Several Topics As Usual

I don't like how much pride Milkman is finding in his father's success when he goes to Pennsylvania and meets the reverend and co. I can understand the feeling of pride that might stem from someone else's excitement with accomplishments that are sort of associated with you. But in my opinion Macon's accomplishments are nothing to be proud of. A new car every two years? That's a little bit despicable, honestly, especially if all you're doing with that car is taking slow show-off rides through town every so often.
They seem to think that he's fighting the good fight, representing black people in a positive way, and showing white people what-for. They say nothing can keep him down, and seem proud or inspired. And it sounded like Macon I was genuinely a good guy and a good role model for these men when they were kids. He represented real success that was maybe otherwise hard to imagine for them. But, especially given the ruthlessness with which Macon II obtains his wealth (see early parts of the novel from his perspective, like when he's dealing with Guitar's grandmother), I'd say that his need to possess isn't helping the black community at all. In fact, his monetary success has made him a total outsider to them.
And it's troubling how the Pennsylvania people's enthusiasm for Macon's wealth makes Milkman feel. He "grew fierce with pride" and had this burning desire to "grab every grain" of the gold. Whether this burning desire stems from a need to continue the family legacy, or is just inherited greed finally bubbling up inside him, was kind of unclear to me. Either way, burning desire in this book is rarely presented as a good thing (think Macon's desire for stuff, Hagar's desire for Milkman, Ruth's desire for love). It seems dangerous. And maybe it's good that Milkman finally cares about something, and is breaking free from the apathy that has characterized him thus far, but I'd feel better if he started caring more about other people and less about that gold. (Although he does feel real pity for Circe, which is, I think, the first empathy we've seen him express. So yay for that.)


This won't mean anything to most of you, but Pilate reminds me of older, narrating Ruth from Housekeeping (not to be confused with Milkman's mom). They're both tall and thin and vagabondish, unattached to material things, and seem to be very confident and comfortable in their strange, outsider roles. They even both have a sibling who leaves them for a more conventional (or certainly more materialistic--I don't know if I can call Macon "conventional") lifestyle. Macon choses to own as much as possible, and Lucille turns to clothes, school, and running a neat household.
Pilate's led a considerably more troubled life than Ruth, whose young adulthood was at worst extremely uneventful and lonely (excluding her mother's suicide, which was quite traumatic-- This is perhaps a large omission, but Pilate's parents also died, and their deaths were not the extent of her troubles), but all in all they're very similar.

Also, this is completely irrelevant, but it needs to be said: The main characters in english books are too tall. The following is a list of books I've read in English for the last two years with the heights of the main characters:
Native son-- not mentioned?
Their Eyes Were Watching God-- I'm not sure
Beloved-- I don't know about Sethe, but Paul D. was tall
Invisible Man-- I think it's noted that he looks like a runner which could imply tall and thin
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-- I don't know
Sag Harbor-- uncommonly tall and thin (especially in contrast to his brother)
Black Swan green-- average? I think
Catcher in the Rye-- uncommonly tall and thin
White Boy Shuffle-- uncommonly tall and thin
Bell Jar-- uncommonly tall and thin
Housekeeping-- uncommonly tall and thin (especially in contrast to her sister)

The Mezzanine-- not mentioned, I think (probably average)
Mrs. Dalloway-- tall and thin
Sun Also rises -- not mentioned as far as I can remember
Metamorphosis-- not mentioned (though really tall for a cockroach)
the Stranger -- not mentioned I think
Wide Sargasso Sea -- tall (Antoinette was described as "tall and large". I don't know about Rochester.)
Song of Solomon -- tall (as are the older Macons, Pilate, and Guitar. But not Ruth. You go Ruth.)

Not that I'm bothered or anything, but I don't think there's been a single short main character.

Looking Glass

While reading WSS, I noticed Antoinette's looking glass popping up repeatedly. Actually, it's talked about in both Rochester's and Antoinette's narrations (so you know it's Rhys trying to tell you something rather than just a character dwelling on it). First, there's of course the much-talked-about scene with Tia and Antoinette staring at each other "like in a looking glass".
Then Rochester illustrates that she's like any other girl by describing her admiring her reflection in a looking glass.
He describes this tendency again later, but his tone is much more hateful; "She’ll not dress up and smile at herself in that damnable looking-glass. So pleased, so satisfied." And here the mirror seems to represent the happiness that he's intent on taking from her.
Then the metaphor is really fleshed out in Antoinette's section. She says that after Rochester renamed her Bertha, she "saw Antoinette drifting out the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking glass." I think that this suggests that the looking glass stands in for Antoinette's identity. Losing it means that she can no longer see herself (literally and metaphorically). She says, "There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now"..."who am I"? So, Rochester's taken not only her money and her home, but, in part through her looking glass, her Antoinetteness (which I think would be enough to drive anyone a little insane).

