First of all, I should say that me and my Children's Lit class don't always get along. Not just because I find myself making huge generalizations about a large percentage of the population (children) in order to answer any question in the class straightforwardly, but because I clearly come from a very different place than most of my classmates. I come from the ghetto. I come from a field of study where gender-bending literature is kind of the norm. I come from a Mennonite church. I come from a family of missionaries and ex-missionaries. Hell, I don't know where it comes from, but I come from a place where we don't constantly deny that penises exist.
Second of all, I would like to say something about penises. About half of the world's population has them. A large percentage of the other half of the population has had one inside of them at least once. They are referred to in a variety of ways every day: on the radio, in books, in movies, in t.v. shows. They are spray-painted on buildings. Any rod-like object has been likened to one at some point in time. Anyone who has seen the cinematic gem Superbad will have seen a variety of fascinating artistic interpretations of the penis and all that it stands for. Penises are real and they're everywhere, damn it!*
And yet today I found myself seated in a classroom full of 20-somethings who could not handle the mere suggestion of the word 'penis'. It was the discussion on puberty in literature. We divided into groups** and examined the classic 'growing body'-type texts that crop up in households when someone realizes that the only alternative is the dreaded Puberty Talk. Then we had to discuss whether or not these books were appropriate for children.
A girl held up a text aimed at adolescent boys and showed us a page with drawings that were 'really inappropriate'. She waved it around. Someone gasped. From my vantage point I could not make out what exactly had shocked them, so I asked what it was. There arose a surprising amount of giggling for a university classroom. The girl would not, could not, say what was on the page. She had to pass the book to me. People stared. People giggled. Someone handed me the book. I tried to open it so that the person across from me could see it, thinking she might actually want to join the class discussion, but she shook her head violently. I began to feel like quite the perverted creep, wanting to see this horrible thing that children should not read about. Nevertheless, I persevered in my misguided quest for the truth. I opened the book to the offending page.
The page was titled 'every boy is different'. It was a set of cartoon drawings of penises. Professionally flaccid penises. Penises of all shapes and sizes. Big penises, small penises, fat penises, thin penises, one that I would have thought was a bulbous nose if it weren't accompanied by two testicles. Ah. There it was, the shocking thing. Drawings of penises. In a book about male anatomy. The horror. And I was being either pitifully naive or very creepy for requesting to see this book about anatomy. In a class about anatomy.
These are the things I probably should have said:
"Where's the inappropriate drawing? All I see are drawings of penises in a book about penises."
Or
"Oh is it because all these penises clearly belong to white boys? This book is racist!" (hey, maybe that WAS why everyone was embarrassed)
Or
"If it's inappropriate for adolescent boys to see eachother's penises how come you're not protesting the open-air locker rooms a the YMCA?
In fact, I've decided to change the ending of this story. I looked at the page of penises. Then I said, "Yeah it's pretty offensive to see pictures of penises that aren't the size and length of my forearm. Thank God there's enough ads for internet porn that all these boys have probably seen what a proper penis looks like by now."
Everyone was shocked by my ability to use the word 'penis' in a sentence. They were aghast at my charmingly dirty sarcasm. Then they saw my point. They all nodded at my words of wisdom. Thus liberated from their body-shaming mindset, we decided that we should make our own book in response. We spent the rest of the class designing it. It is pop-up. It will be on bookstore shelves by May. Enjoy!
*What is more, they're pretty important. Where would we be without them? Half of the DNA that created each one of us came out of one. And think about urinals! If half of North America's population couldn't pee standing up, think how many more bathroom stalls we would need! Penises are space-savers. They can also be time-savers. Think how many more bathroom breaks would have to happen on car trips if certain members couldn't pee out the window (I kid. I can't think of any good that has come from a jet of urine shooting out of a car traveling at 100 km/hr).
**and I can give you a second (and much longer) rant on how much I hate group-work, so I was biased from the start. If I apologize enough for being judgmental no one can judge me, right?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Wow. There's really nothing going on in my life right now.
I got my hand stuck in the fridge today. Not in the fridge door, not in some terrifying and trap-like contraption inside the fridge, not behind the fridge or under the fridge or in the inner workings of the fridge, but inside the large, airy compartment of the Fridge Proper.
