Dust

Being hypersensitive to all things DQ (despite my distaste for ice cream – I actually use “the other DQ” as a landmark and find myself looking at the DQ buildings I would have totally ignored previously) alerts me to the fact that once you start to focus on something, it pops up everywhere. Does that mean that there is no such thing as coincidence? That coincidence is manufactured by a mind that has already created it and is actually seeking it?

Today it’s dust. I see dust everywhere. This is because we’re having an area of our basement excavated. The work started yesterday. We thought we were prepared. Rooms were cleared. Boxes packed. Garbage put out. But we weren’t prepared for the dust. Or, we were only prepared for a portion of the dust that we actually got and now, I see dust everywhere. It’s on my keyboard, my coffee cup, the conference table, the windowsill – all places far away geographically from the work site. Is it a mental thing? Am I just attuned to dust? Did I bring the dust with me, in my pockets, in my hair, on my shoes? I’m checking my shoes now and the bottoms don’t look very dusty but there does seem to be a thin film on the uppers…I’m brushing it off now…

In my reading of DQ, I’m into a longish chunk devoted to DQ & Sancho’s visit with the Duke and Duchess who have recently read the first book of DQ & Sancho’s adventures – The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. As they know “of Don Quixote’s extravagances”, they decide to “fall in with his whimsies, to agree with him in all he said, and to treat him like a knight errant”. But they go further and actually manufacture and stage adventures which entangle both DQ and Sancho in (mostly) funny ways. The D&D understand the triggers, the cues that DQ and Sancho need to engage them in their own fantasies. Much is made, for example, of Sancho’s island governorship (which he covets) and of the transformation of Dulcinea del Toboso. So, DQ and Sancho live in a constructed series of adventures here at the D&D’s place, even as this constructed adventure is part of their “real” adventures embedded in Part II. Do the D&D just want to have some fun or do they want to ensure that DQ and Sancho make their mark on the D&D’s turf so that the D&D can become part of the second part of the story? I’m not through the adventure yet but it’s very curious…


Another page just peeled off the back of my disintegrating copy of DQ. One side is “Penguin Classics: Recent and Forthcoming Volumes” and includes The Psalms, A Nietzsche Reader and Cicero’s Letters to Atticus. The other is an ad for Two Spanish Picaresque Novels – Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler. The description makes them both sound like good reads: with “ingenious ruses”, the outwitting of masters, and “scatological adventure”.

A Greeting from the last paragraph of Part II Chapter XXXV

And now bright smiling dawn came on apace; the flowers of the field, revived, raised up their heads, and the crystal waters of the brooks, murmuring over the grey and white pebbles, hastened to pay their tribute to the expectant rivers; the glad earth, the unclouded sky, the fresh breeze, the clear light, each and all showed that the day that came treading on the skirts of morning would be calm and bright.

Otto on D and G

I actually haven't been reading D&G much lately. But Otto has so I'll just link us to Otto's Plaid Column post from Thursday February 16, 2006! I have made some further notes on my notes/drawings (see Monday February 6, 2006 "Two Cartoons") of my readings from D&G, chapter 10.















The whole practice of "Saturday Reading" (see Monday November 21, 2005 and several subsequent postings) has dissolved...I need a moment to reassess this and find a new small space for reading D&G (was Steve Baker before D&G - not sure who it'll be next - although, now that I think of it, I have Giorgio Agamben's The Open on deck and "the other Mick" has recommended a few things...).

Keeping Things Whole

A difficult few days...but I've learned over the years, to prepare for this. I know where to go. I try to make it easy for myself... I keep Mark Strand's Selected Poems on an open shelf reserved only for "working books". Most of my novels, art books, poetry books etc. are boxed. But I know that sometimes, from time to time, I need to read Strand. He's a literary soulmate. A lot of people I know don't like his work at all but it works for me...I've always really, really liked him. Strand always makes me laugh and cry. "Keeping Things Whole" is one of his best known poems and one I read this weekend. It really helps me to pull myself together.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.


