Category: Play

Play, reading

Will It Go Round in Circles?

anitaderouen

Current Read: Absalom Absalom by William Faulkner

A long time ago when I was a baby doctoral candidate, I decided to listen to William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! on my long drive home from Athens, GA to New Iberia, LA. The audio book that I borrowed (from the library? from an obliging Cracker Barrel?) was, as I recall, about 17 hours long, which ensured me entertainment from GA to LA and then a decent amount of listening on the return home.

Even then I knew this was a somewhat colossal and colossally ridiculous endeavor, but I did it because I could and because I wasn’t in the headspace to physically/visually read such a text; I was mired in British Romanticism and Modernism, Humanities Computing, and Rhetoric. My eyes were already overstuffed. My recollection of the audiobook and the experience as a whole is actually good; the reader was skilled and Faulkner’s storytelling, while maddening on paper, felt like a front porch sitting session when told orally. When I got to New Iberia, I drove over to the public library in search of a copy of the actual book; I needed to see the sentences to know if they really were as long as they sounded. They were that long. I was thankful for the audio and for the freedom of being able to just enjoy the book. No need to take copious notes and annotate and make connections.

It’s 2024 now, and I’m an old PhD wading in whatever territories I deem of interest now. I’m no longer tied to a literary study identity; I gave that up during my time in higher education, and I continued that when I started my K-12 career. I find myself, though, drawn to Mississippi literatures and so I’m back on Faulkner. I’m reading Absalom again.

I’m in the first of the nine chapters of this incredibly dense book, and already I’m dizzied by the number of circles in the narrative. How many times must Miss Coldfield rehearse the Sutpen story before telling it? I’m drawing out family trees on scrap paper, longing for the large sketchpad that I know is at home waiting to be called into just this sort of service. I’m seeing just in this first chapter how ruthlessly Faulkner’s narrator wants to hide the narrative kernel from the reader; the book wants me to sink into its space, to get lost in its slow, recursive, and drawling web. My eyes want a visual of this story structure. They’ll force one out of me before we’re done. I may share it when it’s alive.

I admit that I am considering the audio version again, if for no other reason that to release my mind from the tyranny of Faulkner’s written prose, which, in this text, demands in inordinate amount of attention per sentence. I may meet myself halfway, listening to a reading while my eyes take in the text and my brain tries to draw the circles and lines and boxes. This is what reading looks like, sometimes. I love it.

Other Reading

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin

I’d never read this, but it’s been in my mind for a while so I put it on my TBR for this year. Lovely book, albeit a bit thin as compared to the sorts of books of this sort we see today. I appreciate LeGuin’s desire to push her reader into new associations; the racial designations at which she hints for her characters are sure to challenge the reader as they build their empathy with Ged.

If I could do one thing with this book, I’d think about the essential elements of a character like Ged with regard to race and representation. At times he feels like a white character in black skin, and the skin color is so inconsequential in his experience that it feels almost unnecessary. What I mean is this: that LeGuin’s essentially colorblind writing is so subtle as to make it meaningless. I don’t think she was trying to appropriate blackness or speak for black people–that would be an entirely different book–but I do think that’s she’s offering a sort of reading experience that we aren’t yet ready for.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

First in the MaddAddam series, this book reminded me of what Atwood is so good at: creating worlds that feel real and inhabitable. I’m in another world when I’m reading her books, and as I worked by way through this one, I constantly felt like I was a breath away from being in Snowman’s world.

Home, Play, Work

Photography is Hard

anitaderouen

After a busy weekend of new Doctor Who, homemade pizza, and kid-friendly cookouts with friends, I tried to get some more pics for my hybrid fruit project. Here’s one of the best pics taken in my dining room using the late afternoon sun.

This pic was taken by my husband and without the makeshift white backdrop I created. I took many photographs of this apple and this lemon in a variety of positions and stages of undress, the entire time fighting against the shadows falling from the panes on my dining room window and the toddler who was fascinated by this tripod toy that Mommy wouldn’t let him play with. Eventually, the light gave out, the toddler decided to eat one of the subjects (not the lemon), and Teddy agreed to pose for a few photos.

And that’s how I spent my weekend. Tomorrow I get to try to clean up the pics.

Play, Work

Shortcomings

anitaderouen

We’re all at home this afternoon due to that little squall down in the Gulf of Mexico, so I decided to have a look at the photos I took for the first project in my digital art class. I’ll spare you the horror and just share this picture of my absolutely delectable subjects.

They’re all pretty much gone now; we had the broccoli (in the plastic bag to protect from dust) for lunch with the fabulous Stacy and Mimi, and I have it on good authority that the pineapple provided a perfect morning snack for two hungry toddlers on a rainy day playdate. The grapes and I got acquainted last night after supper.

I was supposed to get shots of my subjects that I could use in a hybrid fruit/vegetable/fruitable project, and I did take a few photographs, but they weren’t lit very well and the tripod was crooked and I just couldn’t seem to wrap my head around all the parts of the project, so I ate my subjects with the idea that I’d get a new batch over the weekend when the weather’s better and give it another go.

The really important thing that came out of this experience, though, was the reminder that we don’t all know how to do everything, and that we can always develop new competencies. Before going to take the photos, I participated in a small group discussion of our sketches for our projects, and all I could think about during the experience was how my writing students must feel when they have to share their drafts with their classmates. Maybe I’m wrong–maybe they all feel confident and competent as they send around those tentative words–but I know that at least a few of them over the years must have felt as I did yesterday: humble and inadequate and not a little bit frightened to reveal just how amateur and feeble my skills are in comparison to the work of those more confident and experienced than I.

Home, Play, Work

A Reason to Write

anitaderouen

I’m going to make some art.

I’ve been wanting to learn the basics of photoshop-esque digital art for a while. I’m not a visual artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to be able to do more than just crop a photo or shift between color and greyscale, so I’m sitting in on a colleague’s Digital Art class. Two classes in and I’ve made a picture.

a very childish drawing of a house with a red door, a tree, some discolored grass, and a burning sun. There are also words along the left of the photo: "Houses have eyes and mouths." "eep!" "Not a home."Clearly, I have a ways to go.

One of the projects for the class is a photo collection illustrating various color and visual principles, a project that gives me license to visit my craft room. I cannot begin to tell you how happy the thought of diving into the bins of yarn and fabric–not to mention the folders of paper and the buttons and…–makes me. Pretty.

So there will be posts here related to that class, which may lead to posts related to other things (like my writing class, where we’re focusing on the use of social media in elections. Team Romney, I’m not talking about you or linking to you or liking you because I like you. My interactions with your social media sphere are for science. So there. Nah nanny booboo).