John Wilkes: The Greatest Explorer Ever?

Well he is according to Cooper...and that has to count for something right? If old "Fenni" (to use a nickname gifted JFC by a girl I knew in college) thinks you are the greatest, what more could you possibly ask, wish, want or desire of fate?

I believe I'll let the man speak for himself:
"There are islands to the southward of Cape Horn, and a good many of them too, though none very near. It is now known, also, by means of the toils and courage of various seamen, including those of the persevering and laborious Wilkes, the most industrious and the least rewarded of all the navigators who have ever worked for the human race in this dangerous and exhausting occupation, that a continent is there also; but, at the period of which we are writing, the existence of the Shetlands and Palmer's Land was the extent of the later discoveries in that part of the ocean" (from Cooper's The Sea Lions (page number pending as I'm on campus and using the Project Gutenberg text)).

I read this a while ago (it's actually in the first volume of the meticulously proofread Kessinger reprint of the text. I'm really quite appreciative of the folks at Kessinger and all they do pour le monde du lettres , so I'm not complaining...just commenting. And it's not a snide comment. Well ok, it is. But it isn't meant to be taken as overtly so. I'm sorry Kessinger. I love you. Everyone head over there and buy rather overpriced sort of poorly proofed -- damn. I'll just stop now.

Anyway, Cooper's Sea Lions. What a book. It's seriously great in the vein of Pierre and Fanshawe...but all of Cooper's works are like that. It's like how ridiculous old people wearing way too much Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds go off about how pugs or some other god-awful-ugly breed of dog is just the "ccuuuutest wittle creatur' that ever walked the eaaaarth," only...less phony. And true. In this case. Yes, Fenni is a fabulous author. You learn to love him - you know? Even with all of his crazy patriotism and bizarre interludes...his science lessons for the audience he openly proclaims to be simpleminded...just everything really. Fenimore, you are "my reason for being" -- to quote a phrase from the Phillip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach (from Knee 5 -- my favorite! (They cut off the end...the best part! oh well...). If you haven't checked out Einstein on the Beach, definitely do so. At least the music. I'm not all too certain about the visuals. Something tells me that they were projected? I don't know. I should look this up.

But not right now. I'm on campus. So anyway, everyone go read The Sea Lions! Your life will by much improv'd by th' experience.

deconstructive paralysis; or, my tumble and headlong freefall into the Symmes' hole

Ouch! Wyn eal gedreas! (The joy has died!)

Yeah...life has just unexpectedly demonstrated its ability to suddenly close in on humble, hopeless graduate students and transmitted the awareness (to said graduate students) that even if they put in twenty-two (22!) hour days for an entire week, they will still end up getting crushed. Our humble protagonists are then also graced with the simultaneous awareness that their awareness of the former in and of itself is really rather useless because they will inevitably end up blazing ahead and putting in 23.5 hour days...and when all is said, done, and insufficiently edited they will limp away feeling as though they could have done all that they have actually (objectively) managed to achieve in roughly three or four hours to the achievement of seemingly comparable end (though perhaps one which only achieves the illusory safe appearance of congruence in retrospect).

O' to be free to read Against the Day! O' to have written a better draft of my biotopography of Symmes! It was dreadful. In one place, I used the word 'promulgate' in a peculiar and...flat-out incorrect fashion. I had, at least to the best of my knowledge as gleaned by my senses, spent hours and hours writing this fantastic draft on a topic that alternately ravishes and rivets me. In short, I had the glowing, elusive sense of having made an important contribution to an underdeveloped region of the community of letters. Then it...all fell apart. It crumbled in my hands, really. I glanced up at the time in the upper right corner of my MacBook screen and six hours had passed. I was still writing nothing fast (the equivalent of "going nowhere fast" in écriture. At some point along the way the sun had set and my apartment was freezing. I had no idea what had happened during what appeared to be the last twenty pages.

Quel cauchemar! "Cauchemar" is the only mot to describe it. Et 'cauchemar' est masculin, non? [flush] J'oublie.

Anyway, I have to go and read Toni Morrison's Sula before going to my undergraduates' lecture. I have to teach the book tomorrow. "Oh great fun!" you exclaim. "Oh yes..." I reply in kind in a tone both wizened and wary. Maybe I'll write a Sula review tonight. We shall see...I just have this frantic progression of alternately warped, thorned, and luscious literary ideés roaring and splashing through the caverns of my cranium all times. Sometimes it's absolutely delightful and I love the world and everything in't...and then it's not...and then I see Benjamin Franklin at the Laundromat, which happened yesterday. I think he was doing Sudoku on a clipboard.

Hm. Well, in conclusion, I shall initiate a practice I shall call (dum, dum, dum) "Quoth Cate, the Wandering Americanist" or, I guess, QCtWA for I feel like cherishing and cultivating a relationship with the acronymic form (the most interesting and meaningful relationship I've had in years, to give you, dearest reader, a sense of the Wandering Americanist herself).

So. Today's QCtWA:
"Quaesivit arcana poli videt dei."

He sought the secret of the Pole
but found the secret face of God.
(Inscription, Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge)

and God kind of looked like...well..uh..this.