Epiphany

On this, the official 12^th Day of Christmas (by the way, whatever happened to the 12 Days of Christmas?  There is even a song about it, but for some reason, everyone treats Christmas as lasting but a single day.  New campaign: Bring back the 12 Days of Christmas!  The day of Epiphany (today, for those of you not chronologically obsessed) should be celebrated somehow.  Though, come to think of it, I have no idea what would constitute a proper Epiphany celebration.  I, like everyone else in America (the world?), am a bit tired of celebrations right now.  But, I digress (from what, you ask?)), it seems a good time to talk about an Epiphany.

“Writing enters into us when it gives us information about ourselves we’re in need of a the time we’re reading.”

I just spent the last two weeks not working.  Pretty nice, I have to say.  Because of the oddity of MHC’s self-scheduled finals (don’t ask), I have never been able to avoid grading between Christmas and New Years’ which meant I had to work between those two Holidays, which meant I always came into work between those two Holidays.  This year, finals ended early enough, my grading was done before Christmas, and I took a vacation.  Wonderful thing, that.  It gave me a lot of time to remember what I like about my job.

And one thing I like is this here blog.  Then, I read a book (shocking to be sure):  Reality Hunger, by David Shields.  (A birthday gift (thanks, Diane!).)  I’d never heard of the book before I read it, which is a bit surprising because it was pretty good.  The reason I liked it had nothing to do with the author’s main thesis, but that isn’t the sort of thing that would bother Shields in the least since part of his thesis is that I probably shouldn’t agree with his primary thesis.  The quotation above is from his book, though he would frown on the fact that I put it in quotation marks and am noting the source.  (Part of his thesis is that I should just steal everything I want to use—plagiarism is not a crime in Shields’ world—it is something to be done proudly.)    His primary thesis, for those who are interested, is that the rash of “memoirs,” some fake, some not, are the best thing going in literature—after all, all writing is fiction and so fake memoirs are fiction masquerading as reality because after all reality is nebulous anyway, but we all want more reality and…well, I could keep going, but his argument is deliberately opaque and wandering and probably self-contradictory and Shields likes it that way, thank you very much, so to start trying to carp about the idea that it is impossible to summarize a book which Shields would not want summarized in the first place is one of those things not to be done, especially since Shields would undoubtedly be quite happy that the book generated a tediously long “Sentence” (Shields is also not a fan of grammatical stricture) which just wanders all over in an attempt to capture a mediation, or dare I say compose an essay (essai) about something which may or may not be what Shields was discussing.   Suffice it to  say; Shields' book was fun to read—nice style—all numbered paragraphs—he, like Nietzsche, likes apothegms.  Wandering, tangential ruminations about things.  I liked it.  (Hard to believe, I know.)

So, to return, I like this blog.  And Shields’ book helped me figure out why.  There are many things I enjoy about my job, and most of the time, I get to indulge freely in the things I like to do.  I like to read books.  I like to learn things.  I like to give lectures.  I like to talk to people about a wide array of topics, wandering freely over the terrain of ideas and life.  This blog is like a giant combination of all these things; a chance to take all those assorted things I enjoy and bring them all together into what is invariably quite surprising realizations.  I just start these things writing about whatever is interesting me at the moment and by the time I am done I have learned a thing or two.   It’s fun.  Learning should be fun.

So, what happened?  Well, I have always felt a slight twinge of guilt when taking time out of the day to write up something for the blog.  It isn’t academic writing, it isn’t teaching, so it just seemed like the sort of thing that I should probably set aside to take care of other more pressing things.  And that is where Shields’ book comes in.  If he is right (and I don’t think he is) that autobiographical writing is the only genuine form of literature these days and really the only thing worth reading, then a blog of rumination about books and suchlike is actually something worth doing.  OK, so his thesis is wrong, but the general thrust of the argument has some merit.  Why should I mentally discount the potential productivity of a rumination about Nothing?  After all, the immediate cause of the dearth of activity hereon has been the endless time sink of administrative work at MHC.  And, that is currently a superlative waste of time (don’t ask.  Really, don’t ask.  It’s hard to watch a once great institution die.  Very hard.)  So, in light of the New Year, my Resolution: less time on Administration, more time enjoying writing blog posts about Nothing.

[Which also means more time thinking of odd songs to append to blog posts.  Like this: Happy Epiphany!]