south of the loop

Compare and contrast the spatialization of time at work in Maus and in Time Code. How is it similar in the two media? How different? Please be very concrete in answering.

I just wrote a five page mini-paper answering this question, so I hope that I do actually understand the spatialization of time, at least as it pertains to Maus and Time Code. But even if I got that right, there are lots of other things I don't understand, for instance, Husserl and Ricoeur. A sample passage from volume three of Ricoeur's Time and Narrative, from a chapter entitled "Husserl Confronts Kant," which sounds far more aggressive and exciting than it actually is:

There is no confusion here between space and time, contrary to what Bergson thought, but the movement from the intuition (unobservable as such) of time to the representation of a determined time, through reflection on the operation of drawing a line. Among all the determinations of space, the line has the advantage of conferring an external character of representation.

And on and on he goes.

As much as I make fun of the crackademics here (which is of course rooted in jealousy, since I only wish I could do it), I am very much IN DENIAL about the end of grad school. As in … I still don't know when it actually ends. Very, very soon. That's all I know. I'm too scared to look at my syllabi to figure out exactly how soon. What I don't understand about graduate school is why it has to end. It's not just the awesome student schedule that I've succumbed to, or the time I've had to write and think, or everything I've learned about theory and why I suck at it. It's not even the fear I have at re-entering the working world. It's all of those things plus the realization–the realization that I knew I would have, but still, that aha! moment grabs you by surprise–at how much I've changed these past nine months. The realization that I think differently, I look at the world differently, I write differently. Strangely, this aha! moment came after the MAPH booze cruise (you can see a few pictures on Flickr), where I rediscovered my love of gin and tonics and partied like a rock star on Lake Michigan. It wasn't the alcohol, I promise, it was the fact that MAPH sponsors such a spectacular event–I mean, open bar on the Lake for three hours, watching fireworks on the shore? That's pretty incredible. It's like they know we need something that big to end our year with. Nothing else would befit the tremendous changes that we've undergone. Nothing smaller would do.

So now I have three more papers to write, a reading of creative theses to attend/participate in, and a precept barbecue to attend. And I'll get a grade and comments on my thesis this Wednesday.

And then it's over.

* * *

current book: honestly? I can't stop reading my thesis. Partly in awe and denial that I'm finished, and partly because the type-A part of my personality can't stop combing it for typoes.
current music: two things: Ozomatli's album Street Signs, and a song by Entre Rios called "Claro Que Si," which you can (and should!) listen to here. Somehow it makes me unbearably sad and it makes me want to get up and dance. Beat that.
current socks: dark blue with all things Western on them, such as cowboy boots, a matching Western shirt and skirt, a cowboy hat and…. a cow-spotted bikini. because that's what I always think of when I think of the West. THANKS, Laura and Mark! These are fantastic!

Filed under: life in general, u of c by admin2
No Comments »

This almost makes me want to have kids. Almost.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvp.video.google.com%2Fvideodownload%3Fversion%3D0%26secureurl%3DtwAAAG7ggqAHSiJjpW0D3w4aYTVn5nYIC0BpumDOvuDJLBUrLR3TlxQPI5o0uuu1soFssGlOmrSTZGwjnS9d2wO0qrlwrefK6KB0laQhQNQL7WkWybJerf5tVYzyH4OxR-MiJ5Zi9H2-7dANcsi_P7llCiTfw7hwJOIzTwaUEHzssnn-viwB8Oqw19oLxlp-Ss4BlLs4bc21fncgXbX2TNhIfToEPEknmYgBYKLiA2TFhaT0mWpQSFKQvMKgIbajRT43Qg%26sigh%3DCBP41BddWaqkNmVs0wuVAkbsCbE%26begin%3D0%26len%3D13255%26docid%3D586395512661950379&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer%3Fapp%3Dvss%26contentid%3Db2c7d14d16b95ed2%26second%3D5%26itag%3Dw320%26urlcreated%3D1148485248%26sigh%3D0jKBBAzwZp2mJPcx-iuL5wDwB5Y&playerId=586395512661950379&playerMode=embedded]

Filed under: nephew by admin2
No Comments »

As Wordpress is adding more themes, I’m playing around, trying to find something I love. So if this blog looks different every day for the next two weeks (or…whatever), that’s why. The one I’m testing now is the only truly customizable one. For me, that pretty much translates into “impossible to get it exactly how I want it, especially when the image has to be long and skinny.” The current picture is from a mural on 16th Street in Pilsen, and, although it is obscured by annoying tabs, it is quite cool.

And if you are less typographically/aesthetically/spatially challenged than I am, feel free to weigh in.

