Winding up and winding down
Topic: Uni
Classes ended for the semester last week. In my last tutes, I plied my students with large bowls of Tim Tams, talked about American junk food, told them not to get too stressed about their final essays, and thanked them for being so easy to teach.

Wish I could take my own advice regarding essays - I slogged away all weekend to get a draft of my reading course essay done, which my supervisor just reviewed and approved. At about 2:30 this morning it all stopped making sense to me, but apparently I was able to keep the argument going in spite of my own befuddlement. So I get to take tonight off, start back in on that essay tomorrow morning and get it done for Friday. Then it's straight on to the social theory essay, which I fully expect will be a horror show. I don't think I've ever gone in to an essay before with so little idea of what I'm doing. But it'll get done, because it has to.

Then I mark my students' final essays.

Then I take some time to finally clean my flat, which is on the verge of becoming a toxic wasteland, and try to figure out where on earth I am with respect to my thesis.

So if I'm not around for awhile, that's why. Wish me luck!

Waiting for my brain to wake up
Topic: Whatever
9:23 a.m., sun streaming directly into my face through the slowly-growing green-and-amber tinted gap in the canopy of the tree outside, mug of dark, sweet tea sending up soft, steamy wisps into the sunlight. Quiet, except for the occasional key taps from me and the person sitting across the room.

Short essay due today in the social theory class - it's not done, I think it's probably total crap, but I've got until 4:00 to attempt to sort something out of it. I was trying to do it last night, but my brain just refused. It was having none of anything academic. Poor brain. I've clearly been asking too much of it lately.

Somebody recently found their way here by googling 'i think i'm going to fail uni'. I don't think I've previously written that precise phrase here, but I am most definitely sympathetic to the sentiment. That can't have been a good night - I'm picturing some distressed first-year student surrounded by indecipherable lecture notes, essays due, no inspiration, freaking out, and suddenly it seems like Google is the only thing to talk to, because Google doesn't judge, it just looks for answers. Yeah, that's a bad night. Hopefully, it's just a bad night, and things look better in the morning -- even if it's just that you realize that failing uni would not actually be the end of everything important in life. It can be entirely too easy to lose sight of that when you're in the thick of study.

9:50 a.m., clouds drifting over the sun, and a current of sound has begun to flow through the hallway outside as staff trickle in. Brain still reluctant to tackle social theory. Time to administer another cup of tea, and perhaps promise it chocolate when the essay is done.

Cage Match!
Topic: Odds and ends
This vs this: which is more ridiculous? One's a massive Wikipedia entry, the other has card-shark dogs. I am SO OVER The Da Vinci Code, and I am not alone. Take that, pop culture juggernaut!

Grammar police, arrest this man
Topic: Editorializing
I'm generally a fan of adhering grammar conventions, but I know I make plenty of mistakes, especially right here, where I'm usually writing quickly and not re-reading very closely before posting. I haven't been called on any of them yet, but others online have not been so lucky. Like this Metafilter poster who makes a classic its/it's error in a comment, which another user points out. The original poster obligingly re-posts the comment - and I leave it to you to decide whether the final result comes out of grammatical ignorance or mischievous baiting of the grammar police.

What's worse, inaccurate grammar that doesn't actually disrupt the sense of a sentence's meaning, or being a grammar snob? I correct the hell out of the grammar in the essays I read, whether they're my students' or my friends'. I think I'd be doing them a disservice if I didn't, when better grammar could help them get better marks. But is it really worth it to be one of those people who interrupts conversation to correct someone's usage when whatever error has been made doesn't detract from understanding the point (or in this case, to be the online equivalent of that person)?

I'm not asking that question rhetorically, because there are lots of casual grammar mistakes that people make in various fora that I don't say anything about in the interests of not appearing insufferably pedantic - but I wonder sometimes if people would rather know? My own grammar wouldn't be anywhere near as good if people hadn't corrected my usage, and good grammar is important to good communication. I have corrected people on stuff like mispronunciations, which I do think pose problems in understanding what they're trying to say, but where does one cross the line from being helpful to being a know-it-all show-off? Or am I already over that line, and should just keep my mouth shut in the future?

blah blah blah modernity
Topic: Reading
Okay, so there's this class this semester that makes me insane. All about 'modernity' and what various dead white men have said about it. And the lecturer said that if we were having trouble 'getting it', we should read All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity by Marshall Berman. And am I ever not getting it. I suppose I could get it if I had the time to read Durkheim and Marx and Nietzsche and Kant and Sartre and Foucault and who knows who else that everyone else in the class seems to have read (or to be able to convincingly fake having read). But I don't.

And I don't really care. Hence, I'm not so much 'getting' the class. So I read this book. And boy, does Marshall Berman love him some modernity, that magical, mystical state of being in which nothing is stable and everything is constantly being torn down, rebuilt and reinvented. He loves modernity so much he talks about it for 300-some pages and traces it's development through Goethe to Marx to Baudelaire. Then he decides to talk about cities, specifically St Petersburg and New York. I don't know. Cities are important to modernity, I remember that much. So are boulevards, traffic, technology, and art. Beyond that, I really don't remember.

