Like coleslaw wearing a seatbelt

The title to this post is taken from a translation we discussed today in my writing workshop, which I have written about here before none too rosily.  The coleslaw wasn't intended to be wearing a seatbelt, of course, but this is the kind of thing that happens in the absence of punctuation and sensible line breaks.  I don't intend to criticize the translation as a whole, actually; I only bring it up because in my half-crazed state of mind, as I waited eagerly for our last class session to end, this particular image struck me as plausibly symbolic for the way our class has gone this semester.  The seatbelt is the safe harness of legitimacy surrounding the class -- the reputation of the university and the creative writing program, the rigorous-sounding title of the course, the vaunted credentials of the professor.  The coleslaw is is the gloppy, disorganized, unglamorous, and totally unappealing reality inside the classroom, whose messy, sub-par reality -- one would hope -- cannot be held in place long despite the seatbelt's best efforts.

I hope my course evaluation, which I filled out as thoroughly as time constraints allowed at the conclusion of our class, will be part of the oozing to light of the past-date coleslaw of the workshop system at my university, but I doubt that this will be the case.  I am not naive enough to think that a professor who has survived for decades presumably doing exactly what he has done in our class (teaching philosophy is closely enough tied to one's personal character that it rarely changes significantly over the years, I suspect)  is likely to be ousted or even reprimanded thanks to a single scathing evaluation .  And single it will be:  I was surprised that I was the only student in the class apparently to take the evaluation seriously.  The others rushed out of the room under a minute after receiving the form, except for the one student assigned to collect them all and take turn them in, so I then found myself in the position of having to make this student wait for me while I spent whole five minutes or so saying my piece about what a disappointment the class and its professor have been.  I could have spent an hour, but for all the good it would have done, maybe it was a better use of my time to wrap up in short order and go meet up with the lovely person I care so very much more about than any of that nonsense.

Augustine, inside out

I made a start today on reading through the early letters of St. Augustine.  This semester, I've been reading the four dialogues Augustine wrote while in retreat at Cassiciacum, near Lake Como in Italy, in 386-87, during the time between his conversion to Christianity and his baptism.  The dialogues themselves are revealing of the inward turn Augustine took in his own search for Truth and which he advocated for his students, and the letters provide yet another intimate level of evidence showing this trend in his thought.

What struck me most today about these letters, though, is that, as personal as Augustine's investigation of his own mind and soul was, it also enabled him to achieve a remarkable depth in his interpersonal relationships as well.  As he shows in his famous prayer at the opening of the second book of the Soliloquies -- "Noverim me, noverim te (May I know myself, may I know you)" -- Augustine realized that self-knowledge could only be achieved through knowledge of God.  And what could be more universally meaningful, what could bind friends together more powerfully, than an understanding of all people as creatures made by God, in his image?  Keeping this in mind, it seems only natural that Augustine and his friends wrote to one another about their intense longing to be physically present together and to compare the findings of their soul-searching and to test their tentative conclusions against each other.  All people being equal and united under God, it only makes sense that friends should assist one other in their ascent towards Truth.

As I admired the intimacy of Augustine's correspondence and the import of the issues at stake therein, I inevitably recognized the general shallowness of my own correspondence.  For this, to whatever degree it exists, I take full personal responsibility -- I'm not tempted toward a tritely gloomy reflection on the detriment of modern media on our social relationships.  What an endlessly facile scapegoat technology can be.  But I'll avoid getting heavy on this point.

So, instead, the day's culinary highlights.  I continue to explore the new Essential New York Times Cookbook, and it hasn't led me astray so far.  Tonight, I had planned to try out Mark Bittman's Pork and Sweet Potatoes in Coconut Milk, but I had to sub in chicken at the last minute when I discovered -- the nose doesn't lie -- that my pork had gone off.  The dish turned out well anyway, with the coconut milk reducing into a thickish creamy sauce that I finished with lime juice.  I served it with Basmati Rice with Coconut Milk and Ginger, from the same book, which turned out to be a nice match as well as a good way to use up the rest of my can of coconut milk.  Tonight, after reaching my brain's limit in gathering thoughts for a new paper, I whipped up, finally, a batch of Dorie Greenspan's Great Grains muffins, which I've wanted to try for a long time.  I've flash frozen them to bake up tomorrow morning -- there's no better incentive to get out of bed than fresh muffins.  We'll see how they turn out.

Not even funny

I have often thought that someone could make a really hilarious reality show exposing what goes in creative writing workshops.  While I got a lot of good writing practice in my creative nonfiction classes as an undergrad, workshop sessions often ranged from exasperating to downright absurd.  In fiction workshops, there were always the obviously autobiographical stories of suicide, drug addiction, death, divorce, etc., discussions about which were much more therapy sessions for the authors than any kind of exercise in literary criticism.  In nonfiction workshops, the classic oversharers had free rein to spill their guts with total abandon, a privilege that resulted in, for example, an hourlong discussion of a female student's extended essay on her experience of childbirth and its gory aftermath, exploring in depth the significance of her own placenta and historical views on that organ.  If I found the experience uncomfortable, my squeamishness was nothing compared to the horrified response of our sixty-something male professor.

My experience in these classes provided plenty of material for TV-worthy situational comedy, but, for all that, it always had some redeeming value.  Despite the nonsense I sometimes had to read and treat seriously in class discussions, it was always the case that most of my classmates were honestly doing the best work they were capable of.  I could count on getting thoughtful comments on my work from at least a couple of fellow writers whose opinions I respected, and my professors always held the class to a sufficiently high standard to stimulate real effort, whatever kind of product resulted.

This semester, I am in a workshop once again, this time entitled Advanced Translation.  I had high hopes for this class:  the title sounded rigorous, and it is offered through one of the nation's leading writing departments.  Unfortunately, it has turned out to be the worst kind of sham.  This is hardly material for a satirical T.V. show.  This is prime fodder for an expose on how Ivy League professors get away with absolute murder, pulling down full salaries for decades in compensation for precisely zero actual work, while offering their students the opportunity to get an impressive-sounding credential on their transcripts for investing nearly zero effort.  While there are a couple of truly talented students in the class who consistently share well-crafted translations, the work we discuss is usually a far cry from advanced, displaying a bare minimum of effort and a profound lack of understanding of the rudiments of the English language.  Today's seemingly interminable class was especially illustrative of the laziness and lack of rigor that have been so characteristic of our weekly sessions, but after enduring two and a half hours of such nonsense, I simply don't have the stomach to describe it.

What I do have the stomach for:  the couple of dishes I've prepared from my new cookbook.  Last night:  a chocolate cake that takes about five minutes to get in the oven, contains only five tablespoons of oil and no other fat, and that turned out to be a moist, fudgy delight.  Tonight:  spaghetti with roasted peppers and fried eggs.  I roasted a pepper myself, and although I think I can improve on my method next time, the result was pretty tasty.  I would have enjoyed my dinner in any case, but it's truly amazing how satisfying it can be to put together a decent homemade meal -- to perform the simple, honest, useful act of feeding myself -- after sitting for hours feeling potentially productive time slip painfully.  Although, come to think of it, I guess that monumental waste of my time produces the useful result of putting dinner on my professor's table -- a pretty good wage for the couple of useless, redundant comments he made today.