Feb. 17, 2016
I've given myself five minutes to capture some of my main feelings about Bahktin's Rabelais and His World. I had a hard time grasping this book. Bahktin is not a great writer and without knowing a thing about Rabelais, the context of this book is lost on me. Through the study of laughter and a long trip through Wikipedia, I discovered that Rabelais is known for writing Gargantua and Pantagruel, a story of the giant Gargantua and his son, Pantagruel. These names I have heard many times in my life in various forms. Rabelais' work was written in the 16th Century and has been about humour, grostequeness, scat, "material body lower stratum", carnival, jesters, and all things seen as "low humour" or "low brow". Having some knowledge that this is what Bahktin is trying to describe, I find it ironic that the text is inaccessible to a regular person while the subject matter was to be presented to the commoners of society.
The images that come to mind thinking about humour and the grotesque are The Joker (and every Batman villain, including Batman), Kefka, Hisoka, Resident Evil/Half-Life, pretty much any anime/video game/movie where there are experimentations that warp the human body, showcase something gross, or present it in a humourous way. Takeshi Miike also comes to mind and his level of gore that's so ridiculous it becomes funny. Tim Burton is also high up there with this. What I like about this level of humour is that it is accessible for all. It's not pleasant and it can sound very rude, but life isn't always pleasant. A little rude awakening can help. Certainly, when compared to the gore presented in the Iliad, I think a fart joke is nothing. Well, 5 minutes is up. I'll write more tomorrow.March 1, 2016
It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote anymore information about Rabelais. The more I think about what Bahktin was trying to say, the more I want to hear about it. I wish we spent more time in class on Rabelais because there is something in the way Bahktin describes the work that has gotten a hold of me and I want to read on. I'm surprised that I might find that Bahktin and Rabelais being the book I will take with me to exile. Dostoyevsky is the cause of my desire to unpack Bahktin further. Bahktin is impossible for me to read. I do not understand it and I think he is (maybe it's the translator) a terrible writer. He does not write so that the information is easy to digest. This is a problem. Dostoyevsky can be the same way but when his characters really go inside themselves and expose their thoughts and feelings, I relate to them. The connection with Bahktin is the realism both authors bring to the world. It is something I discovered with the Iliad too.
I have spent most of my GLS education on looking for the ideal way to life. I wanted to find eudaimonia, enlightenment, the good life, how to become bamboo, and how to cultivate the seed of compassion. I forgot why I was interested in looking for these things. It is because I think that most days, life is dull and uneventful. As I write this, I don't know if I should be happy or glad that life is uneventful. The question I want to ask myself is: Do I want to be a great man so that many people will know and acknowledge me, or do I want to be a minor player, a extra and obscured? Do I want my voice heard or do I want to keep it silent and save it for those close to me? Epicureans might want the latter - be happy with those around you and live a simple life - that is how to obtain happiness. Maybe it is contentment. Is that so wrong?
I have a desire to be better and great also. I want to be the hero of my own story or maybe the hero in others people's stories. I don't know how I intend to do that. The closest I came was when I was working with other people. I thrive on that work; it gives me so much energy to build and be more. My current life is quieter and I want to know if I can become great. This is an opposing view. Which one should I aim for and do I have time to do either? Should that be the goal of life to try anyway, even if I run out of time?
The week that I am writing this, I am reading Van Gogh's letters. They show a person who is feeling the same. He wants art to be his passion and is working desperately to get there and get approval, mostly from his brother, Theo. He works tirelessly and is grateful for his brother's help and is looking somewhat on the approval from his brother too. I like these letters. I like looking into the hearts of the artists to know that they suffer a little bit too. These days, social media only shows happiness. We escape into each others' highlights and we forget how to manage the lowlights. I am waiting for some highlights right now. There is a meme online of Bob Ross. It is a quote of his that goes, "Gotta have opposites dark and light, light and dark in painting. It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come. I'm waiting on the good times now." The problem is when the darkness, the sadness seems unending to the point where your loved ones are too tired to see you hurt that they leave you. Who will be there to pull me out of the dark?
