Thurs Oct 25
My dear good friend Dr. Charles Kinbote is the sort of fellow who makes you wonder. He has a lovely mind and at the same time it is very frightening to think that they allow him to teach in that school. Oh, the mind is a beautiful thing, but when given to the wrong person, it can only hurt others. Poor John Shade and Mrs. John Shade. Their life has been rough. Every move calculated by a somewhat odd old man from across the lane. I do not blame Mrs. Shade for disliking the old man. She did not know how he adored her husband. She was quite the lady. And she had quite the house. Two story, perfectly decorated inside, beautiful curtains. She had it all. She would have been royalty in Zembla. Zembla, the country of dreams. Charles always dreamed of returning someday. He always had something to say about our dear old country. The mysteries are never ending.
6 passages:
“I mean he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.” (Page 13) — He is quite the random fellow. This is very odd to throw in the middle of a paragraph.“From the second story of my house the Shades’ living-room window remained clearly visible so long as the branches of the deciduous trees between us were still bare, and almost every evening I could see the poet’s slippered foot gently rocking. One inferred from it that he was sitting with a book in a low chair but one never managed to glimpse more than a foot and its shadow moving up and down to the secret rhythm of mental absorption, in the central lamplight.” (Page 23) — He is spying on them. He is obsessed with Shade.Line 12: crystal land“Perhaps an allusion to Zembla my dear country.” —He always eludes to this fake country, Zembla. “A methodical man, John Shade usually copied out his daily quota of completed lines at midnight but even if he recopied them again later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy” (page 13). — He knows these little details about Shade that are quite odd and creepy.Line 62: oftenOften, almost nightly, throughout the spring of 1959, I had feared for my life. Solitude is the playfield of Satan. I cannot describe the depths of my loneliness and distress. (Page 95) — He refers everything Shade says back to himself. Line 79: a preterist“… I feel pretty sure that my friend was trying to incorporate here something he and Mrs. Shade had heard me quote in my lighter-hearted moments…” (Page 107) — Again he is referring what was said back to something he had said. He is very self-oriented.
Tues Oct 30 What I have seen I walked into that room and sat down in between a sea of unfamiliarity. Those faces I have never seen. Those voices I have never heard. The ideas that I have never imagined began to grown on me. I saw uniqueness pouring from the very depths of the students around me. As I walked out of the class, I saw new faces that did not seem as bright. I saw the mouths moving in conversation that was pointless. I saw brains and minds being washed away. And as I walked back into that class, I saw hope. I saw growth. The days and the weeks went on and growth did come. I saw David, the insanely intelligent yet very hard headed one, pissed off at Gabe for expecting so much from people who know so little. I saw Jay, the crazy one who thinks he’s a doctor of some sort (a doctor of what nobody knows), crack jokes at Molly. I saw smiling faces. I saw, although upset, young adults learning how to deal with what was dealt to them. I saw battles of wit and I saw Gabe eat an apple or two. I saw the internal struggle of deciding whether or not to open up (which most of us are still battling at times). I saw empty seats and turned over chairs (being used a foot rests of course).
I saw the leaves blowing outside the window as our crazy, intelligent, yet sometimes ludicrous teacher made the walls move as he pulled down the black board. I saw the discussions go on about the books. The eccentric books that made no sense at first. I saw the sense being put into these eccentric books. I saw eccentric books morph into something that was becoming customary. I saw these eccentric books that were now customary teach us something new every time we went over them. And I saw, despite what everyone was thinking, a group of people bonding through the knowledge and the courage to learn.
Fri. Nov 2 Learning can only begin. It can never end.
I have learned in my year(s) of study that all I can do is to learn. In order to fulfill my life, I must learn. I must learn so that I can pass on this knowledge to others who will fill this world with intelligent, mindful souls who might possibly make it a place worth living in. Just as motivational speaker Terry Josephson said, we all need to “stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities.” (He of course was referring to a conversation he had with me before one of his speeches. It was quite the conversation I must say, and we both learned a lot about each other that day. He very well just might be a fellow Zemblan.) Learning is not about filling a container as we found in our Falling into Theory book. Learning is about communication between the one’s being taught and the teacher. Just because we do not always understand what we have placed in front of us does not mean that we should fret. Keep an open mind just as Gertrude Stein would and let the understood sink in. Works of writing are not always meant to mean something to you. I have learned in my old age that what I read and interpret will be different than what you will read and interpret. Although the same text is placed in front of us, the context will be unique. I have learned much about myself in this class of English 100. Conflicts will arise and confusion will clutter my mind but in the end as long as I know that I do not understand, I can be at peace with my mind. There is still much to learn but I am now on my journey of fully becoming me.
Extra Credit—Kaiser Wilhelm II
Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last German emperor and king of Prussia. His policies helped bring about WWI. He was born January 27, 1859 in Berlin and was the oldest child. His parents were Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia and Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria. He birth was difficult and caused him to have a withered arm. He served in the military for some time and married the princess of Schleswig-Holstein, Augusta Victoria, in 1881. They had seven children. Seven years after their marriage, Wilhelm’s father succeeded as Frederick III but died shortly after which left Wilhelm as Kaiser at the age of 29. Within two years of his succession, Wilhelm forced German statesman Otto von Bismarck’s resignation. He played a major part of what lead Germany, Austria, and Britain to turn against each other and cause WWI. In 1918, after America joined the war, Wilhelm was forced into exile in the Netherlands. He died on June 4, 1941.