Sub-topic 2: It's interesting to see Rochester's sexism evolve as his hatred for Antoinette grows. It starts as a vague, subconscious assumption that he should be in charge, which he's presumably been taught for his whole life. It seems kind of innocent and forgivable. But by tonight's reading he's saying things (of Antoinette) like "Vain silly creature. Made for loving? Yes. But she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other." Eesh. (also, it rhymes; what's with the poetry all through this part?) Rhys transforms him into a full blown villain by the end of Part 2. The majority of his last two flower-bound sections are just rambling hatred for Antoinette and the people in Jamaica. "I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know", Really rambling. In fact, he comes across much less sane than Antoinette does in her final sections. She sounds like she's experiencing things that maybe aren't actually happening, but at least the train of thought is more clear than "White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they’ve got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it’s a long, long line. She’s one of them. I too can wait - for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie...".
Later he claims that "All the mad and conflicting emotions had gone and left me empty. Sane."-- and I can see the reasoning behind this-- but he criticizes a similar emptiness in Antoinette, saying that her blank eyes seem mad. Aside from being mean and hypocritical, this judgement makes it seem like he might also comes off as a little insane to others (since he seems to feel a similar way to Antoinette).

At first, I didn't like Mersault. I thought that his Hemingway-esque style reflected a reluctance to acknowledge his emotions or some macho need to hide them from his readers. However, as the story's progressed, I've realized that he really is just as empty as he's letting on. Strangely, this has increased my estimations of him a lot. He's an unusual guy (which I appreciate on its own) and I would argue that he's unusual in a pretty productive way. He's not bogged down by ambition (I could go on for a long time about the evils of ambition, particularly in our culture) or unnecessary empathy.  Most people are disturbed by his lack of empathy, but the only thing I think it would serve to accomplish is hinder his peace of mind. Given that he would never have killed his mother, it's a good thing that he's not bothered by her death. I mean, what would be the point? He'd just be adding unhappiness to the world with no chance whatsoever of bringing her back. And if he is a psychopath, he's not a dangerous one-- except for the fact that he killed someone (still not sure how to fit this into my understanding of his character). He doesn't lie, he never wishes anyone harm, he seems to work hard enough (his boss is willing to promote him). And he's happy. Even in jail (to some extent).
Actually, his happiness in part one has been contested some in class. I think the idea is that he doesn't seem to feel much at all, so he can't really be happy. But I'd argue that no one is ever elated 24/7. You're happy if you're not thinking about how happy you are (and if you're miserable, you'll probably be dwelling on it). So though he's not describing explicitly a bunch of positive emotions, he's got a childlike, worry-free, simple contentedness which I think qualifies as happiness. He's having fun; enjoying the sun and Marie and swimming and running after trucks. That's a pretty admirable thing.

HOWEVER, I do not agree with his philosophy. Existentialism has never made any sense to me.
I must admit, I've always found nihilism kind of compelling, and I definitely related to his "will it really make any difference?" thoughts. (Somehow my brain really wants to believe that everyone has a certain capacity for happiness and eventually the situation you're in wont really affect your net positive/negative feeling. Not sure if this is what he had in mind with "nothing matters", but I was able to plug those thoughts into his words and relate.) But existentialism seems to me to have a serious contradiction pretty near its core (I asked about this today in class): if nothing matters, then why does it matter that you make up something to matter? In other words, you can't justify the need to make your own meaning in life if the outside universe enforces no need to do or think anything in particular. Unless the one meaningful part of the universe is that people make their own meaning, but this seems like a stretch to me. Why would this be the case? It would make some sense for him to say "I'm going to make my own meaning and enjoy life, not that it really maters. And you can too if you want to... or not. Whatever." But I feel like he's being more absolute about the goodness of his own personal meaning that. He seems to be operating on the assumption that the calm he reaches at the end and his eventual appreciation for the apathy of the universe is a good thing. Maybe I'm wrong about this.
If anyone can answer these questions for me, please do.

