the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

random tidbits

I drove to Boulder Monday because I needed to pick up the hair products I forgot with my friend in Boulder, take some clothing to the library, and do some studying. I managed to do one of the three. As it turns out, the library was closed for the holiday, so I couldn't even deliver the clothing.

Which you're probably wondering about. I've decided to commute to school (from Broomsfield) on my bicycle. The trip is anywhere from 14 to 16 miles, depending upon the route I select, and hauling my laptop and books and clothing (with a jacket and shoes) is a bit much. I decided to take school clothes, shoes, jacket, and my laptop and leave them in the secured student carrel that's checked out to me (the carrel assignments are a grad student perk). Alas. 'Twas not meant to be. The only bicycle weight I managed to shed was my bike lock, which I secured to a bicycle rack near the library (a good trick I learned from Travis; goodness, but he's turning out to be handy for all sorts of stuff...).

I drove to Broomsfield and situated myself in my room, where Lisarea urged me to leave stuff I'd need so I didn't have to carry it back and forth (she said she wouldn't sell it or anything...unless she was offered a really good price). I may have done some homework, but not much. I homework* from the time classes end, so even when I haven't done it all, I'm generally burned out by Monday night.

* This isn't a verb, but it should be. Let's take advantage of this living language thing, people. Speaking of which and completely unrelated at the same time, one of my colleagues said something in class today about reading "snid-bits" of a text. Like "frienemies," it isn't a word, but should be. Let's make it so. Oh, ok. One more. "Anecdotage." Yeah.

Tuesday morn, I awoke and showered, sipped some coffee and had a spot of cereal before slipping into my biking outfit. I assemble my biking duds the same way I assemble ski attire (well, the way I did): with no thought to appearance, and every thought to utility and not buying something explicitly for biking if I already have something perfectly functional. The bits that are specifically for biking are probably obvious: shorts (with chamois in the crotch), scullcap* to trap the heat, helmet, rear-view mirror to attach to shades, shoes that clip to my pedals, and booties that fit over my shoes to keep my toesies warm. To keep my legs warm, I wear pants that remind me of cold water scuba gear. I wear my AF issue PT jacket,** as it's warm and it breaks wind nicely,*** a long-sleeved underarmor-type shirt to wick sweat away from my skin, and a pair of leather gloves.

* Or as I like to call it, my "beanie."

** Air Force, Physical Training. You're welcome.

*** Cool trick, huh? It's great at parties.

In addition to this getup, I had two backpacks, one containing my school gear (books, folders, assorted stuff you need in class, laptop, etc), and the other containing enough clothing to prevent me from looking more retarded than usual when I went to class. Since I didn't have any way to attach these to my bike--which, much like me, doesn't have a rack--I put one over the other, which probably made me look a bit like the hunchback of Notre Dame on a bicycle. Imagine.

I was also armed with directions from a site called mapmyride.com. It's a very cool site, helping you decide directions and distance and even altitude changes of your ride (there's a similar one called mapmyrun.com which, obviously, doesn't really apply to me anymore). What turned out to be uncool about the site is its apparent lack of knowledge that some roads change names from time to time, if you catch my drift and I think you do. And so it was that I got about five miles from Lisa's house when I realized (1) I'd left my student ID and in fact, all ID, in my pickup, which might be a problem if I was hit and someone needed to identify the body, (2) my hump was slowly crushing my back, and (3) I'd missed a turn the site had told me was there which...was not, at least, not under the name I was given. And so it was that I pedalled back to Lisa's, stowed my bike, changed to jeans (etc), packed more clothes into my backpacks, and caught a bus to school.

Thus, for my biking commute, the first day was a wash.

I'd like to pause for a moment to talk about classes, because there's another thing I just don't get about English types (which I clearly am not). So many--too many--seem far more interested in defining the categories so they know which bucket to drop each poem, story, or essay into.* Too much of class discussion seems to be concerned with whether X is modern or postmodern, and why. And you know what? As a lover of literature, I could give a flying fig. None of that has anything to do with the beauty, meaning, and relevance of the work itself. Categories of literature--Victorian, Romantic, modern, postmodern....--hope to address the style, historical period, motivation, and (ultimately, I suppose) the meaning of any given work. Categories are inherently problematic, though, as literature is always evolving. No one can say for sure at which point the whiskers become a beard, if you will. (Categories also help people decide which type of literature they want to spend the rest of their lives waxing scholarly about, I suppose. I'd rather just love it. I could care less whether I'm ever hailed as a "scholar.")