- Mark Strand

I also grabbed Ray K. Metzker's Landscapes (one of the best books of photography I have ever seen) and flipped through it. It's partly what every photo monograph is - a collection of best shots- but it's also a cohesive experience. You can't really just flip through it - it's not a casual, detached experience: you're drawn in. We bought it by mistake thinking it was a different book of Metzker's photos but when I opened it for the first time and started to look at it, to read it, I couldn't put it down. I loved it. As I moved in and through the photos, I thought of Strand's poem "Keeping Things Whole". I still don't know why. But in an uncanny coincidence, facing one of plates about 80 pages into the book, Metzker had reproduced that very poem as illustration. And I'm feeling better already...just writing about it!

Wordhoard

Just as I was wondering whether I’m hoarding DQ, I found this news (pasted below) on the OED website. It interested me yet it was kind of repugnant at the same time. My geekiness extends into different areas, I guess. I don’t really care about the size of my vocabulary. I should try reading the dictionary though. It can actually be kind of interesting as I recall especially if there are pictures. I do like the word “wordhoard”. I tried looking it up in the OED but got “Sorry, there were no results for your search”. I thought that was pretty funny. I guess it’s not a real word despite being used in an article posted on the OED website.


In the following extract from Words, Words, Words, language expert David Crystal shows how to estimate the size of your vocabulary...
As adults, our passive vocabulary is usually a third larger than our active vocabulary. We understand far more words than we routinely use.
How can we find out what our active and passive levels are? Most people are intrigued by the question, and would like to know how large their wordhoard is. One method of calculation is given below.

i. Take a dictionary, any dictionary...
Take a medium-sized dictionary - one between 1,500 and 2,000 pages. Aim for a sample of pages which is 2 per cent of the whole. If the dictionary is 1,500 pages, that means a sample of thirty pages; 2,000 pages will give you forty. Ensure the sample is exactly 2 per cent, to make the final calculation easy (see below).

ii. Spread the sample
Break the sample down into a series of selections from different parts of the dictionary - say (for a thirty-page sample), six choices of five pages each, or ten choices of three pages. It isn't sensible to take all pages from a single part. If you chose letter U, for instance, you would find yourself flooded with words beginning with un-. But do make sure you include some prefixes. A representative sample would look like this: words beginning with CA-, EX-, JA-, OB-, PL-, SC-, TO-, and UN-.

iii. Check the words
Begin with the first full page in each case - in other words, if you are looking for EX- and you find a few EX- words at the bottom of the page, ignore them and start at the top of the next page.
Go through all the words on each page of your sample. Divide your page margins into two columns. (Alternatively, you can write the headwords out on a separate sheet of paper.) If you think you know a word, but would not use it yourself, put a light pencil tick in the left-hand column. If you think you would, in addition, actively use the word, put a tick in the right-hand column. This is the difference between your passive and active vocabulary. You may need to look at the definition or examples given next to the word before you can decide. Ignore the number of meanings the word has: if you know or use the word in any of its meanings, that will do.
In a more sophisticated version, you can have three columns under each of these headings. For passive vocabulary, you can ask yourself: 'Do I know the word well, vaguely, or not at all?' For active vocabulary, you can ask: 'Do I use the word often, occasionally, or not at all?' If you are uncertain, use the final column.
Make sure you don't miss any words out. Some dictionaries cluster (or 'nest') words together in bold face within an entry, just showing their endings, as in nation, ~al, ~ize. Don't ignore these. They are different words. Also include any phrases or idioms, such as call up and call the tune. Ignore alternative spellings: an example like Caesarean/Cesarean counts as just one word.

iv. Add up the ticks
Add up the ticks in each column, and jot the totals down at the bottom of each page. Then add up all the page totals. Multiply by 50 (if your sample was 2 per cent of the whole). The result will be, more or less, the size of your personal vocabulary.
The procedure, of course, doesn't allow for people who happen to know a large number of non-standard words, such as dialect words, which won't be in this kind of dictionary. And if you are, say, a scientist, it will underestimate your specialist vocabulary too. But the figure it gives will be an approximation of your everyday wordhoard. And it will be larger than you think (my emphasis)