That is where I think Bahktin's interpretation comes into play. Rabelais wrote in dark times. The world he lived in was plagued by the Black Death. Humans were coming slowly out of the dark ages (I need to make sure my historical references are accurate) yet Bahktin says there was room for fun and laughter. People knew that life was rough and Rabelais showed that they were still able to make the best of it. We are not so grateful these days. Victor Frankl speaks of his experiences with the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors. The ones who made it out were about to make the best of it and enjoy life when possible. Not true for those in Vietnam and for all soldiers living with PSTD. Jonathan Shay gives a good account of this. (Find the images of the lighters from Vietnam). The soldiers' stories were intense but maybe there was some joy and laughter too in the bad situation (will confirm when I read it or talk about it). Freud notes that we need to cope with this trauma and create narratives to survive (research this).
So, this interest in Rabelais is about finding joy while living in the shit. Some New Ager might want to say that it's mindfulness and awareness. We are coping and managing our auras or some other kind of nonsense. I want to believe that we have the ability to change that but since I am in the shit, I want to go back to it and find what's funny. I really don't care if it is vulgar. I want to decide whether the grotesque is adequate in describing my conundrum, my situation. I'm so surprised that I am going back to the book I least enjoyed reading.
March 17, 2016
The last few weeks in class has been tough. I'm not enjoying the works of Virginia Woolf or Margaret Buber-Neumann's Milena. I could not identify with either story and I don't think class discussions has brought me into the fold. I simply don't understand the context of these narratives. I do not have family who were rich Victorians or Holocaust survivors. I'm from a peasant-middle class family. We never tried to bring in memory into our lives. I suppose the greatest source of memory is the Book of Names that my father treasures, a list, almost like a poem of the names of my ancestors. In relation to the books we've read in this class, it is reminiscent to the names associated with the 'heroes' of the Iliad. I am from a long line of other Chinese sons that go back to the 1600s. I am weary of my role in the establishment of traditions too. Do I keep them or break them? I am the only son of the only son left in this line. I should be having another generation follow me. My mind has been pre-occupied with the continuation of this legacy and I wonder if my future partner will understand the significance to my desire to maintain tradition or will I have to abandon ship and enter a progressive relationship where the woman has an equal say in the traditional upbringing of a child.
So my mind is a little split on this. I am looking for a new relationship since the old one seems to have faded and ended, as far as I can tell. I have no desire to return to her and yet I am stuck with strings still attached. Maybe those kinds of love attachments never go away but the pain and sharpness does. Is it so wrong to have that kind of feeling linger? The current crop of women I have gone on dates with seem to think that's a problem but I only recall Mary Wollstonecraft's second husband, William Godwin, who seemed to not be worried that Wollstonecraft had lingering feelings for Imlay, or others who had multiple affairs and recollections and helped bring about the story of their past lovers. Even Buber-Neumann accepts Milena's past attachments to her lovers. What is it about the modern world now that considers these memories as "baggage" that needs to be released before entering into a new life? It only seems to apply to men, but single mothers have children that are attachments to the past, yet I don't think that's looked at as a bad thing. My writing is failing me.
I'm reading Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks, published after his death. I like his writing process, much like I enjoyed Van Gogh's painting process. I write and think in this way. It is not exactly creative but it allows for ideas to escape from my mind, where they are twisting and swirling. They don't go anywhere but now they are free to be. Sometimes I return to my thoughts and wonder what was going on in my mind at the time of writing. I am sure I will do that here too. The process of writing, getting words down on the page is important to me. I am often neglecting this wonderful transition from the internal to the external.
My Grade 9 English teacher, Mr. Miller, made us write in journals as soon as we got into class. For the first ten minutes, we would sit and write. He never read what we wrote, rarely if at all. At first, I was very annoyed. I didn't understand the process so for the first few months, I wrote angrily. I wrote with so much anger and hatred and this waste of time exercise. My memory isn't so clear from that age, but I think I stopped being angry after a few weeks. I might as well write my feelings, anything that I was feeling. I liked doing that so much I continued throughout most of my high school life and undergraduate degree. I continued when I graduated and moved to Japan. My entire year there is captured and easily recalled. People ask me why my memory of the past was so strong; it is because I wrote about it constantly. It was a drive I could not contain.
Nowadays, I write occasionally for school. I don't write as often. I consider myself to be too busy to write. I keep everything locked away in my mind where they can transform. A good thought can brood inside and turn into anxiety, fear, anger, hatred. I tried to speak about it but no one understands. I am better writing than speaking. I forget that about myself.
