I have been away from LJ/DW for some time now, in a larger sense because of the seemingly ever-increasing demands of my job and my family and my desire to actually finish my dissertation, but in a smaller and more local sense because of traveling over the holidays and school starting once again and a fannish trajectory that has me reading far more often than producing or commenting on source material. Add in an anxiety disorder which has in the last weeks blossomed uncomfortably, and I have not been around very often. I sometimes feel as if I'm standing on the shoreline of fandom, right where water eats sand, sinking further and further into the sandy slurry over the last four years while fandom slowly, slowly recedes outwards. Pretty soon I'll be perched on dry dunes and watching the surf crash in down the way.
All this to say, what I miss most about fandom is talking to you guys. On a regular basis. About things. :) Josh is watching
Oz with Dax, and I have a whole evening to spend wading back into the waves. So talk to me. I have talking points.
1. Let's say you fall through a whole in the sky into the Potterverse when Lily is pregnant but before the prophecy is made. Let's say you help defeat Voldemort before Harry can even be involved and while you are angsting over time travel and universe hopping and mostly not-angsting over becoming the filling in a Sirius/Remus sandwich, you are asked to teach a Muggle literature class at Hogwarts to the seventh years. Now remember, the objective of this class isn't merely to showcase excellence in Muggle literature. The texts you choose have to do something more--they must illuminate the Muggle human condition. They must offer some commentary you feel necessary for this class to understand about what it means to be a Muggle or perhaps about the Muggle perception of and fascination with magic. The texts don't have to be readily accessible to the wee wizards; part of what you'll be doing as a teacher is providing context for the Muggle history and situations they don't understand. This is a Muggle world literature class that spans all recorded history. What text(s) do you choose and why?
2.
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executrix sent me the most marvelous parcel of books this Christmas, truly her most inspired assortment yet (and believe me, this lady is no slouch in the book delivery dept). In this parcel was
Very Far Away From Anywhere Else by Ursula K. LeGuin. Clocking in at about 80 pgs, this novella is a lovely slice of adolescence. I think it does a very good job of capturing the peculiarities of being a teenager--the way everything feels so very terribly important, the sense that you are disconnected from and different than those around you, that what you are going through is unique to you and you alone and the select few individuals you find along your journey, the notion of life as some kind of quest for an answer, a thing to be figured out, a puzzle. I love it. It's really more of a postcard of a book than anything, but UKlG's prose is as fine as ever. Also in the box:
Aimee and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin, 1943 (which is about the love affair between a German woman and a Jewish woman who has gone underground in Berlin; has anyone read this book? I have interestingly mixed feelings about the author's epilogue) and
Love in a Dark Time which tries to force intersections between homosexuality, Irishness, and Catholicism in a discussion of a set of artistic figures with varying degrees of success. The chapter on Wilde is the most successful, the chapter on Almodovar the least. He seems pasteded on, yo.
3. Adam and Joy gave us
Never Let Me Go which OMG, y'all. Wow. I mean. I knew that
Remains of the Day is supposed to be awesome and a pinnacle but I'd never read or seen the movie, and now I just want to devour everything this guy has ever written.
Never Let Me Go is haunting and creepy and ambivalent and so overwhelming sad that it instantly jumps into favored status with Lorraine. I think it's been made into a movie. Anybody seen or watched?
4. Finally, seen any movies? Read any books? Heard any songs? Cooked anything awesome? Been thinking thinky thoughts about a thing? I wanna know.
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