration, nitpicking over diction. Some of us collectively justified it with, "it's what we do--word work is our medium," or "clearly, we think too much," playing the we're-intellectuals-and-not-administrators card.

By 3 o'clock, I had an assessment hang-over. And, at the end of the day, when it was all said and done, it boiled down to this:
(1) a handful of adults behaving like rebellious, back-talking teenagers;
(2) I am grateful--this is just one of two such days in my work year;
(3) and such a day gets me to the beach and nudges from canines;
(4) I will soon be living with my love!!

Economics (for Christian Schools)

No joke, this is a text-book title. My eye spotted the said title held between the digits of a high school-aged girl in the wash-o-mat. It had me wondering: did Jesus have advanced economic theories? What were they and did they offer some eternal truth? (I jest.)

Mainly, it had me wondering: what exactly was it protecting its green readers from? I mean a science textbook that espouses to Intelligent Design and dismisses that silly, wayward Darwinism, I can understand--it protects the youth from the point of view that a god doesn't have anything to do with the Universe and its perceived Order. (I know, I sound more like a disciple of Meursault...)

I wondered how a girl, who read such a book, would be...

If the frightful mother weren't there, I might have asked the girl a question or two...

Tim

Early one morning, I had a dream about my friend Tim Williams who died far too young at the cradle-esque age of 31. My beloved said the dream was like a visitation.
On my drive home, I thought, he did not have time to become. The sensitivity and beauty of a poetess Anne Sexton, the vision of a Frank Lloyd Wright, the quirky genius of Miles Davis, and the imagination and aspirations of a Howard Roark... We all got gypped. All over again, that morning, his short life and sudden death hit me like what I imagine a truck- bed full of granite would feel like...

The Etiquette of Street Parking

We know that the vernacular changes from region to region, even within a state. Well, I have recently been privvy to the local mores of a city I frequent.
It has to do with snowfall, the sweat generated from shoveling, street parking and one's right to all the above. If you have spent some time and energy digging your car out with a shovel--made for snow or for the coal-bin--or even a soup spoon, you are in the right to claim that spot until the snow melts. See, if you have an all-weather chair, or that week's trash, you can save your cleared parking spot!
This harkens back, I mused, to those grammar school days when you would get your pal to save you a seat on the bus if he got on before you to claim the coveted very backseat! Or, if you wanted to sit with someone at lunch... But, should I really liken the mindset of this hood to children? Doesn't seem fair, when, afterall, they've managed to get driver's licences and successfully mastered the art of parallel parking... Maybe it's a wise-subcultural practice: if you're working 2-3 jobs, you don't really feel like shoveling ad nauseum for others at the end of a long day...Or, if you're on the dole, you still don't feel like shoveling...
Though I must wonder what it's like at rush hour--returning home and finding a doofus has taken your hard-earned, sweat-dried spot. Does a brawl ensue? If you're Mr. Mancini, do you stand guard all day and shake your stick at the offending motorist?

People of the cloth...

Been thinking about folks who, literally, wear their faith on their sleeves--on their backs and on their heads... In one of my courses, for the next three novels, we're talking about women who take the veil in Islam. A dialogue turns to an interior monologue today:

for faith is a foreign language I do not speak.

I see holymen-in-training almost everyday. Well, I do not witness their training proper, only those who are in training. Makes me think of training wheels, trykes...Yesterday, I saw the same two gents as they arrived as Yeshiva and as they departed it. Where do they all go from here? Not just home, but as holy men. Do they all become rabbis? Do they spend their days reading and debating the Torah? Do they yell at their children, their wives? Do holymen think they are of that other world, or are they of this mortal coil? Do they say "thank you" and "please"?

