Finished one class last night...another tonight...tomorrow's won't really be a class - I won't see anyone...

...I am discovering that I will miss them. Rather. Isn't that odd? Even USI...

pre-paper; D.H. Lawrence's Rocking Horse Winner

Yoder, Katharine

Week 11 Assignment


The easy half of it is greed. The mother’s greed, coupled with the boy’s intensity and desire to please her, drive his frenzy and are his undoing. But there must be more…

It is always talking of Paul’s eyes. Blue, cold fire.

She does grow anxious about him. The quote about their being a gambling family – “you won’t know ‘til you grow up how much damage it has done” – is especially poignant. They are dressed in green, her in green and crystal, in the revelation scene. Haha.

It is futility, somewhat…somewhat. Money does nothing for the house where there isn’t love. The boy rides, works passionately, to please her and fix the house – but luck can’t do it. Nothing can. Not even the shock of his death.

I don’t know…I can’t solve it. If I were to stare at the taxonomy for a while, I perhaps could. But not now. Haven't time.

I am tired.

i am doodling, Egypt, doodling

ebbs the small gray matter fast...


I is a bad college student. I have learned all the phraseology, the isms, of my professors, to where I should like to just try teaching their classes - and, consequentially, I don't pay near the attention I ought. Because I can quite accurately predict what they will say. Instead I take notes on my thoughts on their already-accessible words...am I terrible? Smack me.

Or I word-doodle. Hence the title, which runs in impossibly minuscule cursive across the bottom of my notebook-page. Quipped retorts and satiric variations on the canned phrases - three classes' worth of paper have large letters indicating that Dr. Rivers says "nucular." And misspells "negitive." And I am accumulating quotes...would you like a sampling? (If you haven't noticed yet, I am feeling very un-student-ish, positively unindustrious, tonight.)

"[King] David never took a course at USI in English 105." Dr. Rivers, on symbolism (i.e. Nathan's parable)
"Poe is a writer that certainly introduced us to that aspect of the human experience." Dr. Rivers on insanity... :D
A phrase he's used three times, which I am incessantly fond of, is the "hieroglyphic impingement of data." Just listen to the rhetorician... :D

*sighs* I am a bad college student, to-night...the glamour has worn off, the thrill of Classes and Papers and As and just the sophism in general...yes, Katharine, there are other analytical people in the world. They teach classes, and they will appreciate the fact that you write in long sentences. But - and this is the line in the story I've reached - so what?

Thank You, Lord, that I don't have to run eight rounds of this, that I only have one semester to see all my faults paraded and praised before me. I am a few steps closer to being cured of intellectualism for its own sake. One more class, harder and infinitely more purposed, next semester - I intend to have all the praise I'm receiving now very forcibly knocked out of me - and then a world where all is for the Glory. For the Glory, and so the heads are not bloated and empty - the Glory asks Love, not knowledge. All profits, or it falls in the whirlwind. And no one will debate whether Poe really was mad, or disclaim a list of twenty thematic assumptions, or parody William Haines Lytle in their post-titles... :) and I will not be comfortable. Or ace tests. Or sit in a library, evenings, and try to make my thoughts congeal.
But I will be running with other people better and stronger than myself, who want to see You glorified -- and oh, am I wrong in wanting that to become exponential, to want other strangers to run with? Not yet. I know. But oh, God...I am impatient...

ENG 105 Notes, 11/10/08

...post-class rambles. This is basically to make everything solidify in my head... :D sorry to be confusing!

I like Dr. Rivers. Granted, his class is my literature fix, an excuse to sit and analyze words for three hours, so I could hardly be too disgruntled. :) But he is also very honest, which, as I am discovering, is a rare quality...perhaps he must be, after forty years of telling countless half-asleep college freshman to seriously look at their assumptions, but even so - it makes everything that much more palatable. He does admit when he doesn't understand something, or when there is a flaw in his theory, and never quite falls into political correctness - one of his continual subjects is negative vs. positive freedom, the freedom to dissent vs. the freedom to assent. He doesn't ever come down on one side or the other - one cannot - but he does point out that common assumptions will ignore the latter. I am less prone to that fault, thanks to my Bible-thumping background, ;) and he has graciously admitted as much and taken me - and how that Absolute Truth I took pains to present from the beginning affects my vision - quite seriously. For that, Dr. Rivers earns a few cookie points.