Putting Bug Bio To Use

In this post, I wanted to explore how far bug metaphors could get me in terms of meaningful interpretation of The Metamorphosis. I'm beginning to think that the answer to this question is 'not very far', or, at least, 'nowhere particularly coherent'. But, I'll give it a shot.
We've been over Gregor's pre-transformation bugginess in class; how Gregor works constantly and has a completely selfless relationship with his family like a worker ant or bee.  So, here, I'd like to explore the implications of his metamorphosis and subsequent life as bug-like processes.
The word "metamorphosis", in the insect world, is used to refer to a transformation from a larval form to an adult form. (I tend to think 'butterflies'.)This would sort of seem to suggest that Gregor's human life was his juvenile stage and that his bug-self was his mature form. I think this sounds kind of strange, because Gregor's transformation seems to be a step backwards, whereas for humans, adulthood is the longest and most productive stage of life. We grow and progress into our adult forms; they're the goal that childhood tries to achieve. However, adulthood is different for most bugs, so the comparison works a little more from an insect's perspective. Insects often live for much longer in their larval stages than they do as adults. Cicadas live for more than ten years underground before emerging to live for a single summer as reproductively mature creatures. Adult mayflies last even less long: on the order of 24 hours. They don't even have working mouthparts (which seems to be somewhat the case for Gregor as well). For many insects, living for one's self is done before the metamorphosis, and adulthood is all about the next generation; about reproduction; about he welfare of the family.
Viewed this way, I think the comparison actually makes some sense. Post-transformation, Gregor does seem to be indirectly fostering some development in his family members. After being forced to work, his father and sister get stronger (his mother often deviates from the patterns they follow; not quite sure what to make of her), and though the brunt of Gregor's work is done, his genes persist and develop, just like those of a bug that has successfully reproduced. I would say that the strongest analogy to an insect-like fatherhood lies in Gregor's relationship to his sister, who really matures and becomes ready to leave Gregor, particularly by the very end. In a very insectoid manner, Gregor dies when his sister has grown independent and he has been evolutionarily obviated. (Humans don't die immediately after their offspring become independent, but insects typically do).
This affords a slightly more positive outlook on Gregor's situation (maybe sorta?).  From a bug's perspective, even though Gregor's family has driven him to a miserable life and shameful death, he succeeds in their persistence. And, it seems to me, that usually (maybe due to its association with the butterfly's transformation from a squishy green food-bag into something visually pleasing), the word "metamorphosis" has somewhat positive connotations. So that sorta fits in with my dubious little theory of subtle positivism.

In all honesty, I doubt that I should be crediting Kafka with this much entomological knowledge or this sort of careful analysis of insectly terms. He did, after all, suggest that cockroaches have nostrils. Which they don't. They breath through their sides. So, Gregor's death should have been described more like, "Then without willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his abdominal and thorasic spiracles, flowed weakly out his last breath."

Leaden Circles

This post on Woolf is extremely late; I apologize.
Do you guys think that Big Ben plays any role other than pace-setter? It's got to be one of the most frequently visited subjects in the narrative. Every couple of sections leaden circles are dissolving in the air. And, it seems like the narrator might have a personal connection to it because its chiming is described in the same way regardless of the point of view from which the story is operating: "leaden circles dissolved in the air" appears in Peter's section, in Lucrezia's and in Clarissa's (in Peter's story, it could be Clarissa chiming in--the line is in parentheses, which are sometimes used to switch perspectives in the middle of a character's section-- although its appearance in Rezia's narration without parentheses would suggest otherwise). However, a direct narration from the narrator doesn't necessarily mean that it has any symbolic or conceptual significance. It just seems to come up sooo often, I thought that it must be slightly more important than just an indicator of how much time has passed, or a bridge between the various view points in the story.
In fact, Big Ben is mentioned at least seven times, signaling the arrival of various hours and half hours.

I had a thought that maybe those hours were the namesake of the movie The Hours, and that maybe the movie would shed some light on the subject. Unfortunately I soon discovered the real reason for the title of the movie in a line of Virginia's: "Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours."
Here, "the hours" seem to signify the time spent between her and her husband and the importance of their relationship; not exactly what I was looking for, but still interesting. So, I'll take this opportunity to diverge a bit and address The Hours.

