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.