It's not that this is a bad book. It definitely has interesting moments, and it's surprisingly readable. Berman's aim is to produce a complex reading of modernity, and to defend it from vocal critics who emphasize its destructiveness. But the class that's associated with it makes me so cranky that it spilt over into this book. I was also a bit frustrated that Berman is very focused on 'the West' and doesn't go anywhere near questioning the whole notion of 'progress'. That's what I'm really interested in - where did that idea come from, and how does one go about picking it apart and questioning its power and the unilinear way it's been constructed. And that is not what I'm getting from the class or this book, and therefore, the crankiness continues unabated.

Those 'book club' books
Topic: Reading
I don't quite know how I feel about book clubs. I was in one at work for awhile and it was sort of interesting. I read some novels I probably wouldn't have read if I hadn't been in it, but clearly, it's not like I need to get involved with a book club to read and talk about books. And I really am not terribly excited about the way the way a certain type of book has come to be promoted as good for book club reading - the type concerned with trials and tribulations that ultimately are uplifting and teach important life lessons. And I really don't care for books that are published with book club discussion guides at the end. It feels manipulative, like the publisher is saying that this book is so amazing that I'm a) going to need to discuss it with seven other people and b) going to be so amazed that I'm not going to be able to analyze it myself. Which is a) usually overstating the case and b) an insult to my excellent liberal arts education.

When I picked up Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, it set off the 'book club' warning bells - tastefully muted earthtone cover with script font, story about a woman in tragic circumstances, and sure enough - a discussion guide in the back. But I'm a bit of a sucker for historical fiction, and this was a story based on actual events - in 1666, an English village was infested with the plague and the villagers, guided by their pastor, decided to cut themselves off from the rest of the world to contain the infestation. I decided I'd give it a try for a chapter or two to see if it grabbed me.

With very scant facts to draw upon, Brooks has a fairly free hand in creating her characters - the charismatic pastor, his angelic wife, the intelligent but uneducated maid who plays an ever-increasing role in their household, and the local herb women. A fairly stock set of characters, but in the maid, Anna, Brooks creates an interesting and sympathetic protagonist who confronts a year-long crisis of faith caused by the suffering that she and her community go through.

Brooks' creates a convincing picture of what a quarantined community would go through when confronted with a seemingly unstoppable disaster. The community hovers between pulling together and turning on itself, tugged back and forth across this border by the heroes and villains of the story (who are perhaps a bit too clearly drawn). Anna is the most fully realized of the characters, but unsettling secrets abound and are uncovered under the stress of coping with the effects of the plague.

Year of Wonders rewarded my efforts to get past my 'book club book' allergy. It's an involving novel, both researched and written well. Brooks paints a distressingly plausible picture of what living through a long-term disaster would be like, and does so with an awareness of the great range of possible individual and community responses.

It's that time of year again
Topic: Uni
Time for the semiannual examination of the far nether regions of my alimentary canal for scholarly ideas, otherwise known as 'drinking too much tea, staying up way too late, and pulling stuff outta my ass'. Exhibit A being this week's projects: the outline for an essay that's due in less than a month, and the presentation I'm supposed to give in class tomorrow. The outline I made up in about 15 minutes and I haven't even finished reading one of the chapters that's supposed to be part of my presentation. And it is now well after 11 p.m.

Damn it. This semester was not supposed to be like this. I had my long-range timeline and my daily schedule all laid out and everything. Granted, I knew better than to expect them to work out perfectly, but I had high hopes that for once in my academic career, I might not end the semester in a frenzy of research and writing.

But you can't really plan for grieving, especially since you don't know what sort of toll it's going to take. I expected the crying fits and general blues and flatness, but I didn't expect to suddenly feel that everything I was doing was meaningless. One of the ways I got through a previous difficult grieving period - the months following my first major breakup and finding out that my grandmother had terminal cancer - was by immersing myself in schoolwork. That avenue was not available to me this time. At least I had tutoring and babysitting - those helped me pull together on a regular basis. But schoolwork? I couldn't have cared less.

So I find myself on familiar terrain: the realm of last-minute panic. Oh well. Been here plenty of times before and I know I'll get through it. I just wish I could pull all-nighters like I used to. The day after wasn't particularly nice at 21, but at 29 it's pretty wretched. So before it gets any later, I'd best get back to work.

Must stop watching movies with a social conscience
Topic: Raving
They render me uninclined to find anything of value in my social theory reading, which is a problem since I'm presenting in class on Wednesday and should try to find something worthwhile to say. But it all seems so useless and pointless. Blah blah blah nation-state and military power and modernity yadda yadda.

