I must lighten my load of notebooks I tote around every time I move, so I'm doing the painful and picking through B.A., M.A., M.F.A. to see which ones can go in the recycle bin. It's that nagging in my brain that keeps this from being an easy process, "but what if, at some point in the future, I need to know the nuances of difference between stem succulents and leaf succulents, drought deciduous species and indicator species."
Anyway, I feel some tribute must be paid. Here's a list of my favorite gems from my notes for Southwestern Studies I in 2004, a class I only managed to stay awake through because you, Jack, and you, Amelia, helped me through it:
"Cuaranchuia- cannibals. The Europeans are the ones who ate each other. The civilized taught the uncivilized cannablialism."
"berdache- man taking on dress, role, status of the opposite sex. Anthropologists interested in this ongoing tradition, primitive people engaged in long history of homosexulaity. Cyclone Covey translation= bad!"
"deserts have sparse vegetation."
"D.H. says for next week's reading, 'don't bother with the footnotes, just the text.'"
"Conquistadors: 1) wore sombreros 2) were magic 3) liked coffee in the mornings"
"Cancer is unnatural.
The unnatural infringes on birds.
A man made lake.
First atomic test-New Mexico."
"American cowboy-one of the most iconic America figures."
"Change-Hall, Montejano
Imagine that you are __________."
"Geronimo was an Apache. Apaches either killed or corraled."
So what does everyone else do with all of their old paper? I'm interested. Are you keeping all the notebooks, keeping a select few; are you the type who can dump them all wholesale into the bin?
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I still have some of the notes we wrote to each other in that class. What an introduction to Texas State!
I can't find my notes from that class. I'm looking through my black book. I think I was writing to Faulk on this page
3/7/07:
Act two is generally double the length of act one. Act three begins 176. Act 3 is generally shorter than act 1 (moving from events quickly--elements have already been set and must reverberate)
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Barry Hannah--The plot should always feel inevitable
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The girl in the yellow shirt looks sweet and confused like a kitten
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"To fall in love is to create a religion with a fallible god" -Borges
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Reflection in all symbols. Ghost children == Ruth/Lucille
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WAY VAGUE
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The Writing Process
The Mode of Fiction
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I'm not doing that
I love "I'm not doing that."
My notes also reminded me that "the graduate student" was in our class. Surely she set a record for how many times you can use the same preface for so many different sentences.
The graduate student! I'm sure she's very successful somewhere out there in the world of mere undergraduates.
My dad had some weird emergency heart procedure the very first weekend of class. I distinctly remember sitting on the floor of his hospital room and reading Cabeza DeVaca's Relacion. And NOT feeling like a graduate student.
Kisses all around. Today I want to channel Tom and tell my students that we are all going to die. Didn't he do that? I never wrote it down in my notebook, but I think he used to do that. Or maybe he just told us that nobody would cry if we didn't write.
Denis Johnson cried. And Tom told us we were all dying. Debra ate green beans, Barry Hannah said, "you know how all Mexican kids love candy." These are things I will never forget.
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