* * *

current book: I still haven’t checked any syllabi, but suspect I will be spending tomorrow morning speed-reading Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative… volume THREE. as though the first two weren’t tortuous enough?
current music: sweet, sweet silence
current socks: I bought these last week after being stuck in a torrential downpour. The downpour only lasted about 15 minutes and struck at precisely the time I needed to leave my house to catch the bus. I sat on the bus for an hour, my jeans as wet as though I’d taken them out of the washing machine before the spin cycle, my feet sloshing in half an inch of water. Once I got to Lakeview, I found a DSW and bought socks for my poor, soaked, shriveled feet. They are black with rows bright, polka-dotted kitties. Doesn’t sound cool? Guess again:

Filed under: chicago, life in general by admin2
No Comments »

One of my MAPH-mates really said it best in the title of his most recent blog post. It’s exactly how I feel right now.

So now my master’s thesis is done. Done. Done. People keep congratulating each other, “whew” and “thank God” and “we did it,” but it’s a little bittersweet. The school year is coming to a close along with my academic career, and I have to start thinking about the real world… I’d really much rather have the kind of time for writing that I’ve had this year. Obviously “time” is a relative term given that the U of C loads us up pretty well, but it’s so different from the working world. Which I have to re-enter. Soon. And frankly, the thought of having to be anywhere at 8 or 8:30 in the morning FIVE DAYS A WEEK is much more than my worn out little brain can deal with right now. Did I really used to do that? (No, I know I was never actually anywhere as dreadfully early as 8:30am, but still… even 9:30am sounds painful).

I apologize if my next few posts are babbly and incoherent, but I’ve put all my narrative and descriptive energies into the thesis I turned in today, so I might need to recharge. I am pleased that it’s done, and I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out, although I could have kept tweaking it indefinitely. Tim did an absolutely ASTOUNDING job with the layout (a beautiful pdf file available upon request so that you, too, might ooh and aah over the sculptural qualities of the “Stone” typeface) and helped me come up with a title that I’m pretty pleased with: Beholder and Beheld: Essays from the space between. Not bad!

So now that the Blessed Day has arrived, I’m going to do what every new mother desperately wants to do, but cannot: sleep for about seventeen straight hours. And when I awake, my mewling newborn will still be in the hands of my advisor, and I will be left to begin damage control for the two classes I’ve been neglecting.

* * *

current book: I’m quite sure I should be reading at least four other books for my classes, but I have literally not looked at the syllabi in a week.
current music: my roommate just sent me an mp3 of Louis Prima’s “Banana Split for My Baby,” which kind of rules
current socks: ooh, these are good ones! black with a bombshell PINUP COWGIRL sitting atop a barbed wire fence. or, as my high school history teacher used to say, bob wahr.

Filed under: master's thesis by admin2
No Comments »

You know you're at the U of C when…

The guy sitting next to you in a local coffee shop–who's maybe in his late 20s/very early 30s–is talking to his friend about the first and second year Sanskrit classes he's teaching. Sanskrit.

Filed under: u of c by admin2
No Comments »

Yes, I always hang them dry. It helps prevent widowed socks and it maintains longevity.

Filed under: life in general, socks by admin2
No Comments »

* * *

current book: I should really take the opportunity to thank jaq for making me read Art Spiegelman’s Maus last year, because we just read it for my Time & Narrative class. And by “we,” I of course mean, “not me, because I was working my ass off on my thesis.” But I managed to muddle through the class because I had already read it. And… wait for it… wait for it… I actually made a comment during class. Out loud.
current music: the sound of my thesis-soaked thoughts
current socks: this post, such as it is, was really just a lame excuse to tell you about the socks I wore today. Black with bright yellow toes and heels and bright yellow DUMP TRUCKS all over them! Thanks, Julie, for thinking of me when you were at the Oil Sands Discovery Center in Alberta, Canada! These are almost better than the crabby socks for turning my mood around. They are that amazing.

Filed under: clarabelle, monte by admin2
No Comments »

Don't worry: the only thing I'm pregnant with is a thesis. It's been nine months in the making, though, and I'm nearing the final days before delivery. I've got to keep my strength up for the arduous process ahead of me.

It's often said that pregnant women crave pickles and ice cream (although I have it on good authority that McDonald's Filet o' Fish–no cheese–is much more appetizing). Since the only extra hormones I'm producing are stress-related, I have been craving (and eating) nachos and ice cream. Hopefully this will keep me going until The Blessed Day when I turn in my thesis.

Please don't call me. I can't talk, only babble about "aura" and "immersion" and other such nonsense. If you email me or leave a comment here, it should include something along the lines of "your thesis fucking ROCKS." I'm so entrenched in it right now that all I see are its inadequacies, and as delicious as nachos and ice cream are, they do not provide the sort of ego boost that, say, shots of whiskey might. However, it's probably ill-advised to drink right now, as it might seriously compromise the health and well-being of my thesis.

* * *

current book: seriously?
current music: my favorite writing music: Anner Bylsma performing Bach's Cello Suites
current socks: stripey Grumpy Bear socks

Filed under: master's thesis by admin2
No Comments »

And his long eyelashes.