It's clear from Woolf's notes to her husband that she loves him quite a lot, but for most of the movie, their relationship seems kind of strained. He's almost playing the role of Holmes of Bradshaw in that he's treating Virginia's depression as a condition that he understands better than she does. Although he doesn't seem to see it as a weakness like the doctors do, and maybe a better analogy would be to the relationship Septimus has with Rezia: troubled individual, and occasionally misguided caregiver.

Okay, shamelessly shifting topics without a transition: Another really important theme in the movie (that's also a theme in the book, particularly during Septimus's story line) is the idea that freedom (by whatever means) is necessary: like, of more importance than life. At the end of the movie, Laura claims that she needed to escape her confining life as a fifties housewife; that it wasn't even her choice to leave her family. She calls staying "death" but in some senses it seems like it was worse than death, because she seriously considered suicide as a way to escape it. And, if the parallels to Septimus's case mean anything, one could interpret willful suicide on Laura's part as a better choice than being held back by society (or doctors), because it's a freer choice (assuming that Septimus's suicide is actually presented as the right choice, which I think is somewhat unclear). Woolf (the character in the movie) insists that it's a human right to be able to chose to live in an exciting place, and suggests that maybe suicide would be a better option than sticking it out in a lonely, boring place, like the one in which she's staying during the movie.

Woolf (movie character again) also justifies her death by asserting that the deaths of some (and these would be the "poets") make others appreciate life more. This certainly seems to be the effect of Septimus's death on Clarissa. I was looking for evidence that Richard's death inspired some character in the movie to better appreciate life, but couldn't find any (if you've got some, please let me know). I also tried to figure out how this relates to the freedom thing, but couldn't.

Anyway, getting back to my original topic (Big Ben, if you've forgotten), the the movie didn't contain the answer I was looking for. So, I'll keep wildly speculating.
Regarding what I said earlier about being a pace-setter, I suppose that an illustrator of the unrelenting passage of time is not such a trivial role to play in this book considering Clarissa's relationship to time: her nostalgia and fear of the future (specifically death). It also seems to be nearly the only objective aspect of the story. Everything else is filtered through a point of view, and though it's described in a creative way: leaden circles and a perpetually strong, confident almost human demeanor, it's description is, like I mentioned before, always consistent, and therefore, somehow more objective. Big Ben is either connected to the narrator, or the same to everyone, heard by everyone, and always there. Inescapable, sorta like time.

Some Observations

Every so often I write a post that makes no attempt at organization or cohesion. Thought it was about time for one of those.

• At one point Jake tells Cohn that Brett's "one true love died in the war". This is conceivable given that a large portion of her generation was lost to WWI and that Brett must have known some of these young men during her time as a nurse. However, I happened to read this line just after glancing at a quote of Brett's employing the exact same phrase: "Jake, you're my one true love", which could afford a different interpretation of Jake's claim. Given that Brett's chances of being with Jake romantically died with his war injury, would it be too much of a stretch to suggest that Jake might be referring to himself when he speaks of Brett's dead lover? (darn it, Mr. Mitchell! I promise I wrote this before you mentioned it in class.) If this is the case, it seriously takes Jake's reliability as a narrator into question. If he could lie to Cohn in this believable but slightly self-flattering/pragmatic way (self flattering because it suggests that he is actually Brett's true love, and pragmatic in that it's meant to discourage Cohn from pursuing her) about Brett's past, he could be lying to us about his relationships with the aficionados or with Brett; about how Bill's little joke about impotency makes him feel-- who knows. Although he probably respects his reader more than he respects Cohn; don't know if that would make a difference in his honesty.
• Poor Cohn. Poor, poor Cohn. My classmates don't seem to agree with me, but I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Robert Cohn. I'm familiar with the dynamic going on between Cohn and the other's in the story: the group of friends+awkward outsider dynamic. And I don't like it. There's something about being in a group of people like you that makes a small seed of annoyance directed at someone who's socially unusual echo around, feed off the other members of your group and amplify into an unrelenting and unjustified cacophony of ridicule--even hatred. Basically, I think Cohn is being bullied. And it probably has something to do with the fact that he's a Jew, which makes it even worse. I'll grant you that Cohn's a little odd sometimes, and maybe a little too chivalrous, but in my opinion it's not an offensive chivalry, and he's certainly well meaning. For one thing, he's the only one who reacted reasonably to the bullfighting (a disgusting and unforgivable tradition). His discomfort with that alone made me like him more than the other characters, no matter how much more clever they are.
• There's this section at the end of book II in which Jake goes into all sorts of detail about the experiences of the older, less well-liked matador, Belmonte (perhaps he's only less well liked because he's more famous, but he's still less well liked). Apparently Belmonte had intended to have a good afternoon, but now everything hurts because he's sick. It's an odd, almost Clarissa-Septimus type moment, in that Jake seems to have this magically personal connection to this guy's experiences, despite not knowing him well at all. And it's only made weirder by Hemingway's strict refusal to look beneath the surface of any other situation or character (I think we've seen more of this guy's thoughts than we've seen of Jake's!), and by the fact that his character is hardly relevant to the rest of the story at all. I suppose it illustrates Jake's aficion that he's so in tune with the fighters, but it's a weird little passage. 
• Also, this is completely unproductive (and to you I'm sure uninteresting), but 2 summers ago I took a trip that included nights in Paris, Biarritz, Madrid, San Sebastian and a little Basque town near San Sebastian called Oartzan or something like that, so the descriptions in this book are really bringing back memories (although Madrid was not all that hot). 