I wonder what that proves? (my emphasis)

Yesterday

Yesterday, someone asked me how much longer I was going to be reading DQ. I thought it was an odd question. I have about 300 more pages left to read. I’m not rushing. I like to wander in the episodes (and the book is very episodic) and I spend quite a bit of time thinking about Don Quixote and Sancho after I read an episode. I don’t have a plan. Maybe I’m a slow reader. Maybe I’m a hoarder. Some people seem to judge a book’s quality by how fast they read it. “It’s a page-turner”. DQ is a page turner. I just don’t turn the pages very quickly! That might be why my copy of the book is getting so messed up.

Loose Covers

Just a bit contrived (but I am really reading these books right now)...This book was a gift (people rarely give me books). It's proving to be useful for the upcoming/impending Austen talk (and of course gives me permission to read more of/reread Austen's juvenilia -- Love and Freindship is brilliantly satirical and Jack and Alice is a real hoot!)




This one is for a class I'm teaching this week on "designing explanations".



The cover attracted me. I thought it was about a prof. who breakdances for his class. It's actually quite ok, very smooth easy read on pedagogical excellence based on a study done by Ken Bain.

Was "not a coincidence" but now I'm not sure...

I’ll start with “a voice”

Daumier tried to capture Don Quixote as a character who had escaped Cervantes and the prison bars of lines of print on pages of a book. And it seems to be true, DQ has escaped the world of “retreat” and has entered the “real” world as an icon of some kind, known by everybody from scholar to man-in-the-street. This escape from the author and even the story the author placed him in is quite fascinating. Sherlock Holmes has done it, so has the monster of Frankenstein, and Dracula, probably Ebenezer Scrooge. They no longer have to have anything to the book that gave them birth, but they can if they want to. They are comfortable in both the “real” world and the splendid world of “retreat”.

…and continue with “Otto”

I love the notion of the "creature" being free of the creator - free to be accessed by anyone who sees themself in him or her.

…and then it’s over to me…

I’d already titled this entry “not a coincidence” and I was starting to write it in my head while on my way to work this morning.

But there is a coincidence, something I probably looked at a long time ago but didn’t remember – especially as both the back and front covers of my Penguin Classic DQ fell off several months ago so I don’t see the real cover as the cover anymore – I just see what I have left which is really just the title page and the text. The papers are all curling up at the bottom right corner and I’ve now torn a couple of pages…but I believe this is a Daumier painting on the cover that I’ve kept and sometimes use as a bookmark:















So now to the part that is not a coincidence or is no longer a coincidence:

A couple of months ago, the local Jane Austen Fellowship group asked me if I would give a talk on Austen at one of their upcoming meetings. I agreed but put them off a bit. Now the date is fast approaching. I vaguely said I’d talk about either the juvenilia or the influence of earlier authors on Austen but I’ve decided now that I’ll incorporate DQ.

I have a somewhat uncomfortable relationship to Jane Austen’s work. I used to teach a course on Austen which I enjoyed but I am definitely not a Janeite. My students were either appalled by this or didn’t care. They were amused by my attachment to Austen’s juvenilia – one of the Janeites suggested that it was a sign of my immaturity. So be it. The juvenilia makes me laugh and it’s clever. I’ll report on my journey to integrate Austen and DQ (it’s fairly obvious in Northanger Abbey that Austen is borrowing from either DQ or Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote which is an eighteenth-century rewriting of DQ – and a very funny book too!).

Like a skipping record, I am repeating myself - but is there any harmony in that repeated moment?

or exquisite dissonance...?

After commenting twice on my own posting, and reading those comments (see Tuesday February 7, 2006 "Reading Dore's DQ/a voice...coincidences redux"),I begin to wonder ...Should I create or admit that I have already begun to create connections to DQ deliberately...that it's not just all coincidence?

