am reading mcmurty's PARADISE right now. travel writing, set on the author's journey around the marquesan islands (?), makes connections between life on the islands and life in rural texas. commercialism. capitalism. nationalism. communities. lack of a home. very modernist voice.
do people understand each other better if they do not speak the same language or merely speak bits of each other's native language? if you can exist in that environment, it would seem so--you're naturally a more patient, perceptive, empathetic person, and therefore a better communicator.
i got along with many of my students because i was willing to wade through a thought with them.
thought of baudrillard the other day. simulacrum: a copy of a copy. insists that what it is imitating is a reality, when it is not.
x = reality.
x1 = facsimile of x
x2 = facsimile of x1
x2 shows that x1 is not x?
disjuncture. miscommunication. lost meaning. x2 is very false, is a copy of something not x in the first place. disney world mimics a fantasy land to try to prove to us that we live in a real world. i am not remembering this correctly, probably.
or something like that.
postmodernism makes my brain bleed.
i'll have to re-read him. especially about the gulf war and how it did not happen.
what else. also reading ABSOLOM ABSOLOM by faulkner. that is also making my brain bleed. i can only read a paragraph at a time, which is actually three to five pages. damn long paragraphs. he was drinking some fine alcohol at the time, so i guess he cannot be blamed. it's the gin's fault.