I had been in my bedroom, procrastinating busily and getting paint all over the bedclothes, when I suddenly became desperately, ravenously hungry. I had to make myself some dinner immediately, and so I went downstairs.
My only excuse, then, is that I must have been so faint with hunger that all of my capacity for logical thought was momentarily eclipsed by my need for sustenance. I had already prepared myself a tasty meal of starches and was replacing the large tupperware container of rice back in the fridge when I noticed that right behind the rice was a container of strawberry yogurt. My food was in the microwave and would take at least another 40 seconds to heat up, and I decided I couldn’t wait that long. Reaching over the container of rice, which was now firmly inside the fridge, I grabbed the yogurt and attempted to quickly whisk it out over the rice container’s lid.
Unfortunately, I had overestimated the amount of space available for yogurt container whisking. My yogurt-filled hand was suddenly wedged between the rice container and the light installed on the fridge’s ceiling. I panicked. There were at least 27 more seconds left on the microwave; I couldn’t relinquish my yogurt. More importantly, I actually couldn’t let go of the yogurt; my knuckles were compressed in such a way that I was unable to move my hand. I was going to be stuck there in the kitchen, one hand holding a yogurt container I could not access and the other hand a good two feet away from the microwave that held my dinner. It was maddening. I tried the age-old technique of pulling harder on my trapped hand, but to no avail. The microwave was about to beep and I suddenly was incapable of reaching it! I wrenched still harder at my imprisoned hand. Suddenlymy hand was free!
I spent the next 10 minutes eating yogurt off of various things in the fridge.
I had been in my bedroom, procrastinating busily and getting paint all over the bedclothes, when I suddenly became desperately, ravenously hungry. I had to make myself some dinner immediately, and so I went downstairs.
My only excuse, then, is that I must have been so faint with hunger that all of my capacity for logical thought was momentarily eclipsed by my need for sustenance. I had already prepared myself a tasty meal of starches and was replacing the large tupperware container of rice back in the fridge when I noticed that right behind the rice was a container of strawberry yogurt. My food was in the microwave and would take at least another 40 seconds to heat up, and I decided I couldn’t wait that long. Reaching over the container of rice, which was now firmly inside the fridge, I grabbed the yogurt and attempted to quickly whisk it out over the rice container’s lid.
Unfortunately, I had overestimated the amount of space available for yogurt container whisking. My yogurt-filled hand was suddenly wedged between the rice container and the light installed on the fridge’s ceiling. I panicked. There were at least 27 more seconds left on the microwave; I couldn’t relinquish my yogurt. More importantly, I actually couldn’t let go of the yogurt; my knuckles were compressed in such a way that I was unable to move my hand. I was going to be stuck there in the kitchen, one hand holding a yogurt container I could not access and the other hand a good two feet away from the microwave that held my dinner. It was maddening. I tried the age-old technique of pulling harder on my trapped hand, but to no avail. The microwave was about to beep and I suddenly was incapable of reaching it! I wrenched still harder at my imprisoned hand. Suddenlymy hand was free!
I spent the next 10 minutes eating yogurt off of various things in the fridge.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Stein 101
After all the confusion at the end of last semester, I ended up in this dizzying course on Gertrude Stein. We couldn't have a more perfect professor to teach the course. Half my notes are actually about her, and not the author at all. I haven't decided if this will be a problem or not.
"Who would like to hear me sing Gertrude Stein's favourite song? I don't know the tune but I thought I'd improvise."
"Who here knits? Raise your hands! I knit sometimes. When the Gulf War started I was so mad, so mad that a war like that could start in my lifetime that I just had to knit, and the only thing I could knit was a scarf so it ended up being very long . I wore it on the bus once but I had to wrap it around my neck so many times I started to strangle in it. So I gave it to the girl who lived next door and she turned it into a lovely dress!"
"There is no exam in this class! No quizzes! The quiz is the puzzlement of being together in her presence. If you'd like to form an orchestra, please do so."
"This is a lovely secretion you have made!" (in response to what I wrote for our in-class assignment)
"If we had some drums in here it would be helpful."
"Who would like to hear me sing Gertrude Stein's favourite song? I don't know the tune but I thought I'd improvise."
"Who here knits? Raise your hands! I knit sometimes. When the Gulf War started I was so mad, so mad that a war like that could start in my lifetime that I just had to knit, and the only thing I could knit was a scarf so it ended up being very long . I wore it on the bus once but I had to wrap it around my neck so many times I started to strangle in it. So I gave it to the girl who lived next door and she turned it into a lovely dress!"
