Deep Dark Mysteries

Back in the office for a new semester. Feels a bit shiny, even though I don't teach until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm making plans for the first day of class, which involves reading the first assignments again. Making plans = thinking about doing it, stacking the books on my desk, and then writing in livejournal, AIM, talking to students and colleagues, getting hungry, and etcetera.

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I have a question for movie aficcionados: what's the last line that Ennis mutters to the shirt on the closet door at the end of Brokeback Mountain? I can't figure it out, despite rewinding and replaying at least 3 times.

Maybe it's supposed to be a deep dark mystery.

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I think next I'll read Kitchen Confidential, or Children of Men. I also have a Wilkie Collins book sitting on my desk here in the office, The Evil Genius, and its beginning is pretty good. Sucks me in. I'd rather read that, in fact, right now, instead of going over Death of a Salesman for the umpteenth time.


Still, I always find something interesting in Death, every time I read it again, talk about it again with a class. Work is such an integral part of who we think we are, who we become in the world. If our work is inauthentic--if we're not doing what we're "meant" to do--then the whole world is off kilter, as it is for poor Willy.

Well thank the lord, or whoever, that I get to do what I like to do, which is to read and write and talk about reading and writing (and myself) to a captive audience.