HOLD ON TIGHT

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot Tuesday, January 27, 2009 accents and attractions last week i read in the new yorker about how hannah arendt was heidegger's lover, heidegger, the embodiment of male, german reason, married, contemptuous of arendt, jewish, sensitive, vulnerable, half his age. my professor, the same professor for a couple of semesters now, is socially awkward and inadvertently flirty. (he used to be married, but is single now.) he introduced me to everything i truly love now--renaissance drama and theory. i used to fantasise about about him in my first semester, the same way i would fantasise about sleeping with a news photographer, when i interned in the newsroom. i think it's something i do, because i'm intrigued by creative or intellectual people whose jobs i don't understand, or seem too difficult for me, or beyond my years. this not knowing, this knowing that the other person knows more than me, this defining people by what they do, this knowing that i am young, much younger, gives me a huge sense of helplessness and pleasure. it's a terrible habit, because this means i enjoy exoticizing people. i remember the halloween party that a graduate friend--fernando, who is peruvian, 40-something--invited me to. i learnt for the first time that graduate party crowds are more eclectic, and international, it's a lot of fun. what is drunk is usually beer, not liquor. a lot of the talk that night was shouting over (super old-school) music with a whole lot of latin-american people about where we were from, and it was cool to not be american, to speak in an accent, any accent. when the professor took a semester off for a brain operation, i finally got to think about just thinking for myself. i took an american lit course, i took a milton course, taking a break from renaissance drama, and discovering that his approach isn't the authoritative approach. i am back in a seminar with him again--it's a graduate seminar with seven guys, with the inadvertently flirty professor, and i am the only undergraduate, and female, and asian, and non-american. i am more self-assured; but this is not to say that first five minutes, i wasn't blushing a lot--old habits. sometimes we are attracted to people for the worst reasons, really. a lot of the (intellectual) pleasure of slowly falling in love was about understanding what justin did when he was working in the neuroscience lab, even if it meant long, nightly conversations about caged animals, and donated brains, biowaste, and new york city in the spring. i don't thinking learning can ever be, for me, disassociated from desire and transgression. but i think i have learnt, that not all learning, the most revolutionary or subversive of learning, has to scar. posted by dawn # 1:11 PM Comments: Post a Comment << Home		[publishing] Publishers Weekly . Dystel & Goderich . New York Center for Independent Publishing . Association of American University Presses . Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators [people] clarisse . nurul . aunty zarina (ummi's bakery) . jeremy . pak . cyril . softblow . karen & kenny (booksactually) . eric . joel . [other loves] digitaljournalist . ballet dictionary . poetshouse . urbanwordnyc [me] dawn, singapore, new york city, ithaca. [yesterday] i got an on-campus job--production assistant at th... stories 94 dean drive, tenafly the wages of dying is love tarts pre-departure hello, america reeling from the snow bill's mechanics history [archives] January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

accents and attractions

last week i read in the new yorker about how hannah arendt was heidegger's lover, heidegger, the embodiment of male, german reason, married, contemptuous of arendt, jewish, sensitive, vulnerable, half his age. my professor, the same professor for a couple of semesters now, is socially awkward and inadvertently flirty. (he used to be married, but is single now.) he introduced me to everything i truly love now--renaissance drama and theory. i used to fantasise about about him in my first semester, the same way i would fantasise about sleeping with a news photographer, when i interned in the newsroom. i think it's something i do, because i'm intrigued by creative or intellectual people whose jobs i don't understand, or seem too difficult for me, or beyond my years. this not knowing, this knowing that the other person knows more than me, this defining people by what they do, this knowing that i am young, much younger, gives me a huge sense of helplessness and pleasure. it's a terrible habit, because this means i enjoy exoticizing people. i remember the halloween party that a graduate friend--fernando, who is peruvian, 40-something--invited me to. i learnt for the first time that graduate party crowds are more eclectic, and international, it's a lot of fun. what is drunk is usually beer, not liquor. a lot of the talk that night was shouting over (super old-school) music with a whole lot of latin-american people about where we were from, and it was cool to not be american, to speak in an accent, any accent.
when the professor took a semester off for a brain operation, i finally got to think about just thinking for myself. i took an american lit course, i took a milton course, taking a break from renaissance drama, and discovering that his approach isn't the authoritative approach. i am back in a seminar with him again--it's a graduate seminar with seven guys, with the inadvertently flirty professor, and i am the only undergraduate, and female, and asian, and non-american. i am more self-assured; but this is not to say that first five minutes, i wasn't blushing a lot--old habits. sometimes we are attracted to people for the worst reasons, really. a lot of the (intellectual) pleasure of slowly falling in love was about understanding what justin did when he was working in the neuroscience lab, even if it meant long, nightly conversations about caged animals, and donated brains, biowaste, and new york city in the spring. i don't thinking learning can ever be, for me, disassociated from desire and transgression. but i think i have learnt, that not all learning, the most revolutionary or subversive of learning, has to scar.

posted by dawn # 1:11 PM

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