And the way he rests his head on my shoulder.

And his rolling and rolling and rolling.

And the kisses.

Filed under: nephew by admin2
No Comments »

I met with my art history professor on Friday afternoon about a presentation I'm giving in class on Tuesday. The presentation is on Futurism, something I studied maybe seven or eight years ago. I saw a great collection of Futurist art at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice–also about seven or eight years ago. So I'm coming to this with only the vaguest familiarity, and I'm anxious to give a good presentation and get my seminar paper off to a good start.

Futurism reared its head at a culturally ripe time in history: the Futurists aligned themselves with Mussolini's Fascism, and to some degree both epitomized and catalyzed a culture that was ready for a radical change. World War I soon followed. Futurism attempted to be determinedly anti-Romantic, dispelling the aesthetic theories that had resulted in paintings of moonlit forests and similarly mystical scenes. Futurism also aligned itself with newfangled technologies like racecars and railways. The artists were hooked on concepts of speed, velocity, destruction, audacity, and revolt.

[Boccioni's Dynamism of a Cyclist and other Futurist paintings. Don't be fooled by the apparent visual similarities to Cubism. The movements were rooted in quite different agendas.]

What's particularly fun about the Futurist Manifesto is that despite adamantly reacting to Romanticism, the language used is poetic and melodramatic [note: this is best read aloud while shaking your fists in the air]:

'Let's go!' I said. 'Friends, away! Let's go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are defeated at last. We're about to see the Centaur's birth and, soon after, the first flight of Angels!…We must shake the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Let's go! Look there, on the earth, the very first dawn! There's nothing to match the splendour of the sun's red sword, slashing for the first time through our millennial gloom!

Ah, yes, our millennial gloom. Sounds a little… Romantic to me. The Futurists' art took smaller steps away from Romanticism than their violence-loving manfiestoes might suggest, but nevertheless, it was a step toward abstract art and toward new technologies.

But the augenblick is really why I wanted to post… After Professor and I chatted about Futurism, he asked me how I was finding the class and what my other academic interests are. He's visiting from Europe and not that familiar with the U of C, so I explained about my program, my thesis, etc. I've pretty much gotten this speech down to seventy-five-words-or-less (not including the big sigh that answers the inevitable question, "so, what will you do after you get your degree?"). When I got to the part of my thesis description that goes something like, "and so I'm trying to work with Walter Benjamin's idea of the aura, but I'm finding it really difficult…," Professor's face lit up.

"Why do you find it so difficult?"

You mean aside from the fact that Benjamin is maddeningly inconsistent in his use of words like "aura"? And the fact that Very Important Pronouns have no antecedents, leaving sentences' meanings up in the air? Aside from that?

Professor confirmed that "aura" is one of Benjamin's most difficult ideas, and that its meaning does change from essay to essay. (You know, if I did that in my thesis, I would SO get called on it). In his essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility," Benjamin defines aura as "A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be." I've been attracted to this idea of space and time as "a strange tissue" (in one of Benjamin's earlier essays, it's "a strange web")–it is a web both delicate and mighty, a web that can trap you in its strings. Benjamin is attempting to describe the indescribable: the mystical element of traditional artwork that makes you stop your own movement and forces you to look at it. According to Professor, it is really something that must be felt, not described. That moment when the aura captures your attention loses meaning in the English translation. "Moment" in German is augenblick. Augen means "eye," and blick means "gaze." So the moment of an artwork capturing your attention has countless more connotations in German. I'm still trying to unravel all of them.

But what of this "unique apparation of a distance"? Professor gave me an excellent example: suppose you have an old book that you knew once belonged to somebody you deeply respected and admired. You would, of course, treat that old book with great care and caution. It would remind you of that person you admired, and you would, perhaps, think of that person everytime you flipped through the pages. It is the aura of the book that brings that which is distant–the person you deeply respected and admired–into the present moment.

Another example? A girl looking at a Michelangelo drawing, knowing that what was before her held the pencil lines of a master. Knowing that the same person who created the Crucifixion scene in front of her had also created the Sistene Chapel, David, the Rome Pieta… and that Michelangelo's hands had touched this drawing four hundred years before. This drawing that was now in front of her, and was now part of her story. The aura of the drawing brought all of that into the present augenblick.

* * *

current book: the essay "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a Historical Poetics" by M.M. Bakhtin. It's kind of more interesting than it sounds.
current music: the sound of Clarabelle purrrrrrrring in my lap and the sound of Monte howwwwwling at the door. Clarabelle was allowed to walk around the house for awhile today, but they have to be separated as soon as they want to start roughhousing. Oh, and I'm listening to Luiz Bonfa in the background.
current socks: I got new crabby socks! whoever said that money couldn't buy happiness never shelled out dough for novelty socks. As soon as I slipped them on, my mood went from crabby to ecstatic.

Filed under: u of c by admin2
No Comments »