The Pastness of the Past or Notes taken in English 225, Am. Lit 2.

I see a speck of dust walking between the blue lines.
If you meet a Buddha, kill him.
If you meet a patriarch of the law, kill him
The jerky realization of a motif is remarkable.
Freshly washed hair helps the broodiness I have accepted as an integral part of my existence.
Views askance.
Let’s begin then, with vulgarization. Muddying the past and pinning hopes on Naipaul’s “The past is deep.” A line a day for me.
I hope you have fish tonight.

I
Swim in limp
Break me- you
Stick making, sick mating
Aah, Aah, Eee, Eee
Ooh
Rap! Clean streaks on
Dusty mats.
Sifting through texts
For ridicule, like
Monkey backs.
Exes
Fly and settle down
Heavily
And then I
Colour.

On Power

This week has seen me in the University bookstore almost every day. Independent Studies entail having to order books myself. It is a pain. Picking up books for my regular classes are almost...fun. In a portentous way, ofcourse. I found myself, just yesterday, looking at books selected by Professors for certain English classes and despite myself burst out laughing. It was remarkably comical, this circus of an exhibition. I could almost picture these Professors take out their selections from their sulfurous cupboards, wiping the dust off them with their sleeves and handing it to the secretary with a mad glint in their eyes. Yes, they must, they could subject their wards to an unending list of obscure literature. Obscure did I say?
A certain Professor seems to have a more discerning bend of mind and has included a Divakaruni (?...alright I do know her but have they exhausted all possible choices when it comes to World Literature or have they started assuming that all students in their classes are going to be like me and simply need to be brought in contact with bad literature so as to toughen us up) in her World Literature class. This was the same teacher, I am pretty sure, who insisted on telling us that one of the characters in Vikram Chandra's (yes) short story had a name-sake in Bollywood. I remember being so mortally frightened of being asked questions on Shahrukh Khan that I immediately started on how Vikram Chandra co-wrote the screenplay for a popular movie called Mission Kashmir and from there eased the class into a discussion of the then upcoming Academy Awards. I shan't get into that right now because I fear I digress too much. Yes, she had her mandatory Morrison too. There are others who have mandatory DeLillos and others who demand you buy Gaitskill. These Professors I call non du peres. For all his presumptuousness Lacan can be pretty useful. Which reminds me of one of my classes. I think I shall drop it for the DeLillo. Why? I was asked to buy a David Lodge. And also because his ugly bowties distract me awfully.
Oh, to be sixteen again and under the sway of Derrida. I should have just taken the advice of my senior school English teacher to heart and turned my nose up at Universities.
Well, Said had called it one of the last remaining utopias.


I also remember feeling slightly nauseous when I thought I saw Kite Runner in the English section. Fortunately it was in the Liberal Studies section. Fortunately. Ho hum.

Excerpt / Abandonment (In the Heideggerian sense)

“How short do you want it?” Making a plane with her hand she showed the woman how short she wanted it. Enjoying the cold edges of the scissors on her nape she saw herself after the woman would finish with her hair. Success was two steps away. As always. Two cuts away, maybe less. Shy, because she had wanted to look at herself in the mirror longer. The folds under her shirt were visible. Gently undulating. Mrs. Lawny had asked them to learn the phrase by heart. They would be asked to match the phrases, in one column, to a set of words in another. She could feel her face growing red and asked how much she owed. “You can pay me fifteen.” Low voice. Co-conspiratorially. She thought the voice demand her face be scrunched up into a grateful smile. But who were they conspiring against? It was her shop. Perhaps, against her patrons? She paid.

Charlie Chaplin had once taken part in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. He had come third. When asked about this he said that success was just two steps away. Or something like that.

She had always remembered this anecdote from the numerous that the quizmaster had expected them to know. Sometimes she doubted their truth. It was the way he recounted them, she thought. His cheeks whose firmness seemed to disappear when he told them these anecdotes and the viscous anticipation that clung to his arms, the anticipation of appreciative clapping that dulled the sharpness of truth.

Walking back home was always difficult for her. While working for Makhmalbaf she would recognize the chair as hers. It was the one she had always carried home. It had to be a chair. Somehow she was convinced of its functionality. But she couldn’t have thought that then. Then, it was just a misshapen bundle: the contents were hidden by a floral sheet. The chair would be recognized only a few years later. The edges of the seat that were polished by her back. She asked the actress if she could carry the chair so that the edges of the seat were resting on her back but was told that it would be extremely wearisome. Were they looking at her clothes that were so badly mismatched? Regret at having put on her father’s woolen cardigan crystallized into little red spots on her cheeks. Thank God her cheeks did not look like those of the kuccha children. They had always been described as rosy by her father's unnaturally gleeful students. The lines that seemed to run across the rosy patches and form a peculiar patchwork made her want to brush her fingers over them. Ruddy was what she'd wanted to call them. But they meant almost the same thing, didn’t they, asked her brother. Are you going to tell me you’re going to choose ruddy over rosy because ruddy has “rougher edges” around it?