An example of my brooding. On Monday, I met a young woman for dinner. I have seen her once before and I have been anxious to see her again. She is very attractive; beautiful. We talked but we didn't really laugh. Maybe we did. I can't remember because I only remember how I didn't laugh at everything, didn't try to make her laugh. I was so nervous to talk to her. I was surprised she wanted to meet again because it seemed like she didn't want to meet. She does not use her phone to text and her life seems pretty complete and busy. Yet, at the end of the night, she leaned in and kissed me. I liked it. I think she liked it. Here's my problem: "I think she liked it." I wasn't present in the moment so I couldn't feel her and I'm usually very good with that. I wonder now if that means she couldn't feel me either. Without that spark of the first kiss, we don't have a chance of getting any closer. But maybe I'm thinking about this too much? How do I stop? Her lips were very soft. Now, she's busy again for another week or two. Will I see her again? I don't know. As Roland Barthes say, "I'm the one who waits." So I wait and I wonder. I try to distract myself so I don't become anxious. I try to focus on other tasks. They don't work. But writing! Writing seems to work well.
My distractions are coming up to meet me now. I must end this writing section again. Where will I go with my final paper for GLS?
April 7, 2016
The last two books of this semester were Fred Wah's Diamond Grill and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam. Both books were great for their own respective reasons. I liked Diamond Grill because there are many parallels with the Wah's trip through immigration in Canada and my own family history in Canada. My family history is very short. I don't really understand my cousins' view of living in Canada. I'm sure it's hard to be mentally challenged (is that the correct political label - why do we care so much that our words no longer offend? Whatever happened to Rabelais' vulgar, grotesque, carnival, spectacle that is what it is to be human? Why are we so focused on being clean and safe? Have we gone too far or do we need to keep going to find those limits?) or homosexual as the first set of immigrants from my family to be hard. I'm not better - a 36 year old unmarried bachelor - something my parents were not expecting when they came to Canada. They make it obvious that I should have had children by now, settled down, not focused on my dreams (if I knew what my dreams were, I would definitely have followed them - it's the problem with being an immigrant child - where do we get our dreams if they were not forced upon us by our traditional families? I don't know that I have actualized my potential and become my own self or I'm still split between the multiple selves with attached responsibilities from my immediate family to my distant ancestors. The whole filial piety thing is difficult for me to comprehend and put into practice. It pulls me in from time to time, when I see my father with a head of white hair, when my mother asks for help to lift a heavy object. My sister is there but she's not the one responsible, or shouldn't be, but has become de facto caretaker of my parents because I'm the older fairy child with one foot in reality, a foot, sword, bow, shield, aura in fantasy. I never want to leave that fantasy world; I'm afraid of reality and facing it. It's much easier to see it play out in someone else, learn the lesson from their trials, and incorporate the learnings in me. That's why we read, right?
I need to come up with a way to express my choice of exile. I like the writing style of Kafka's Octavo Notebooks and Fred Wah's vivid detail of his childhood as a homage to his father. I want to provide some kind of legacy and record of my family history. It will have to change since our family history has been documented in Chinese and I'm finally regretting not learning the language in my youth. It is hard to read and write Chinese as an adult. I don't have a lack of motivation. I am incapable of memorizing new information easily. I always feel lazy, like I'm not doing enough. Life is about opportunities for experience. I am forcing myself to experience positive things, all things. I realize that I cannot possibly do this. Those who have children seem to comment on how children change their focus and purpose in life. I wonder how much of that is reflected in Diamond Grill. Wah doesn't speak much about his children. There is some two way communication between him being a son and him being a father. He plays with language so well I can't tell which way his address is heading.
Shay's book is very intense and I'm interested in it because it brings me back to the fantasy world. Wah's book is real. Shay's book is meant to be real but I can't experience it other than through stories which seem to always glorify battle, even if it's meant to provoke compassion, sadness, or some other sombre emotion. The text is heavy. I feel for the Vietnam veterans. It is much easier to think about the Iliad because I can think of the soldiers as mythology and not real people. I have met a real soldier but he was young. His eyes were not young but he liked me and his platoon liked me and I felt like I was part of their brotherhood. There's something there that is not love, it's not caring, and he was their commander and it was definitely like being a mother. He talked about going berserk. His name was Sparta. I can't believe I didn't bring him up in class. Maybe I should write something about it in an email. yes, I'll do that and share my thoughts.
