Exergue

It's a beautiful Friday evening, and I'm alone and already in for the night. There's brown rice in the rice-cooker, a stack of books on the coffee table, and a DVD waiting next to the television. Ah, what a life I lead. I spent the day reading (in the park) on cryptography, reading (by the office window) on millinnerianism, reading (once again, in the park) on corporeality, and finally reading (with Jeehyun at Tuscany) on grammatology. Despite the intended sarcasm, I enjoy the work; I only wish that my days of it might conclude with a dinner out, dancing of some sort perhaps, and the hands of another body.

There's little time for such, as is. And what little time there is, I give to my writing - itself the time in which the times of my work and life commingle. But the novel, which I originally conceived as an open system, permeated by the day-to-day, experiences more comings and goings from the books I read (and the conversations with Jeehyun) than it does the actual events of what we usually describe as "living." Sometimes I even think that the various things I call texts and my interactions with them through thought or writing provide the very depth of experience I long for "out there" in the real of romance, of friendship and of family.

What would it mean to accept this, to turn from the outside to the inside of writing? Or must I, like Stephen (see The Library's Grain #66), remain the child poised between the two, moved by the question's implacable demand and the never-finished writing of its answer? How do others stop their ears? How do they, after all, trade the dance of words for hands that hold?

Spring is a fashion too

The tree outside my window has just started blooming: tight little bunches of white flowers, each with a speck of pink at the center. It's an extraordinary sight. Spring, it says. This week, I've already spent much time lingering in its arrival. I've walked to school more slowly, pretended to read on the benches that line Locust Walk, and passed whole hours of the afternoon on the green of Rittenhouse Park. I am, for the first time this semester, purposely shirking my schoolwork.

Last night, Sara and I attended this season's "Diesel party," a sort of open-house at Diesel's Philadelphia store. There was wine, really terrible sushi, and poci (does anyone out there know how to spell this?) for dessert. The festivities were rather tame, and - unlike the last party - I knew almost no one there save the employees. The crowd was not what I had expected: conservative-looking young women (all blonde) with their boyfriends, a few Philadelphia hipsters (who spent the entire evening clumped together by the door), a small contingent of Asian women, and a couple token gay guys. I'm not sure where Sara and I fit into these - no doubt unfair - categorizations, but I suppose that's the point. At least, the point I'd like to establish.

But the real point should be what the purpose is of the tremendous amounts of money I spend at that store (Matt and Jen used to call it my "Diesel addiction"). Three years ago, I wouldn't set foot in the store; now the people that work there know me by name and send me personalized postcards multiple times a month. Last summer they even sent me free clothes in the mail, "to add to the collection." There's a pleasure in all this that I'm not describing here, but there's also a question regarding this pleasure's purpose, which seems to remain largely unavowed - and, frankly, somewhat unfathomable.

In lieu of a superficial and highly cliched psychological analysis here, I offer instead the following problem, a problem (of course) related to my novel. And that is this: What does Stephen wear? I've grappled with this for weeks now and can't get anywhere with it. Square's "costume" is both well-plotted and central to his character (it's been mentioned in The Library's Grain too many times to cite here): spiked hair, occasional eyeliner, and a continuously changing wardrobe that runs from suits-and-ties to torn t-shirts and boots. He is, in short, the punk who plays with fashion. He's also, unlike Stephen, a gym-goer, intent on gaining muscle and willing to ingest the extra protein to secure it (see The Library's Grain #99). But who, in these terms, is Stephen? I picture him in black, a turn-of-the-centry Raskolnikov, a lugubrious poet in ill-fitting collared shirt. Except there is simply no way a contemporary young man (even taking into account his eccentricities) would dress that way. The question, in slightly different terms, might be: How would Stephen Daedalus dress, were he young and alive today?

Any and all reading out there, I'd love to hear your thoughts - if not on this question, then some other, real or imagined.

Comings and goings, and other partings

A beautiful day. Spent so far without much reading. I'm trudging through Merleau-Ponty, one of the least pleasant reads I've had since the summer. Not only is it dry and dated, but it's printed in a font that practically begs its reader's mind to wander. Still, it should be useful, though as of yet I'm not sure how. I'm imagining a paper for my film class on the meaning-structure of (so-called) synaesthesia. My argument is that sensual knowledge is, in almost all cases, mediated by the word, and that the special claims film theorists have made for it misunderstand its logic. Dry perhaps, but at least not dated. Not yet.