The film that has done this to me is Deepa Mehta's Water, which centers on a widow house in India in 1938. The widow house was an institution for women whose families did not want to support them. Widows were social outcasts, and in order to support themselves often turned to begging and prostitution. Chuyia enters a widow house at the age of seven, a child bride whose husband dies unexpectedly. She is taken in by Kalyani and Shakuntala, two very different women who draw on their faith to cope with the difficulties their widowhood presents. At the time, Gandhi is challenging British rule in India and a range of oppressive religious and cultural traditions. The question of whether the increasing current of change will make a new life possible for the widows runs through the film. Mehta holds out hope and provides beauty and humor, but doesn't shy away from cruelty and tragedy. Water is a powerful movie, and while its not exactly uplifting, neither is it mired in despair. There is a strong theme about the merits and risks of following the dictates of conscience that I found inspiring.

Unfortunately for me, I must now follow the dictates of my class work and get back to social theory.

What I've been reading
Topic: Reading
Australian novels, finally. Bit disgraceful that I haven't read any since I set foot in the country, although I read a few before I got here:

My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin, the author's debut novel, was written when she was a teenager (and does it ever show) and published to great acclaim in 1901. It tells the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a smart, outspoken, ambitious young woman growing up poor in the country. That Franklin was a talented writer at a young age is evident in the fact that she manages to make Sybylla both real and sympathetic, which is a challenge when dealing with a teenaged character. All the adolescent melodrama is here - 'I'm a troll! I'm a freak! No one will ever understand me!' but the aggravation that attitude prompts is tempered by the knowledge that it would have been difficult to be a poor young woman with intellectual aspirations in the late nineteenth century, and by the flashes of insight and maturity that Sybylla shows. The movie is quite good too, and more accessible to a modern audience, but it doesn't capture the details of country life that enrich the novel, and it gives greater priority to a very unconventional courtship that Sybylla finds herself in. The novel is more of a character sketch of Sybylla, and the character sketched is generally an intriguing one.

Miles Franklin's other notable achievement was establishing the preeminent annual award for Australian fiction, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Tim Winton has won it three times, most recently for Dirt Music. I plan to read more of his work soon because I was so engrossed in Dirt Music I could hardly put it down. I don't know where to start describing it - the characters are complex, the relationships are messy and involved, the landscapes are fantastic, the language is gorgeous - it has so much going on. A strange love triangle starts in an insular, tough fishing town, involving the town's favorite son, the last member of its most unwanted family, and an isolated recent arrival. The scars of these people's pasts and the prejudices and politics just under the surface in the town shake up their lives, despite all their efforts to maintain control. Dirt Music a powerful book about music and tragedy and running away and coming to terms with the past.

'friendship, humor, art and music'
Topic: Raving
Sunday night, as my reward for finishing marking essays without pulling an all-nighter involving gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair and many bitter comments about attention to important details like using citations and doing so correctly (and yes, I will shut up about the marking soon, I promise), I went to see I Know I'm Not Alone, which is a remarkable little film. And I want to be clear that when I say 'little', I say it because it's a movie that doesn't have grand pretensions. It's all about small but important moments. It's about ordinary people and their lives. It's about the difference that small groups can make and are making. It's about relating to people as people - hearing their stories, sharing in their lives. It's heartbreaking and uplifting and challenging.

Michael Franti, a hip-hop/funk singer/songwriter (whose music I've just started getting into), took a break from his work with his excellent band, Spearhead, to travel to Iraq, Palestine and Israel with a few friends to find out what it's like to live under military occupation. Franti is interested in individual stories. He takes risks to reach out to people: traveling outside secure areas, performing his outspokenly political music for US soldiers, bringing together small groups of people who might not ordinarily interact. He wanders around playing his guitar, and builds a rapport with people whose language he doesn't speak by writing a catchy little song with one lyric: 'habibi', which means, basically, 'my dear friend' in Arabic.

Franti absolutely succeeds in putting a human face on the conflicts in Iraq and Palestine/Israel. I was particularly struck by the clear intention to produced a balanced portrayal of the people on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli state doesn't come off well (particularly where the land grab of the wall is concerned), and neither do those who support suicide bombing, but the Israeli and Palestinian people are not demonized. In a particularly brave moment for everyone involved, Franti and his group, along with some Palestinians from a town near the wall, have an intense conversation with some Israeli soldiers they had argued with earlier in the day. Both sides discuss their fears, where their fears come from, and how much they don't like the wall. It's tragic to see how the systems and structures that these people have been shaped by separate them from each other, but encouraging to see that, even if only for a moment, some communication can take place across that gap.

I saw it with Ro, and all we could talk about afterward was how much we wanted to drop everything and go somewhere and do something. And yes, I took deep breaths and reminded myself that, in theory, once all this research and writing is done, I will be in a better position to do that something. I might even have a better idea than 'something' about what I want to do. But I don't know. Franti says he wanted to make a movie about the way people cope with the stresses of occupation, a movie about 'friendship, humor, art and music'. And those are seriously missing from what I'm studying, which makes me wonder whether I'm going about this all wrong - am I learning too much about ways to 'help' people that don't really consider their humanity, or mine? Have I learned too well to see people as problems that need solving? Where's the heart in what I'm studying? It strikes me that we've got the 'head' covered around here, but we're seriously lacking in soul.