Greetings again, everyone. As the weekend slips away (and we lost an hour, besides!), I have just a few more items to pass along to you. First of all, thank you for your patience last week in class. I hope my personal situation/sadness over losing Lucy (seen above, in perhaps the one picture by which I'll most want to remember her: early in her thirteenth year, she even manages to get that fourth paw airborne!) wasn't betrayed too evidently by a sense of waywardness; that is, I hope we accomplished enough and that the class session had a sense of shape (it's all a blur to me now). It was a strange thing to acknowledge to myself, but I think last Monday was probably one of the three saddest days of my life so far. Some/most of you will respond by saying I'm very lucky to be able to say that -- since this only involved losing a dog -- and indeed I am, especially after living some 16,000+ days, but, well, it's a lot more complicated than that, too. I guess it's one of those "It's the blight man was born for / It is Margaret you mourn for" kind of occasions: I'm grieving for a dog, yes, but also for a whole lot more. Given the numbers involved (i.e., 3 truly profoundly rotten days out of 16,000+), I wonder why my main take-away from this past week is to be reminded that life is about loss (the loss of Lucy portends other losses, other vanishings, other sorrows, other closed doors, other partitionings of my life). And, yet, that's where I'm at right now. Fortunately, I have three young boys to serve as an antidote.
Anyway, I fear this will be the kind of sadness with staying power, and that I'll be reeling for a good while. My wife and I can't even vacuum the rugs right now for fear that all of Lucy's blond hairs will eventually be gone. And yet, I can't help but think of (and draw hope from) that scene in Pather Panchali when Apu throws the beaded necklace into the pond (the one Durga denied having stolen earlier in the film). As we watch it disappear below the surface, we interpret it as one of Apu's moments of grieving, as well as a way of protecting his memories of his sister; knowing, though, that he has been learning how to write during the progression of the story, we also might think of this as a kind of metaphorical moment: something is sinking down deep so that, just maybe, it might be pulled up again later ("emotions recollected in tranquility"?) and transmuted (via writing?), into something that will provide solace and affirmation. I'm hoping Lucy's loss promises the same for me, eventually. You all are writers, so I suspect you know what I'm getting at. Anyway, onwards ...
Having invoked PIco Iyer in a previous posting, I went ahead and added that first chapter of The Global Soul to the moodle site. And although I know you hardly have time for any more secondary readings, I also put up there a chapter ("'Jewels Brought From Bondage': Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity") from Paul Gilroy's book, The Black Atlantic, which I thought might be of interest to some of you (now or eventually), and which probably intersects productively with specific scenes like the Club Hot Wax and with Rushdie's general project of exploring hybridized identities in late twentieth century London. Finally, a couple of web resources: you might find Paul Brians' online guide to The Satanic Verses to be especially useful (I should have thought to pass this one along to you last week). I also just chanced upon this story about Rushdie's presence at Emory University these days, which, most recently, involved a marathon public reading of Haroun and the Sea of Stories (maybe that should be a model for our class on the 20th!). You'll also find some other Rushdie-related links embedded in that story. Finally, do consider the invitation below (in the "Up in the Air" posting) to share an interesting passage and just a few sentences of commentary from your reading of the novel over the past week, and do also stop by and read Ted's phantasmagorical tour of The Satanic Verses in his posting. See you on Tuesday night.
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