My meeting with Matthew was, of course, anti-climatic. He turned out to be quiet, unassuming: a Modernist writing his senior thesis on repetition in Woolf. We had coffee instead of lunch, and our conversation lasted fifteen minutes. At which point - the department having scheduled our meeting as a hasty afterthought - he was dragged off by the "real" representatives of University Modernism: Benjy and Andy. As my tone suggests, we tend not to get along. And worse, we're forced - based on very tenuous connections between what we study - to associate more often than any of us would like. Textual versions of them both appear in the novel I'm working on (see, for example, The Library's Grain #90), though Benjy's character serves a comparatively minor role in the plot and so has received little development.

After Matt had left with Benjy and Andy, I mingled with the other prospective students. Almost all of them were women, and a good number of them were unusually attractive (at least, for English grad students - we are, on average, not a pretty bunch). Six of us (Jeehyun, Gershon, myself, and three prospectives) lunched together at the White Dog. The restaurant was loud and conversation difficult, but the meal was pleasant overall. A "colloquium" was planned for the evening, but by the time lunch had ended, I'd had my fill of "Prospective Days," and so walked home in the glare of the afternoon sun.

All things considered, I found the first Day of our visitors disappointing, though it was well-organized and most of those I met will - I imagine - accept the University's offers. What was missing then? A moment whose measure could not be taken: a meeting not built upon figures and percentiles, job prospects and faculty interests. The reasoned part of the decision-making process is given too much attention, I think - both by those who offer the invitations and those who respond by visiting. There should be, beyond the various sides of self-interest cultivated, something raw and disruptive, unpredictable, irrational. There should be an erotics of exchange, a coming together that makes its meaning more from suggestion than promise. I, at least, found nothing of that today. Unless it was in the gaze of one of the Medievalists who visited. I don't remember her name, but she was pretty, had short blonde hair, and eyes that - for the few moments that we spoke - hovered over mine for a second longer than they needed to. And my eyes, they followed her example.

Of novel flesh and strangers

It's been almost a full week since last I wrote here, which means it's been a busy one. Lots of academic nuts and bolts that aren't worth committing to (digital) posterity. And, as always, a good deal of reading: Of Grammatology, Dancing in the Distraction Factory, and the Phenomenology of Perception. Lately, my life seems to consist of three (and only three) activities: reading, the gym, and class (or something related to it). In the grand scheme of things, that's not so bad, though sex and naps on the beach would be nice additions.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a prospective graduate student out for lunch. I know absolutely nothing about him - not even what he studies. Last year my "guest" was for me a remarkable match: queer, into philosophy, fairly handsome, and immensely over-confident. He didn't end up coming, which wasn't much of a surprise to me. Just as I had done, he decided to stay at his undergraduate institution.

I'm not expecting such synergy tomorrow - and indeed find it rather curious that the organizers haven't told me what "Matthew" studies. Either they're not sure - or, and this is just as likely, they're not sure what I study, and so think such information irrelevant. And maybe, after all, it is. These lunches are probably not very important for the decision-making processes of those visiting.

Still, I find them exciting. They're like blind dates except with a vastly skewed distribution of power (that favors, of course, the host). Not only is the prospective prone to over-hasty indentification, but the departmental representative occupies an unusually solid position with respect to his or her own identity. And for me, that solidity is license to experiment.

I've been thinking a lot this weekend (since reading Jeehyun's blog) about what my position might be - my character, so to speak. This is a rather common meditation for me, but (as those who read The Library's Grain have probably noticed) one that has become increasingly insistent over the past couple months. Whether this means that its object has also become increasingly fluid is a question to which I don't yet have the answer.

In the novel I'm working on - currently titled (presumptuously) Work of Art - what I imagine as my identity gets split up amongst numerous characters, but finds itself incarnated mostly in the textual configurations of the protagonist, Stephen, and his "supporting actor," Square. The difference between the two is obvious but difficult to summarize. As originally conceived, Square was Stephen's Cranly, and their relationship was meant to mimic that which is described in Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Square has developed since then: Cranly's quiet self-confidence has been replaced by a schizophrenic jubilance, and his heteroglossic speech has taken on an occasional mean-spirit that (though not at all modelled after him) sometimes resembles that of Buck-Mulligan. Stephen, on the other hand, has departed in many ways from his namesake, but not with any real consistency. It may be that his great uncertainty (about who and how he desires) produces a protean character less predictable than Square's. Or it may just be that he is better able to project (and deny) his own qualities than any of the other characters can or would want to.

I, of course, have since the beginning of the Work's conception leaned most strongly in affection towards Square. He is, without a doubt, the linguistic configuration in which I feel most comfortable writing and thinking. But he's also whom I likely least resemble in my day-to-day existence. There's no darkness in Square, no secrets made sacred by the wards that forbid access. Sqaure is chaste, and unproblematically so. But Stephen goes without sex for reasons that only his Work can tell him. He is the scene in which he watches, from a distance, two other characters (Andy and Sarah) converse in all the dressings of attraction. He is the hand of Square's on his that draws him out the door for places unpredictable and bright with synaesthesia.