Thesis

I wrote the underlined section below before our discussion today:

In class, Mr. Mitchell pointed out the section of the Mezzanine where Baker uses the white background trick as a metaphor for his style of writing. He called this Baker's "thesis", and I think we may have just encountered Woolf's thesis (or perhaps one of several) in this weekend's reading. The passage has a striking similarity to some of the essays we read in class that were written by Woolf right around the time that she was writing Mrs. Dalloway. Just to recap, the essays argued for character driven rather than plot driven writing in which the characters sacrificed nothing for the plot and the reader could get to know them on a deep level-- see all of their idiosyncrasies and motivations, etc.


It's a goal that Woolf realizes extremely well throughout Mrs. Dalloway by familiarizing the reader very intimately with the characters. The novel also explains the goal indirectly by presenting the characters as unable to fully understand each other-- which reflects Woolf's criticism of real life, and justifies her call for literature that bridges the gaps between people in the real world. In what I've been calling the "thesis passage", her criticism is quite directly explained.


It's presented as a theory of young Clarissa's (one of "heaps"), but Woolf frames it through Peter's point of view.


"(the theory) was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. (...)(Clarissa) felt herself everywhere;(...) It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her skepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps — perhaps."(Woolf 148)

I don't quite know what to make of most of this passage, but the 'apparitions are so momentary compared with the the unseen part of us' bit definitely makes sense in terms of Woolf's essays and the rest of the novel. One of the benefits of Woolf's wandering free indirect discourse is the illustration of this concept: that we are more complicated than we seem to be (not to mention the benefit of overcoming it by giving the reader more than the 'apparitions'). We are constantly being shown how characters are more complex than they seem to one another. A good example is the scene where Clarissa speaks to Peter while she's sewing up her dress. He thinks, but doesn't tell her that she looks older. And she's been having qualms about being too boring which he obviously doesn't think she's bothered by (though he is bothered by it--as she knows he will be). It's also a good example because they had "met every day; then not for six months, or years" like Clarissa complains about in the first bit of the theory (which she presumably came up with before they had stopped regular contact-- that's not really relevant, it's just interesting).

So I read the passage in a slightly less positive light than Mr. Mitchell. He seemed to think that Woolf was making a case for our relationships with other people completing our characters (which would really justify Clarissa's parties). And, now that he's explained this, I believe him and the latter parts of Clarissa's theory make a lot more sense. However, I originally thought that Woolf was still complaining a bit about our distances from other people, and the discrepancies between people's surfaces and their underlying thoughts. And I suppose this passage could sort of fit both of our interpretations, because if you're unsuccessful at finding other people or places to impress upon and have relationships with--if you remain too distant from other people--you would definitely have something to complain about--perhaps even the loss of some form of life after death in the preserved impressions you've made on other things. Like poor Miss. Kilman, who's not doing very well at extending her unseen self wide (at least not among people-- maybe among places). But I now agree with Mr. Mitchell that this problem doesn't seem to be presented as inevitable.








I'd also just like to note that Clarissa's theory that we might survive in some sense through our impressions on others fits in beautifully with her fear of and fascination with death (as we've seen throughout the book) as an atheist who doesn't believe in a conventional afterlife. We've seen her worry in disbelief about being gone, and it's like she's trying to console herself with the thought that maybe she will last after she dies.

Note #2: It's clear that Clarissa was never quite convinced by her theory ("perhaps -- perhaps"), and it seems that she's abandoned it mostly by age 52 because she hasn't mentioned it, even though she's been talking a lot about death.

