Word Salad with a Side of Soap

Again, I have been remiss in my posting, but by way of explanation, I will here include my travel log of late.

Dec. 5th-Return from Australia
Dec. 9th-Off to Houghton
Dec. 13th-Return to Houston
Dec. 19th-Leave for Plano (via road trip)
Dec. 21st-Return from Plano/Pick up Alicia
Dec. 22nd-Alicia departs
Dec. 25th-Christmas Day
Dec. 27th-Leave for Omaha
Dec. 30th-Aunt Erinn comes to Houston
Jan. 3rd-Return from Omaha
Jan. 7th-Aunt Erinn departs
Jan. 9th-Return to Houghton to begin another delightful, whirlwind semester

So, as you can see, I haven't had much leisure time since break began. I think I'm still waiting for break to begin, still trying to prepare for Christmas, a holiday which has already passed, in case I'm not the only one who might have missed it. This, I think, is also a vindication of my continuing pilgrim status, as you can see there has been little of the quiet pleasures of hearth and home for me lately. And Kathryn, I promise that I have not tried to avoid you, I have not seen any "301" numbers on my phone. In fact, our new phone in the kitchen doesn't even have a screen for call waiting, so I have had to resort to the unthinkable...actually answering the phone when it rings!!! (*gasp!*). When I'm home, that is, which as you can see isn't often.

At any rate, in addition to alerting you all to my impending "out-of-town" status, I also wanted to continue a little reflection with which I was trying to inspire my sister earlier this evening. We are watching the movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame tonight, a movie which my sister does not particularly care for because it is not an especially happy movie, even for a Disney version. I responded by asking her if the only purpose of stories is to entertain us. She knows that that is not the case, but I don't think she quite understands why.

This all goes back to some conversations we had in Oz Lit class in which my much esteemed professor Maurie Nestor said that he thought that there should be a saying; "Don't trust anyone under 30" in reference to the changes that our culture has been going through in recent decades in regards to the way that we understand stories. One of the things that we have done is to cultivate a culture of forgetfulness in which we have a widespread ignorance about the stories which are most important to us, most fundamental to our knowledge as a culture. Now perhaps, too many of us see stories as entertainment alone, nothing more than to occupy our free time.

Now, it's not stories that I am attacking here, I am an avowed lover of stories in all forms, not least because of the many capacities they are capable of operating in and the many functions they are capable of fulfilling beyond just mindless entertainment. Our stories are our teachers, first and foremost, the way we transmit our values, our ideas, our way of looking at the world. This you can tell most obviously by the fact that stories are what we use to teach the young, and the most effective method of teaching the young, I might add (just ask Lyotard). Or at least, we used to, at any rate. Now I don't think we see our stories as anything besides a play-pretty, a bauble for babies to gawk at, with no real meaning. Oddly enough, we are still often telling the stories that we've told for hundreds of years, in their original or more modern (often watered-down) forms, but I think that what has changed more than the stories that we tell is the way we are taught to look at them. There is no more critical thinking, we do not look at the stories as our teachers, but as our court jesters. This is why I think Maurie Nestor says, "Don't trust anyone under 30," because they are bankrupt of the kind of knowledge which was always previously thought to be fundamental.

Don't misjudge me here, I'm not saying that we have to interpret the stories the same ways that we always have, but we must think critically about the stories we tell, and we must tell stories about which coherent and depthful thought is possible. Our stories must convey aspects of the culture from which we tell them, there is no other way to give them life. Think about it, out of the phenomenon of postmodernity we begin telling stories from "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" to the new movie, Hoodwinked, stories which look at things from a new perspective. We love turning stories, like everything else in postmodernity, on their heads so we can marvel at the new point of view. We don't just babble to amuse ourselves, we as a culture must tell and re-tell our stories with conviction, knowing that we have something to say. Maybe I'm just on a rant b/c I have an analytical personality, so I see meaning in just about all stories, even though it's not always a meaning I agree with. But I still can't help but think that people like me are vital for distilling those values and wisdom into something that just about everybody can stomach, and understand on some level, even if its not quite as conscious as one might wish. And hence, I think this is why I have become a writing major, because I want to tell the very most important kind of stories in a way that is just as bright and as vibrant as something that is meant solely for entertainment. I want to tell the old stories in new ways, so that they become fresh and lovely again, and I want to tell my stories as well, for my own benefit as well as for the potential benefit of others.

I am not, I do not think, by any means an exceptional story teller, but I am an avid one and I hold on to the hope in this, as in so many other things, that passion will serve me where talent and aptitude fail. Once a friend asked me if I could ever stop being a writer, a novel question and one which intrigued me. I know that there could be a time in my life in which I put away laptops and keyboards and pens and papers and pencils and any formal accoutrements of the writing process with no regrets. But there are two things which I know that I will never be able to stop doing: stringing wonderful words together to enjoy their beautiful sounds and meanings or to form a brilliant, tiny gem that I think of as a proto-poem, and telling people stories. These things I know I will be doing long after my wrists become defective from carpal tunnel syndrome and my fingers are too cramped from arthritis to type. Even when I am senile and shoved into the dark corners of a nursing home, I will still mumble the events of the Odessey, of Oedipus Rex, of Shakespeare, of the Brothers Grimm, of Tolstoy, of Bronte, of Tolkien, of Faulkner, these are the characters, the lives, the doings that I will blather incoherently in my gumless glory through my mushy applesauce till they lie me cold and dead in the ground...

Ahem, excuse me, allow me to step off of my soapbox and collect myself. It is here, friends and readers, that my rant must sadly end, as the night is late and furthermore, it is now time for me to go and read my sister her bedtime story...