October 22, 2006

• Progress Report

  I just know you all have gone about your business long since, figuring
  I might never be heard from again. I have read each of your comments
  with great enjoyment, but when I think of taking the time to write some
  thoughts here, I just determinedly move on to the next assignment,
  reading, essay, whatever…. but it’s Sunday  night and I just
  can’t focus on the books anymore.

  My Old Norse studies are coming along; we have just translated good old
  Snorri Sturluson’s passage describing Ragnarokr, the twilight of the
  gods, the end of the world. Nasty. Imagine people who knew that their
  own gods and creators would be destroyed along with all else when the
  final doom fell. This kind of fatalism was shared by the sailor on the
  pre-modern sea — he knew that matters of life and death were
  determined in advance, and there was no sense in fretting about it.

  I, however, have a keen sense that studying like a maniac for each
  little quiz will have a great bearing on my mark. Nouns, masculine,
  feminine, neuter. Strong verbs, weak verbs, just plain bizarre verbs.
  Case, number, gender. Present, past. Pronouns, prepositions, and odd
  little particles lurking about here and there looking enigmatic.

  In contemporary Canadian poetry, I have discovered the poetry of
  Christopher Dewdney. If I hold this stuffy-looking gold gilt frame up
  and look at him through it, he is an environmental science professor at
  York University here in Ontario. Through this other frame though (what
  does it look like? hmm), he is the most fun Canadian poet I’ve
  discovered in a long time. Clever wordplay. When a scientist writes a
  really good poem informed by his scientific understanding, you really
  get to go places and see sights. I’m too tired to go into it, but I’ll
  probably write more about him one day. If you see any of his stuff,
  check it out.

  In my Gothic course, we are onto Blade Runner and Alien!
  I’m about to write an essay about why we human beings are so interested
  in the non-human, whether undead, inorganic or off-planet. I’ve got
  some good ideas after reviewing these films (and reading P.K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). This is just a lark of a course. Oh, I read Laurell Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures
  too. I can’t recommend that one, though… I think it represents the
  decadence and coming death of the mod-vampire genre. It is as if a
  genre could “jump the shark” just like the Fonz. All oddity and
  novelty, no substance. I dunno. When you get vampires filling out tax
  returns and waiting for the bus, what do you really have?

  My thesis. I have 3500 more words to write on the section that is due
  November 1. I love studying the history of law, especially with this
  Old Norse connection, and i have never had more fun working on any
  project. However, the pace is getting to me. So I’m excited and
  motivated, but. You know how it is. Or I bet you can imagine, anyway. I
  don’t dare read anybody else’s blog at this point, for fear of being
  caught up in a whirlwind of envy about someone else’s vacation pics!

  My life as a TA is quite interesting and varied. I have decided that I
  oughtn’t to write about specifics here, since I am helping 40
  first-year students navigate through what has got to be one of the
  roughest patches of their lives, and empathy is strongly called for. I
  will say that I am learning a great deal, both about my own limitations
  and about their abilities. Their first essay is due November 7. I hope
  I will do a good job of marking it!

  Hope you are all doing well. Perhaps sometime in December I’ll take a day off and tour the Xangaworld. Until we ‘meet’ again,

  CG

  
  

  • 9:35 pm
  • 6 Comments