Some of it is. And I have to admit that I'm enjoying the moment of discovery, the moment of the coincidence. I smile or laugh. And it mostly has come through reading: a note scribbled on a draft program that I happen to see, something received in the mail, a magazine found on a couch, a comment here on the blog...from a voice.

I would include all of the links but I think the last paragraph looks better without them...

Reading Dore's DQ/a voice...coincidences redux

Here's the frontispiece from Gustav Dore's illustrated DQ. I think it's called "Don Quixote in his Library"

Not too many thoughts yet but always the thought that illustrations and text generate a potential. And...the frontispiece is a gateway and sets a tone. You have to pass through it or flip past it to enter the text. I like the author/illustrator (for example, Dr. Seuss). It's a comfortable fit. But comparisons are interesting. I like the completely different takes of John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham on Alice in Wonderland. Maybe with children's books you grow up through Tenniel and into Rackham who has much more appeal for disaffected youth. I've seen the Petipa/Gorsky/Minkus Don Quixote ballet which I could read as an illustrated text but the ballet really just focuses on one episode. Dore's project seems much more comprehensive and ambitious.

Two Cartoons;Or, reading D&G just before Xmas with the Carpenters running interference

In fact, the self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities.

Each multiplicity is defined by a borderline functioning as Anomolous



Functions of the Anomolous:
1. borders each multiplicity
2. determines stability
3. precondition for the alliance necessary to becoming
4. carries the transformations of becoming or crossing of multiplicities always farther down the line of flight



They speak of dangers...on a continuum from poodles to Ahab-like self-destruction

…and The Folding

It is, in part, the folding that I love about DQ. The folding brings you back to coincidences again…(see Thursday December 22, 2005, “Folding; Or, Now as I have a taste for reading even torn papers lying in the street” and other varied postings on coincidences). Now the narrator has revealed that Cide Hamete, “the chronicler of this great history” has revealed that Master Peter, the puppeteer, is really Gines de Pasamonte, one of the galley slaves DQ freed in his earlier adventure (in Part I). (Wow, it’s tiring just recounting all that). In Part II, Gines tricks them again and goes his merry way. It’s just a brief reappearance. It’s interesting to me mostly because of his ape (he travels with a prophesying ape) and because of his puppets. I really didn’t pay much attention to Master Peter himself and in this way, I suppose, he conned me too (“he made apes of them all” is how the text puts it). But I’m wondering now about the ape. In the story, the ape is represented as highly intelligent but then revealed as merely having the ability to mimic intelligent behaviour. The ape has run away – fled to the inn roof. What does his running away mean, how do I read it? Do I fold in what I’ve already seen in DQ with the lions in Part II, Chapter XVII, do I include my own reading and response to the tiger in Life of Pi? (See Thursday January 19, 2006, “DQ Update”). Or is the ape folded in from some other fiction or reality outside of my reality or experience…perhaps while Cervantes was mowing Borges’ lawn (see Wednesday February 01, 2006 “comment from ‘a voice’”)?

The Scramble

I forgot about “scramble competition”.
It’s another new term.
I like the free-for-all implied by it.
It appeals to my apparent need for chaos.
It’s dynamic and risky.
It’s a breakdance move.
It’s a midway ride.
It may be dangerous... especially for a reader.
A reader tends to like to sit back and watch, and be there for the long haul, for the story.
There’s pleasure in that.
That strategy (sit back and watch) could be an advantage if tenacity and being there are the keys that access the resources.
But the reader may not know or care about the competition.
The story is a siren.
Readers often don’t want to know where they are going (they hope though) and often don’t have practical skills in controlling where they are going (except to stop reading).
Are readers too polite?
Should they know what the competitive stakes may be before they go into the story?
In the scramble, can the reader be easily colonized, tricked out of the limited resources that caused the scramble in the first place?