"There is no exam in this class! No quizzes! The quiz is the puzzlement of being together in her presence. If you'd like to form an orchestra, please do so."
"This is a lovely secretion you have made!" (in response to what I wrote for our in-class assignment)
"If we had some drums in here it would be helpful."
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
I want to be the sort of person who wants to go to poetry readings
"There should be a word for the things we do not because we want to but because we want to be the sort of people who want to" --e horne and j comeau
Ah, poetry readings. They're one of those things cultured people claim to enjoy. It's right up there with jazz4--or opera or classical music, or visiting art museums, or wine tastings where there isn't an open bar.
I want to be the sort of person who enjoys poetry readings. I should be; I'm a creative writer and ergo want to be the sort of person who wants to be involved in the local creative writing scene. In actuality, all I want is to get published. Unfortunately this would be greatly helped if I really did enjoy the local creative writing scene, because then when I went to open mic nights my heart would be in it, and I would probably try to make friends with the other participants instead of sitting in a corner without making eye-contact so that I can think up really nasty ways of criticising anyone who has the guts to (read: is self-important enough to) actually go up there and read something out loud, and eventually I could make good connections with people who know publishers and also can maybe give me tips on how to actually write a novel that doesn't suck. But I digress.
On the first Tuesday of every month, Aqua Books has an event called Speaking Crow. It is an open mic night, the sort of night where anyone who thinks they are anyone (regardless of who they actually are) is allowed to go up and perform their original pieces of poetry, provided it is under 3 minutes*. Some of the poetry is rather good. Some of it is notably bad. Aqua books always schedules a Feature reader**, presumably to guarantee that there will be one reader with at least professional-grade material, if not actually enjoyable material. But I'm being uncharitable. I must direct your attention back to the middle of this paragraph, where I conceded that some of the poetry was 'rather good'. Even this description must come with a disclaimer, though, which is this: when it comes to poetry, I am rather bad at enjoying it.
Appreciating poetry is either a skill I have not acquired or a gift I was not born with. When a poem begins, my mind begins to float in and out of consciousness. It can generally be found squatting in an alleyway on the other side of town when the most beautiful of poems reaches its crescendo. If I list a poem as 'one of my favourites', this means I regained awareness of my physical surroundings at a time when one profound line of poetry was being read, and I clung to that, spawning an appreciation for the entire poem from that one little scrap of poetry. "But my mother's voice was rain rich with lilacs, her look a field of brown oats, soft bearded."1 "and the days are not long enough, and the nights are not long enough, and life creeps by like a fieldmouse, barely shaking the grass" 2***
The fact of the matter is that I was at Speaking Crow this Tuesday, not because I wanted to be but because I wanted to want to be. The parts of it that I enjoyed I did not enjoy because I wanted to be the sort of person who enjoyed them****, but the parts I turned my nose up at I definitely scorned because I am NOT the sort of person who actually wants to be at poetry readings. The thing with poems is they generally occupy more than one line, and my mind can't often handle more than one or two. Ergo, I managed to catch about 20 little lines of poetry, ranging from "The heart is not a beating thing for you" (by Robert Hays) to "will you be part of the generation who turned the water black" (by Gag Me With a Spoon and Hypocrite).
Ergo, a poetry reading for me is one fairly brief poem with three-minute pauses between sentences:
Poetry is all about punishing people.
His eyebrows are white. His hair is black. He is 15 years old.
When you need something from him, you'll remember his name;
the heart is not a beating thing for you.
The pavement will grow no softer if you jump on it,
and the Earth produces a disaster to scratch at every irritation
will you be part of the generation who turned the water black?
When I looked at the sky, I saw clouds forming chains,
but we keep the heart to a perfect sound.
*And if you have ever had to sit through an open mic night where the limit was 10 minutes, you will appreciate how mercifully short Speaking Crow is.