I work with sisters, as in nuns. I often wonder how they made their choices to serve God, to be the bride of Jesus---sometimes, when I'm in the mood, I poll the occasional soeur. Sometimes it was for His divine love, sometimes it was an opportunity... I wonder how fiercely independent, yet community-minded women reconcile themselves to bit parts in the Popes' successful scheme. (Ah, the patriarchy!) They cannot be priests, or perform a proper mass. Perhaps not all share Sor Juana's sentiments--her "antipathy for marriage" and her desire to study. But, ...while those who chose the Church, in principle, chose (latent or manifest choices) to keep men out of their beds, they still opted to 'marry' into a male trinity. Sounds almost polygamous, from the woman's position, and polygynous, from the Godhead's point of view. Maybe that's the spiritual community's way of meshing, belonging to each other--a simulacrum of intermarrying? Although these sisters seem charitable and committed to social justice---thus potentially sound Marxists in practice, they surrender their rights of property and wealth to the Top Dog, rendering them totally dependent on the two Hims--- the Benevolent Father or Rome's papa. And they're all educated...

Perhaps faith is the caulking of what one knows to be true and what one wants for the world...

Mythmaking

She thinks--or, so she says--in terms of myths and legends.
If she says that she thinks in such terms it is because she is in
this world, but often not of this world... This too becomes,...
even abets her mythmaking process.
What are the origin tales of Love? It's got nothing to do with
a cherub volleying arrows or the Symposium, she thinks, but
with the held gaze.
The gaze belongs in that realm of the Mythical. Unequivocally
aggrandized and tangible because it is the stuff of human narrative.
A glance may pass, or it may evolve into an intense stare, a wordless,
continued dialogue. The gazers, for there can only be two, both
are versed in the atoms of silence and the connective tissue of
shared time.

Days without misanthropy

an older couple sit bundled up on the beach:

they are a catalog of fleece, scarves, hats, vests personified
she, working on a crossword, in pencil
he, taking drags off his fag and reading some print-out

an ageing Fillippina walks her? bmx-tricks-bike across the intersection:

when she reaches the sidewalk
she hops on and pedals away

an orthodox boy eats a slice of pizza while waiting for the bus:

it is not yet 8 a.m.

a man at the laundromat studies his stack of 3x5 cards:

a nearby birdguide suggests he is a budding ornithologist
a man with a purpose to know

Post-Modern Coquettes

I think of myself as something of a neophyte to the cyber-cliques of myspace.com.
An observer on the inside, perhaps a post-modern ethnographer. Only thing, unlike Winnemucca of the Piutes or Hurston in rural Florida, I lack a certain cyber-culture insider status. Or, let's say I lack certain technologically enhanced social skills? Perhaps the equivalent to the bull in the china shop...no, actually the plundering, aggressive forward thrust is the very m.o. of cyber socialization.
Technological distance allows for that creation of a persona. It also promotes predatory strategies for self-advancement and "friend" recruitment. Vehicles such as Facebook and Myspace blur the boundaries between teens' quest for high school popularity and adults' intrigue with the topic of the at their office's water-cooler. Both entertain a certain level of omphaloskepsis that did not get thrown by the wayside after graduation... It's like a neo-Neverneverland, no one has to grow up and everyone can be desirable!
But part of attaining that desired inside status of being desired means flirting. You flirt in order to become desirable. Simple pimple: we like people who make us feel good about ourselves. And what about when that heavy cyber-petting, ego stroking, is a means to narcissistic ends? (Aw, hell, why do you have to bring ethical questions into it? We all just want to have fun...) But then why must we self-aggrandize and self-promote through such extroverted channels? A former friend once spoke of lattes and gore-tex as created needs... Well, one's hotness-status is another created need, right?
And, oh, the time it takes to create oneself! When we could be learning something new, planting trees, (hell, even working to earn money--what a concept!), saving manatees, cleaning the gutters, holding the door for someone, reading something outside our norm, walking to the store, .... we-as-first-worlders (not that I like the hierarchy of such terms, but I cannot ignore the social reality of wealth and leisure time..) have so many choices, so much freedom in how we use our time, really.
It is, indeed, all a little "creepy," as Ivan said. Especially when flirting is non-specific, it's a generic littering of "hey, sexy!" And the absurdity of the corny graphic inserts on a Wednesday, "Happy Hump Day!", which invite a variety of graphics pimped to your "humping" taste--the fantasy Xena-esque amazon, a dominatrix, a mud-flap-trucker chick....
But who am I to judge? After all, I can now post my blathering online, anonymously, instead of conversing with some kind of eye contact? You'd never think I'd be versed in "Courtesy 101" if this was all you knew of me...