Little Thoughts

The amount of thought that Nicholson Baker has devoted to the density of straws, shoelace stress, perforations and milk carton spouts is quite amazing. The man has some serious respect for the subtleties of every-day technologies (and everyday human experience). Which is good, I suppose; considering the abundance of these technologies and the work put into them, they're probably under-appreciated by the general public.
So, as a testament to the conveniences made possible by the quiet helpers of (post) 20th century life, (and in preparation for my pastiche) I will now also write very long and hard about some trivial things:
Note: I'm not necessarily trying to write in Baker's style, I'm just collecting thoughts.

On my relationship with pencils:

• I've always hated those gummy*1 pencil grips. Iulianna would wrap her pencils in miraculously clean (given their slight stickiness) pink gummy cylinders of various textures: some spiraled, some ringed or dotted. It made her pencils very difficult to steal*2, because I couldn't stand to hold them (and because it made it obvious that I was using her pencil). I would shift my hand back and forth between choking up to the very tip, which gave you the best control, but (as my art teacher would say) was poor form and tired out your hand faster, and relaxing back to the end of the pencil which made writing neatly a real challenge.*3
• *1 Actually, ever since a vomit-inducing binge in kindergarten, I've hated the edible gummies too. For years my friends would taunt me with the stale sweet smell of Mots fruit snacks. I seem to be recovering somewhat now, which isn't of great consequence to me at this point in my life. However, I do take to be a good sign for others suffering from conditioned taste aversion to more important foods: it's not permanent apparently. 
• *2 This was a serious problem for me because (aside from the extra thick perpetually unsharpened pencil*4 that I kept through the entire second grade, and the ridiculously short pencil I slowly whittled away three grades later*5) I've never kept an individual pencil in use for more than a week. In sixth grade I learned to reclaim my share of lost pencils from the hallways, which came in handy when Iulianna and I were put on different teams in the 7th grade, making her supply of pencils definitively off limits. 
• *4 I managed to get through the entire year having only sharpened this pencil once because I was utterly convinced at this time that dull pencils were the way to go. This probably had something to do with the fact that I had just started art lessons and learned that it's much easier to shade with a broad tip. I had failed to catch onto the fact that this did not generalize to writing. On the up-side, my wide lines were probably the only things keeping my handwriting from degenerating into microscopy, which it has now done since Iulianna convinced me that sharp tips were preferable in the fourth grade.
• *5 It was a contest between the three of us: Jennifer, Iulianna*6 and me (Jonah may have participated at some point as well) to see how small we could make our pencils. The green metal holders for the erasers were thin enough that they could be shaved back into little curly bits, revealing more of the eraser beneath them which could then be used up to achieve an even shorter pencil. Eventually you got the the point where normal pencil sharpeners wouldn't work and you had to use the hand held kind, or a pocket knife to expose the last bits of graphite.
• *I have spent way too much time with Iulianna.
• *3 Kai held his pencil in a way that I admired for the whole time we had art lessons together. Not only did he hold it at the very end, extremely loosely, he held it backwards so that his pinky was closest to and his pointer finger farthest from the tip. 

Paper is two-layered:

• Iulianna and I were shocked to come upon, one day, a piece of paper that, in a small corner had somehow been ripped down the middle. I don't mean down the middle 'hamburger' or 'hotdog' style*, but split down the thinnest dimension into two separate, thinner corners of paper. This meant that what I had once assumed was a simple rectangle of thin, pressed wood pulp mush and bleach, was more complicated. It was at least two layers of very thin dried mush stacked on top of each other. And, as I looked more closely, each layer revealed itself to be woven, deliberately, like a tiny straw carpet. How they would efficiently lineup such tiny fibers of wood, I have no idea.
• *I was first introduced to these terms in the third grade during some craft-making exercise. I thought them very strange, and somewhat grotesque ways to describe a method of folding something so utterly un-food-like as paper (unlike Baker, I've never been a big fan of either hamburgers or hot dogs, even with sauerkraut). I imagined my crisp, newly folded sheets dripping and translucent with yellow grease. Several years passed before I made the connection between the shapes of the foods and the methods of folding, which helped me accept the terms to some extent.

Sorry if that was impossible to follow because of all the branchy footnotes (and/or super boring). Don't feel compelled to struggle too much keeping track of their order. They should be understandable enough independently.

What's been on your mind recently?