And, just this evening, he's finally come out and stated something, in quotable, question-able black and white, that I may ask for clarification on. Of course, the entire semester, he has spoken of the notion of us coming to the University to be educated, and so - since we're paying for this, it's something we freely chose - we ought to swallow it all. Allow ourselves to be subjected to the scrutiny that analyzing difficult texts is. Katharine nods agreeably, but her eyes glitter - University is well and good, but where do they come from? Which higher being decided what we little students needed to know? And Dr. Rivers has finally said something clear enough that I may ask about it (we are allowed to submit questions relevant to the lectures with other assignments). He said that the goal of the University education, with relevance to this particular class, is that we be made selves who "are no longer bored by pieces you used to be bored by, and no longer interested in pieces you used to be interested in." All very well and good, if one is speaking of reading an entire Melville novella - and being interested in it. But who determines what we should decide to like? - there's still some absolute about it somewhere...

...am I entirely evil? :D I think so, sometimes...this is likely why He is sending me to the Academy. I don't need to sit around and play head-games, intellectual fencing, for four years...much too easy, much too entirely in Katharine's comfort zone. :) I do not need college to make me critical and analytical; that comes much too naturally. Instead, I need to learn love and compassion for the people...

Post-Much Ado

...the library again...

...the world is black and white today. Whenever I wake up on Sunday mornings, my first thought is generally something along the lines of, "Oh...I have to invent something to wear...bother." But today it was decided for me by the light - yet not insipid - sky and clouds.
Which makes it the perfect day for stalking about campus in a trenchcoat. (Thank you, Mrs. Boyer!! :D) Detached, trying to be menacing, but obvious in the attempt and only succeeding in something indefinably grand.

And on campus I am, because Theatre 101 requires its students to attend both of this semester's plays and I just walked out of Much Ado About Nothing. I was rather apprehensive beforehand; my one USI theatre experience (also Shakespeare, no less) was...interesting. We'll leave all description at that. Interesting.
But Much Ado was significantly less so...perhaps it was the presence of Real Actors within the play, which - oh unheard-of miracle in America! - added Interest instead of the abovementioned...interesting topics. USI is extremely proud of these Real Actors, four certified and unionized thespians who are present in both of their fall semester plays. Even the New Harmony Theatre's artistic director, Lenny Liebowitz, who also directed the play, claimed and ran with the malapropistic comedy as Dogberry. Over and over again have I heard touted these professionals that the students get to work with...I will not deny that they made the play as strong as it was, or that it must've been great for the students - but I also must say that their strength only exaggerated the weak performances.

Oh, but I won't write my paper here...I just - it reminded me, is all...
...I would feel assuming, saying that I categorically love theatre, but I have been away from it for so long and - it's perfectly silly, but I am much too empathetic. I sit in my little chair and find my face contorting through what the actors ought to be doing, getting into the emotion of the play better than they themselves, running the entire scene and then falling back, exhausted, at the end, to mutter to myself about how terrible it was. :) I guess I do like theatre. Kind of.
And just to watch a play, no matter what I think of it, reminds me...reminds me of the fact that it's been seven months since I had a character to run in, reminds me of what that feels like, reminds me that I actually do miss it...I am very good at forgetting what would hurt otherwise. But I'm remembering today.
...oh, Academy...
...seven months more...

...we're all mad here...

Good morning, dear world...

the Katharine is back. :) I am blogging again, rambling, because I am going to explode otherwise. I finish my classes by 8:30, three nights a week, and the profundities - or screams - go zinging 'round my head, and it would be so nice to have a place to write again...I've been sending the worst out as emails, but I think that will drive someone else crazy too, so...back to the unobtrusive blog.

And not Xanga...Xanga was a different world, one to which I cannot return. It was an era, and remains a time capsule, and I won't re-take up writing there. Let those silly, lovely old things sleep, like the shelf full of journals, and I will go back and laugh over them some days (www.xanga.com/Emilyrebeccamegeponinelydia - for the brave! ;)), but nothing more. Not today.

Today it is the madness. :) The God-madness, which Katharine is learning...learning oh! so slowly...I don't even realize how pitiful I am, most days. And that is half the learning, I suppose...I am only rambling now. (It feels so lovely! :D) Those things I will explain out later.

So here...bits and pieces, post-theatre ravings and parries to professorial assertions which cannot be had out in class. Cringe and do not feel obligated to comment; I am only talking to myself. :)