I’ve fully memorized
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Dog”. I recited it completely on the way to class on
Monday.
As I pulled up on the Bloor bike
lane across the street from OISE I put my left arm into the stop signal with my
elbow bent and my forearm down. A guy behind me that had been following me
since Ossington said in a bored and almost sarcastic sounding voice, “Thanks
for the signal.” I suspect he really was sincerely thanking me and that was
just the way he talks.
I was at my classroom ten minutes
before the other class usually gets out but the other class wasn’t there. I
couldn’t set up a lot of tables in rows because a lot of my fellow students had
already taken their seats. I was about to move a table when Zanab walked up. I
asked her if she preferred it in the sideways position and she said she did, so
I had to just put a few tables together at a weird angle along the front. I
moved one table and a young woman’s phone hit the floor because she’d had it
sitting on the crack between her table and the one I was moving. I apologized
profusely but she didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.
I told Professor Weisman that Thomas
de Quincey, in his manner of putting himself into that on which he’s reporting
is sort of like a 19th Century Hunter S. Thomson.
She began the lecture talking about
the contrary fictionalized personas that De Quincey presents of himself. The
pious intellectual gentleman writing a non-sensationalist discourse as a
warning. Not like the ulcerous writings of the non-English such as the French,
the Germans. His text is a forum for moral rectitude. He takes his place at the
top of the pecking order while he walks among the marginalized as the trope of
the haunted fatal man inflicted with paralysis of will. He takes a common cause
with prostitutes.
He uses Christian symbolism and
presents himself as like Satan as depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost or like
Samson Agonistes. He depicts himself as the tragically fallen gothic hero.
Romantic heroes identify with the heroic criminal of Satan, as did William
Blake because Satan is sexier than Adam. He was a vital revolutionary and
analogous to the long-suffering philosopher.
De Quincey’s addiction is like the
pit in Paradise Lost. He is building his own Pandaemonium, the capital of his
personal hell. He is dreaming from Satan’s viewpoint under the oppression of
the inexpiable guilt of the gothic hero. Satan personifies death through incest
with his sister Sin. Satan is like the choice to take opium.
De Quincey’s confessions are
different from St Augustine’s because there is continuity between the subject
and the writer. It’s not “I can’t believe I was once that person!”
There is no shallow closure.
Some say that the racist parts are
meant to expose racism.
England in the early 19th
Century had national Anglican Christianity and non-Anglicans did not have equal
rights. Exoticizing the east reduced it to type and othering. The opium trade
was part of the illicit East. Opium and dangers of the imagination.
He does not want to be caught out
not knowing how to speak Malay and so he sustains the fiction by speaking
Greek.
He represents self as falling back
on British decorum. Malayans must know opium. To give the Malay an emetic and
save his life would violate decorum.
I stopped at Loblaws on the way home
but even their grapes were not as firm as grapes should be. I picked through
and found a couple of passable bags.
I worked on getting caught up on my
journal.
That night I had cheddar cheese on a
piece of toast with a beer and watched an episode of Star Trek Discovery.
Spoiler alert!
In this story Discovery investigates
another flash of energy and it leads them to Suru’s home planet of Kaminar. Saru
and Michael beam down and Saru sees his sister Siranna for the first time since
he escaped many years before. She had not known he had gone into space and
hadn’t known it was possible. She has never seen an Earthling like Michael
before. But the Ba’ul are watching and Saru and Michael begin to feel the
ground shake. They beam back up to Discovery.
Meanwhile the regenerated Dr. Culber
is being examined by the ship doctor and is told that since every cell is brand
new he is pristine. He seems upset though that the scar that had inadvertently
cause him to become a physician is no longer part of his body.
The Discovery is confronted by Ba’ul
ships and they demand that Saru be turned over to them. The Ba’ul target
Siranna’s village and so Saru disobeys orders and teleports down to the planet
to turn himself in and save her. He finds himself in a cell in the middle of
which is pool of water. Siranna is teleported into the cell also. A drone
enters the chamber and causes Saru to be camped to the wall. He no longer has
fear ganglia, but suddenly when threatened, in the place on the back of his
neck where the ganglia had been, teeth form and some of them are shot forward
at the threat. One of the Ba’ul, covered in black slime emerges from the pool
and tells him that he does not realize what he is.
Meanwhile on Discovery Burnham and
Tilly access the vast database that had been given them by the dying sphere and
research the history of Kaminar. They discover that the Klepians were the
original predator species of Kaminar and that the Ba’ul had been the prey but
the Ba’ul had used their technological superiority to conquer the Klepians and
to alter their DNA.
When Siranna is threatened by a
drone, Saru shows strength not seen in him before. He breaks free of his bonds
and crushes the drone with one hand.
Burnham
contacts him and tells him that since the transformation that caused him to
lose his fear ganglia was set off by the sphere, the same energy burst could be
used to remove the ganglia from all of the Keplians. Saru gerry-rigs some of
the tech from the drones to transmit the signal. The Keplians are transformed.
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