* As Winston Churchill is erroneously attributed with saying, "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

I was thinking about this in my 20th Century literature class, because we were discussing one of my favorite novellas--and one I daresay I know far better than any self-respecting graduate student probably should--Heart of Darkness.* We'd been divided into groups to contribute to a class blog, and I was in Group 1, meaning I got to contribute my thoughts immediately. Thankfully, I knew the work well and had strong feelings about its artistry and importance. I responded to Chinua Achebe's very well-known condemnation of the book as a hopelessly racist text. My position: it is actually a virulently anti-racist text. Consider his audience, his description of the natives and obvious mockery of the Europeans, etc (and don't conflate the author's identity or intentions with the narrators').

* When I initially read it, I thought the same thing everyone else did: Why the devil is this a classic?! Is there more than meets the eye? The answer is yes. After reading it, I attended a seminar taught by a Conrad scholar, and the book came alive. I saw its multiple layers of meaning, and the pure poetry of Conrad's prose (and you know that English was his third language, which he began learning at the age of 20, right? Yeah. He learned it from working on board ships--if you can imagine--and reading...Shakespeare, I think. He wrote in English because Polish and French (and arguably, Russian) were not challenging enough. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Class began with the instructors giving general refinement instructions for our weekly posts. We were to briefly sum up the scholarly opinion we were responding to, offer our arguments, then ask two to three thought provoking questions--in about 500 words. (My response had not bothered to sum up Achebe's argument and I'd cut my argument short, and it was still almost 1000 characters. I asked about this and Janice told me to just be brief. Ah...righto.) We were then told that, if we wanted to engage with a more dated arguments--like Achebe's--we had to respond to literature which was more recent. In other words, the conversation had moved on since then. I was a bit annoyed with this, because the literature since Achebe simply assumes he is correct, so I had every reason to go back to his and respond, but I said nothing.

Then we ended up spending about an hour of class time arguing about whether Achebe was right or not, anyway. I felt vindicated, but still said nothing.

What I did argue about, with one of my profs, was whether Kurtz is necessarily a bad man. Everyone (but everyone) assumes he is a wicked man who commits unspeakable acts. However, the text is as ambiguous with what he's actually done as it is with what he actually means (that is, who are the brutes he means when he writes "exterminate all the brutes," and what, exactly, is "the horror"?). One of my instructors became defensive immediately, insisting that the "heart of darkness" was embodied in Kurtz. She was quite animated in her defense, if I may say so.

I remain to be convinced. The other prof lingered after class and acknowledged that Kurtz may have simply been guilty of "going native"--which may not have involved any atrocities whatsoever. Yeah.

One of my peers  stayed after class to discuss my thoughts about Kurtz being a Jesus figure, even. It seems that she and I were the only ones who picked up on this. So...another ally.

On the bright side, Kim told me I wrote like a teacher. :) She meant that my object is clearly clarity and communication, instead of appearing "scholarly." I've rarely felt more complimented. (She, also, is a teacher, btw.)

So today, see, I traded my standard leather gloves for the extreme cold weather Iraq-issued ones,* to keep my phalanges warm. They helped a bit. My fingers were still largely void of sensation when I arrived, anyway. They just took a bit longer to freeze, is all.

* I know. Nuts, huh? But they also issued me chem warfare gear, which I also didn't need. I'm not complaining.

So back to biking. I biked up to Boulder on Wednesday via a route prescribed by Mapquest. Much of it, however, is riddled with heavy traffic, no shoulders, and/or heavy speeds. So...Wednesday evening, I tried to take Highway 36* home. It's listed on the Boulder bike map, as a matter of fact, as a bonafide bike route because it has nice, broad shoulders.

* Listed on the maps as Boulder Turnpike, if that puts the fear of God into ya.

I'll never do that again. I feel I took my life into my own hands that afternoon. It may be the shortest route, but it certainly qualifies as the most dangerous route.The shoulders are full of debris, and they are frequently broken--leaving little option for bikes--for exits and on-ramps. In addition, said shoulders are littered with debris, and the traffic defies description.

I may have actually kissed the pavement when I arrived at Lisa's home alive.

Thus, this morning, I decided to try the original mapmyride.com route. I'd figured my way past the original obstacle (the street I was to turn on which was not named appropriately, which I'd since been able to pinpoint) and was fairly confident in the way that I should go.

Alas. Pride goeth before a fall. The next street I was to turn onto was similarly moonlighting under a different name at this juncture, so as it turned out, I biked ten more miles than I should have for my morning commute and actually entered Boulder from the north.

On the bright side, I had a commute which was the stuff of dreams: it had (1) shoulders, mostly, (2) low speed limits, and (3) a low volume of traffic. It also had a breathtaking view of the Rockies.

After class, my legs were still rubbery lead, so I hitched a ride with Kim--who generally travels by car and lives in Westminster, which is adjacent to Broomfield--and Jeremy, who lives across the street from Kim.

Thus, I survived my first week of classes and have resolved to put the study into everything necessary to understand discussions next week.

d