On Our Engagements

I concern over how quickly many of us purport to digest and/or comprehend something, when often that very judgment prevents us from taking the third or fourth read that might yield other insights, the sort that might incite a much more radical revaluation of our previous thoughts. It is in and through the first or second engagements that we apply and reproduce (or insinuate) cliched and established paradigms and judgments; but it is in and with third, fourth, even ninth that we begin to how a text is constructed, what makes it unique, where it comes from and how riddled with contradictions it is. Now, we cannot all be experts in everything we read (and hence give such time), but it is worth noting what we lose when we read an SAT passage and pretend that five minutes will tell us 'enough,' which may be sufficient for the questions but is not at all what we need to think ourselves back to health.

Benjamin considered the superficiality of our engagements in his essay on technological reproduction. Popular art often exhibits the trait of closeness, of being readily accessible to us by fitting within established artistic and literary conventions: pictorially and otherwise; while it often also exhibits the trait of being supportive or elaborative of predominate ideologies, although, admittedly doing so with new flares or flourishes (that intrigue and entrance new readers but do not seek to fall from the tree). Novelty is avoided, while 'newness' is praised. And the novelty that is quickly fades.

I think this thought as I read through Adam Fell's Dear Corporation, his latest poetry compilation. The book, which I won't describe here at length in anticipation of a later review or consideration, is embraced by a dark cover that ends with an inscription by him, observing sublimely: "some choices are not really choices at all." What appears to be is not always is, and when we come closer to something, we begin to see its details, its fissures, its blemishes and wrinkles. And when we think more narrowly on our own paths, we begin see the outlines of anticipation and predictability, where one moment follows from the next, although always with the possibility of new and different iteration present within the germs of preceding ones. Nevertheless, however, the germs of the novel and of beginnings must from somewhere. And that somewhere is someone: it is us and where have been and will be.

A Long Day In The (Sub)Mines

No blogging today, but I'm thinking about getting a Subtips (and gripes) website going. We'll see where it goes (and I'll keep you updated of and about its progress).

On this sub site, I would discuss best practices, helpful quieting techniques, ideal conditions, what to bring to prepare, how to avoid overpreparing, how to avoid coming off as too self-aggrandizing and how to focus less on yourself and more on the overall maintenance of the class (which should be the vanishing point around which all actions take place for all teachers but might be even more difficult for subs). I'm still relatively inexperienced myself, but perhaps I could speak with others to see what they think, too, and then maybe I can put something together.

Toodles.