**This week's feature reader was Jonathan Ball, who read from Ex Machina--a book of poetry arranged like a choose-your-own-adventure novel where if you actually follow the page directions the book will never end and you'll never read all of the poems inside it. He followed this with a few excerpts from Clockfire, a collection of plays that are impossible to perform. Personally, I would say Ex Machina is notable for the idea behind it though not for most of the poems within it, whilst Clockfire is actually worth reading (though I've been warned that the excerpts he read that were hilarious become terrifying if you read them to yourself)
***these were of course drawn from vague memory and I cannot guarantee accuracy.
****Or, put more plainly, I actually did enjoy them
Ah, poetry readings. They're one of those things cultured people claim to enjoy. It's right up there with jazz4--or opera or classical music, or visiting art museums, or wine tastings where there isn't an open bar.
I want to be the sort of person who enjoys poetry readings. I should be; I'm a creative writer and ergo want to be the sort of person who wants to be involved in the local creative writing scene. In actuality, all I want is to get published. Unfortunately this would be greatly helped if I really did enjoy the local creative writing scene, because then when I went to open mic nights my heart would be in it, and I would probably try to make friends with the other participants instead of sitting in a corner without making eye-contact so that I can think up really nasty ways of criticising anyone who has the guts to (read: is self-important enough to) actually go up there and read something out loud, and eventually I could make good connections with people who know publishers and also can maybe give me tips on how to actually write a novel that doesn't suck. But I digress.
On the first Tuesday of every month, Aqua Books has an event called Speaking Crow. It is an open mic night, the sort of night where anyone who thinks they are anyone (regardless of who they actually are) is allowed to go up and perform their original pieces of poetry, provided it is under 3 minutes*. Some of the poetry is rather good. Some of it is notably bad. Aqua books always schedules a Feature reader**, presumably to guarantee that there will be one reader with at least professional-grade material, if not actually enjoyable material. But I'm being uncharitable. I must direct your attention back to the middle of this paragraph, where I conceded that some of the poetry was 'rather good'. Even this description must come with a disclaimer, though, which is this: when it comes to poetry, I am rather bad at enjoying it.
Appreciating poetry is either a skill I have not acquired or a gift I was not born with. When a poem begins, my mind begins to float in and out of consciousness. It can generally be found squatting in an alleyway on the other side of town when the most beautiful of poems reaches its crescendo. If I list a poem as 'one of my favourites', this means I regained awareness of my physical surroundings at a time when one profound line of poetry was being read, and I clung to that, spawning an appreciation for the entire poem from that one little scrap of poetry. "But my mother's voice was rain rich with lilacs, her look a field of brown oats, soft bearded."1 "and the days are not long enough, and the nights are not long enough, and life creeps by like a fieldmouse, barely shaking the grass" 2***
The fact of the matter is that I was at Speaking Crow this Tuesday, not because I wanted to be but because I wanted to want to be. The parts of it that I enjoyed I did not enjoy because I wanted to be the sort of person who enjoyed them****, but the parts I turned my nose up at I definitely scorned because I am NOT the sort of person who actually wants to be at poetry readings. The thing with poems is they generally occupy more than one line, and my mind can't often handle more than one or two. Ergo, I managed to catch about 20 little lines of poetry, ranging from "The heart is not a beating thing for you" (by Robert Hays) to "will you be part of the generation who turned the water black" (by Gag Me With a Spoon and Hypocrite).
Ergo, a poetry reading for me is one fairly brief poem with three-minute pauses between sentences:
Poetry is all about punishing people.
His eyebrows are white. His hair is black. He is 15 years old.
When you need something from him, you'll remember his name;
the heart is not a beating thing for you.
The pavement will grow no softer if you jump on it,
and the Earth produces a disaster to scratch at every irritation
will you be part of the generation who turned the water black?
When I looked at the sky, I saw clouds forming chains,
but we keep the heart to a perfect sound.
*And if you have ever had to sit through an open mic night where the limit was 10 minutes, you will appreciate how mercifully short Speaking Crow is.
**This week's feature reader was Jonathan Ball, who read from Ex Machina--a book of poetry arranged like a choose-your-own-adventure novel where if you actually follow the page directions the book will never end and you'll never read all of the poems inside it. He followed this with a few excerpts from Clockfire, a collection of plays that are impossible to perform. Personally, I would say Ex Machina is notable for the idea behind it though not for most of the poems within it, whilst Clockfire is actually worth reading (though I've been warned that the excerpts he read that were hilarious become terrifying if you read them to yourself)
***these were of course drawn from vague memory and I cannot guarantee accuracy.
****Or, put more plainly, I actually did enjoy them
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