But that is prose, and they are letters, names that form and diassemble and form again on pages not all yet written. I am something else. Flesh, let's call it, in keeping with my recent reading. And tomorrow, it will be in flesh that I appear, in flesh that I am spoken, and in flesh that I will bait. And in flesh, I envy him, this Matthew who in title is undecided, a consumer of the identities myself and others like me proffer. Young that way, more known than knowing.

Such a metaphysics I've made here of - really - a very simple meeting! That's the way though - I mean Stephen's way, and mine so much as I am Stephen. Every experience, when given words, encompasses countless others. Words move the way flesh cannot; but flesh, being of words, moves itself as they do for those who trouble themselve to read.

Blankets, Apples, Walkmen

Cold day. Not long, but weighty. Shakespeare this morning, then a meeting with Charles. Stephanie tells me it's the first day of spring, but nothing in my mood or the weather agrees.

More reading tonight, which is probably much less exciting to read about here than it is to actually do. Well, maybe not much less. But it is suggestive - and the lingering winter seems to obscure the suggestions that might usually be made by the real world. In particular, Cohn's book on Medieval millenarianism has regularly prompted a slew of creative musings, much of them finding synthesis in the (growing) outline/scrapbook for the novel I'm writing. At Swim, Two Boys is equally inspiring, though along a more humanist line. Doyler, the poorer of the boys in O'Neill's novel, has had me thinking these past couple days of the relationships I've formed - mostly as a child - across class lines. There's a number of them, actually, throughout my life, but their tendency to encompass gross difference has decreased with age.

Growing up in Johnson City, New York, on an extremely tired road named Baldwin Street, I spent much of my early youth around children and families that were often struggling to get by. There were a large number of Laotian immigrants: families of four or more living in small two-bedroom apartments on the north end of the block. Closer to my house, there was a large and incongruous edifice (my brother and I called it "the blue building") that consisted of numerous small public housing apartments in which a gaggle of young and often dirty children lived. Worst of all, however, was "the White House," a public eyesore that looked as if it would collapse in the event of a severe wind- or snowstorm. The families living there succeeded each other with quick regularity, but each one brought with it a plethora of small children and a great of deal of trash that soon found itself strewn acorss the yard in which they played.

I don't know what children make of distinctions in class, but I know that they're aware of them, and understand them in a more sophisticated fashion than we typically credit them. I've wrangled my memory of my first schoolfriend Corey into my novel (see The Library's Grain #103), but I didn't finish the story there: Eventually, I began to see the things that I found - even then - so attractive in Corey - his rough English, his endless need to move, his messy and dirty hair that pointed always at odd angles - as evidence of a lack in him that I couldn't name but knew was bad. I slowly but unequivacally began to shun him, and a year later he disappeared (as was common for the poor children in my school) and I never saw him again.

What can I make of this memory, and the memories that follow it? Friendships with the children around me - Vien Phet who avoided me (six years old) after I appeared, unannounced, at the door of her apartment to ask her to play; Zachary, who lived with his father (an alcoholic) in a tiny attic two-bedroom and who would not sleep over for fear of wetting the bed; Sarah, who teased and threatened me, as I spurned other friendships to spare her the practical jokes of our wealthier classmates. What to make of all this; and what lingers of it today?

These children were in and out of my house as a child; they ran in our yard, knocked at the door timidly to ask if they could play on our piano. My mother gave them rides and food and little toys when they moved away, but mostly, as she told me on the phone Sunday evening, she tried to give them a moment or two in which they could feel safe. It is a feeling I have had for every day of my life, and a feeling that not until recently could I imagine someone else not having.

I don't know how to place Corey now: my first love, as it were. These days, I rule out romantic interests with no hesitation for being too uncultured, too uneducated, too unable to think and feel as I do. It's hard to imagine doing otherwise. The professors I am trained to emulate have, for the most part, partners who are also professors - and, when not, who are doctors or lawyers or curaters. Again, it's hard to imagine otherwise. But I still thrill to the eyes and hands of boys with less. Not a fetishization of the working class, but a feeling that it is I who am lacking when compared with them. Lacking what, I can't determine, but I have lacked it always, and saw it right there at the beginning in Corey's nervous smile.

