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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Oddly Specific Dreams

1. I was writing some notes on Frank O'Hara's style. I just made a list of his various styles with examples. Like the quasi-surrealist style of "Hatred," the preciosity of the poems dedicated to Jane Freilicher, the faux-casualness of the "I do this / I do that" poems. I knew if I could keep working I could list at least 10 styles, but it is hard to work like this in dreams.

2. I was in a curriculum meeting of some kind. We had to defend our reading list, which had nothing from the 18th century in Spain, to people from outside of the department. I started arguing with a bearded man who demanded "coverage." I had to explain to him why "coverage" was a stupid word. I think I used the word "stupid." I virtually took over the meeting. I deliberately didn't use the "Enlightenment was weak in Spain" argument because I thought it was weak.

So in my dreams I am lucid and correct in my positions. I continue to do "work" of a certain kind while asleep. For example, I will use those "notes" in my section on Frank O'Hara of a chapter I am now writing. I know I do personal work in dreams in which my ex and my current romantic interest are in the same room with me together.

1 comment:

Leslie B. said...

"I deliberately didn't use the 'Enlightenment was weak in Spain' argument because I thought it was weak."

So, what argument did you use? I can tell you what I would say: these 1700-present courses were created when the present moment was 1940. Something has to go.

I swear that after this wrenching syllabus making experience I will never try for coverage of modern Spain again. I used to just do 6 representative texts on a theme of some kind and I am going back to that, I do not care. A pox upon everything and especially on those fools who invented the idea of national literature, Volksgeist and all the rest of it, I hope they are happy looking for the last atom of the germ that created their nations in the correct circle of Paradise.