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april 16, 2001.I've spent a good chunk of my Easter Monday marking journal entries about Fifth Business. Blech. It's a very depressing and nervous thing to assign marks subjectively: no wonder math teachers look more youthful than english teachers. And besides the stress of assigning quality markings there's always the unexpected to poke holes in my serenity balloon. One student spent a third of his first entry talking about pot. Another (male) student handed in two (short) entries in a distinctly feminine hand. Two students have handed in word-processed packages and two of their reflections are identical. And so on. At least this is the end of my involvement with the novel. After the last late assignments trickle in and the debates are debated in tomorrow's class I'll be done. It's a good thing too - I was growing quite disillusioned with researching the novel. There are some really clever nuggets buried in the secondary scholarship, but the really depressing thing is that in his own correspondence Rob Davies seems to go out of his way to diminish the novel as much as possible. He was always trying to write a novel that would knock Fifth Business on it's ass, and I find it sad that he could never accept that he had produced an exceptional piece of art. I read World of Wonders (the third book of the trilogy) this weekend and was not entertained. Individual parts were interesting, but it had nowhere near the mythic power of Fifth Business. And as if to insult to injury, the last part of WoW did it's best to demystify the wonderful ending of 5th B. Phhhbbt.
I woke up this morning from a dream in which I was in a confusing high school environment. I knew that it was time for me to teach, but I was halfway across the school, and besides, I didn't have anything prepared. In the dream I brainstormed a quick, lecture-less solution and resumed hopping around the school in a sleeping bag. As anxiety dreams go, I think this one was kind of lame. But I can definitely see it replacing the old 'have to take a calculus test after recklessly skipping for the entire semester' dream, the one I've been having ever since first year university. See, that year I showed up for a class in second semester that was scheduled for first semester. Quelle horreur pour la frosh! I have yet to show up to class without a lesson plan in the waking world, although I've come awfully close some days. I suppose that in 100 years no one will care...which is an awful, unprogressive attitude, I know. I should be ashamed but somehow I'm not. Hop hop hop.
FYI:
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