And today? Some years ago, a friend Madelaine took me to McGlinchey's on my twenty-first birthday. There at the bar, sat a young man with dark hair, the beginnings of a moustache, and a sullen look that he kept in silence. He was Brian, Madelaine told me, and she thought the two of us would be "perfect together." I watched him closely that evening, but he never (that I could tell) looked back. Weeks or months later - I don't remember - I saw him there again, in the same spot, smoking and drinking a beer. WIth courage unusual for me, I approached him, introduced myself as a friend of Madelaine and tried - with little success - to make smalltalk. Eventually, he asked (in a threatening tone), what I "did." And after I told him, he replied, looking firmly into his beer glass: "I work in a grocery store." I was at a loss for how to respond and he knew it, seemed even to enjoy it. "Cool," I said, unable to think of anything better. And his answer: "No, it's not." He took a long drink from his glass, leaned over to the bartender to order another, and repositioned himself in his chair, so as to signal to me that our conversation was over.

Post-aggressive

A tired, sleepy weekend on the heels of an exhausting week. Friday night, I had dinner with Jeehyun, followed by a terrible movie at my place. Saturday: the gym with Mike, Cafe Sud with Fran, and the Huong Vuong supermarket and then Chapterhouse with Sara. By 7:30, I had fallen asleep on the couch and was out for the next 11 hours.



Today should finally be a day of much reading - and much reading that seems to be merging. This morning, I find this in Marwick: "In April 1966 the publisher Gallimard simply printed 3,500 copies of Les Mots et les choses. Within a week they sold out. Regular reprintings followed. 'Foucault commes des petits pains' was the heading to a Nouvel Observateur article devoted to the best-sellers of the summer of 1966. It was, naturally, the apocalyptic view of the individual human being about to disappear as a focal point of knowledge which seized the attention of the press . . ." Of course it was - and I'm reminded of the chapter I just finished on Thomas Muntzer in Cohn's In Pursuit of the Millennium. In something like the German peasant revolt recounted there, however, the eschatological impulse to destruction is not wedded to a post-apocalyptic social rebirth. The end is simply the end. In Foucault, however, and all the French, Marxisant theorists of the '60s (as Marwick notes - though I believe he's wrong regarding Derrida), the end is always the beginning.

As to that bit in my last blog about my "aggressive" academic tone, I've decided - with the help of Sara and Jeehyun - that, though that is a somewhat unconscious tendency of mine, it can also - as in the case of the class in question - serve as a defensive posture against excessive infantilization. The class involves: 10 or so undergraduates, a sign-in sheet, weekly postings to the Blackboard server, a midterm examination, and - beginning with the last class - the practice of splitting us into groups of four (complete with group spokespersons) so as to secure maximum participation. All of these are unheard of (and for good reason!) in graduate classes. Given the options of either a friendly, invested performance of engagement or a critical and predominantly written antagonism, the latter at least appears more honest. Of course, there might be other options too, but with the exception of silence they've yet to occur to me.

"something like an anti-intellectual gesture"

A gnarly day. Dressed in a striped shirt and sports jacket, I show up at the Filbert Street courthouse this morning to learn that the defendant's lawyer's wife has just given birth. My case is thus postponed (for the fifth time).

Across the city and a few hours later, I'm told (in writing) by a professor that the tone of my exam and weekly responses is antagonistic, ineffective, and perhaps even occasionally offensive. The worst part is that I don't necessarily disagree. Some significant part of my mind seems to thrive on contention; and this same part learns through sometimes hysteric negation. I could, when I meet with her next Tuesday, justify this predilection with numerous arguments - and many of them would even be valid. But what gets at me is that she's hit on something that, despite my reasons, is not a considered pose or practice, but deep and inherent, definitive and compulsive. Of what use does it serve?

But now, 5:30, a snack, a drink with Sara, salsa, and then perhaps the gym. There's the mind, but also the body. Best not to forget about either.

The Basics

Owing to an escalating case of blogger's envy, I've finally decided to give in and start one up in the good ol' tried-and-true journal style. I have two others, one a kind of hyper-modern commonplace book and the other a free-form writer's notebook for a novel I'm working on. As far as I know, those two have an audience of maybe three people (including myself). With any luck, this one'll make it to four.

As for today, what's going on? I'll tell you - not much. Up at 6:00. To the gym by 6:30, where I stretched and worked on chest and tri-s. Then back home to comment via email on the writing of a Korean high school student I'm tutoring. 11:00 finds me at Penn for the undergraduate Shakespeare lecture and the Pedagogy graduate seminar that follows. Then back through the city to TLA to rent My Own Private Idaho for class on Friday. Some comic book purchases at Atomic City. And then back at the computer to submit a response on Third World cinema.


And what's up for the night? Reading, reading, reading. Marwick's The Sixties, Cohn's In Pursuit of the Millennium, and O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys. I'd love to do something else: go out for dinner, grab a beer at the dive bar around the corner, or - most of all - have sex and go to bed. Unfortunately, this winter has seen a short supply of money, nearby friends, and sexual partners. With any luck, all this will change come spring.