Like Shakespeare's Sister,
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/09/my-friend-joe.html
I too have been suffering from a lack of the will to go on as this week has progressed. I find myself sitting at stop signs, staring at them, thinking, Why? Why would I keep going? When we are so clearly fucked?
Or sitting in my office at school wondering if it would really be such a bad thing if I yelled at all my students that they are wasting their time reading Middlemarch and they should all join the Peace Corps and I myself am, in fact, planning to quit teaching and get a job at FEMA, how could I possibly do a worse job than the yabbos in charge now?
The Other Liberal Professor and I, as well as Zelda, over at her blog, (http://darcy12.blogspot.com/) we're pretty sure it's exhaustion -- too much bad news, for too long. Five years of watching Bush destroy our beloved country, and then Katrina piled on it. And watching Bushco trying to spin their way out of it. And suspecting they will likely succeed. And watching as, around us, our neighbors say things like, "Better get extra locks on your doors if those people show up." Or "There's a reason those people stayed. There's a reason those people are so poor."
I'm so sad about this country. I'm so sad about what's happened here.
So's Shakespeare's Sister.
“Quote Faulkner,” Joe told me.
He was writing a post, and I figured he was looking for a specific quote. I gave him what I had.
“‘A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.’”
“Ooh, that is a good one,” said Joe.
Not the one he needed, I guessed.
“How about, ‘Man will not merely endure; he will prevail’?” I suggested.
“The most quoted,” Joe noted. “Not even in book; Nobel Prize speech.”
“‘Others have done it before me. I can, too’?” I went on.
“‘Given the choice between grief and nothing, I’ll choose grief’?”
“Good,” said Joe. “You are just full of them.”
Joe wasn’t in need of Faulkner for his post. I was in need of Faulkner to regain the fight in me again.
“Is this just a trick to get my blood pumping again?” I asked. “Sneaky.”
“Yeah, well you know,” said Joe.
I've been using Billy Bragg in the same way. He's not from this country, but I am hanging onto his music this week like it's my last hope in the universe. It just might be too.
7 hours ago
3 comments:
There are some very timely & relevant themes in Middlemarch that your more insightful students might pick up. Maybe you could tease that out & tie in to current events during in class discussions - you may have some long lasting and positive impact on those kids with it (and be able to feel you're doing something worthwhile in the meantime). Getting a degree isn't that big a deal, getting an education is priceless (pity those Bush kids didn't appreciate the difference).
That has been me, how I feel, the way I don't want to go on. It is seeing the pictures of the floating bodies, the abandoned animals, the faces of the people. It's knowing that it is happening here, in my country, in my south and that the government has let those people down, has let us down.
Bush is just an idiot. It is his legions of supporters who have destroyed the country. What was left of it after Reagan and his supporters got through with it.
Post a Comment