...

Oh make it last

The mere smell of spring through my window was enough to clear some of the cloud that has hovered around me since November. I can feel the beginning of a lift, and already feel better.

:)

>>soundtrack of (500) Days of Summer

Library of Congress

I'm dumping some of my journal for the class into here - it is less research related than an actual thoughts-and-feelings sort of diary entry, but I don't want to just eliminate it altogether:


I have now made two successful trips to the Library of Congress. The first trip was obviously more orientation and less research; hoards of information and directions and policies being stuffed into my brain until I thought it would come out of my ears. Needless to say, a bit overwhelming. But by 2 o’clock or so, when we finally sat down with a few books to start reading, I felt much more comfortable. The simple and pleasurable act of reading a book does that.

I think in my head I always think I’m completely incapable of independently traveling to new places, sort of the same way that when I’m sleepily sitting at my desk in the evening I can’t fathom how I ever gather the alertness necessary to drive a vehicle. But once you’re actually moving, you instinctively remember where you’re going, you recognize landmarks. The only wrong turns I took once in the Library were in the sub-basement or whatever it is - at first nothing looking familiar, but once you start seeing “Jefferson” signs (or “Madison” signs on the way back; I decided it was best to go out that way instead of walking more outside in the cold February wind) you get your bearings and follow these courteous bread crumbs. Considering my greatest hesitation revolved around actually going to and from the Library by myself, I think I managed very well and the next time I won’t feel so nervous to get on the Metro alone.

The second week tested my ability to go from campus to the Library and back on my own and I succeeded (miraculously). I didn’t get lost, didn’t need to ask for directions. The Library itself... I feel like I’m inside a large, intricately designed organism. Each part hums along, working like clockwork without bothering about my presence. Help is available, and though I may not need it most of the time it’s good to know it’s there. The other researchers there are absorbed in their work as I soon will be. Walking to the shelf that’s reserved for holding our books (it’s at three o’clock in the room, though I forget the “alcove number”) I feel like I’ve done this thousands of times, sure, I’m a regular, I belong. Sign in to make sure our books don’t disappear, carry them out to a desk in the no-laptop section. And I read for a couple of hours. Strangely it doesn’t feel like research (yet); I spent most of my time reading one book that followed the progress of several authors and their works from their first publication in the early Soviet regime to their later transformations. I found it unexpectedly fascinating.

Russian INVASION

So half of my classes (2) are Russian this semester, a lang. and a lit. They will all probably be Russian next semester... YES. But anyway. I wrote this earlier this afternoon.

On my mind is the dual effect of learning something, or seeing something in a new way: on the one hand you feel relieved to know that there is this explanation (or at least pseudo-explanation) existing in the world, and you feel closer to humanity knowing someone else articulated it first. On the other, you’re devastated to know that it’s true.

Today in my Soviet Lit. class the terms “consciousness” and “spontaneity” came up in discussing the Cossack-Jewish dichotomy in Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel. The Cossacks are the über-military sort, but in the warrior-brotherhood sort of way. They’re large, intimidating examples of such virile manhood that the part of my mind that envisions any possible situation quakes at the mere thought of being transported in time and space to stumble across such a band of pillagers. Their existence consists of war and reaping the benefits thereof. They kill the men, rape the women, drink the vodka, and look forward to their next conquest. They are the “spontaneity” in the equation of opposing forces - instinctual, emotional.

The “consciousness” are the Jews, or more broadly the intelligentsia. These are the people that, in the Party’s scheme of things, don’t immediately fit into the scenario (capitalist bourgeoisie being overtaken by the industrial yet class-conscious proletariat). They represent the consciousness without being the workers, they were the writers, the artists, wondering “What is my role, what is my place?” So people like Babel sign up as propagandists to travel with the armies, selling the Revolution to anyone who can read while witnessing the ravages of the war that will supposedly take them to a new world order. In the course of the stories (Red Cavalry is presented as a collection of nouvelles or really short stories, vignettes) the narrator Lyutov (a jew) obviously desires to be included in the brotherhood of the Cossacks, not really for the raping and killing but for that idealized vision of camaraderie, companionship. But when it does come to actually being a Cossack, i.e. raping and killing, he can’t pull the trigger. Like the Revolution he is trying to unite these disparate forces, the spontaneous workers and the conscious intellectuals, but can’t.

I am the consciousness side, obviously. This holds true for the way that I live and participate in life, the universe and everything - I can’t get over my brain. I don’t do spontaneous. I analyze everything and I’m always thinking. About anything. The part of me that wants to emulate that spunky devil-may-care heroine of teen movies, the one that all the guys fall for because she’s wild and adventurous and can let the world spin without thinking how or why - that part is so entrenched in my consciousness of existence that I’m barely aware that it’s there at all. Surface thinking is where I imagine that I desire to be more like her, and there it remains as an idea, a moving picture that paints a desirable reality rather than the actual one. I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger. (Bad comparison on that last bit? Well, maybe. Just think metaphor, it’s a metaphor people...)


That's my layman's understanding of this history stuff, or at least where the discussion went today. I feel like if I add/change some stuff it might be more concise and/or readable, but... you'll manage. I can feel it.

muzyka>> Bobby Long, assorted unreleased tracks (especially "Dead and Done": My body's out of work 'cause my mind's in town.)