My mind is a pretty weird place.

English notes 10/22

The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale
Wife is actively trying to find her voice
- But she is forced almost necessarily to draw on all the preexisting discourses that shape her because that's the language she has at her disposal
- Has to give a sermon in defense of her idea of marriage

Turns around one of the fundamental tropes of antifeminism by accusing her husbands of lecturing her when she's drunk (it's all a lie, though).

Wife as proto-capitalist subject --> understands her life and position in the world as fundamentally economic and based on consumption

• She desires because she lacks, and she lacks because there's been a "cut" of some kind (symbolic castration)

Prologue, line 509: Middle English "glose" = gloss, interpret. Her fifth husband knows how to read her/interpret her, and that's why she's attracted to him

DAMN IT, IT IS SNOWING OUT. WE ARE DIGRESSING ABOUT THE SNOW. I AM WEARING LEGGINGS AND A CARDIGAN.
oh, no, wait. it's stopped. thank the lord.

but SERIOUSLY. there are still leaves on the trees.

okay, back to work.

but it was just so FUNNY. an entire room full of people got distracted and prof was like, 'what?' and someone said, 'snow,' and he went, 'oh, well, you know. new england.' and then told us how when he moved here from LA he thought snow was "volcanic ash falling from the sky." ha.

NO, IT IS STILL GOING. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. bad hanover. bad. snow is only pretty between thanksgiving and new year's. everyone knows that. except skiiers. but they're crazy. they strap sticks to their feet and whiz downhill at speeds that no unaided human should ever achieve. crazy. we shouldn't use them as our authorities on desirable weather.

i can practically hear this snow taunting me. "wee-hee, i'm a little snowflake, i'm here a month early! not for any real reason, since i'm not even going to bother to accumulate, i'm only here to freak you the hell out about how it's almost winter and another year is gone by and you're still broke, single, and lacking definitive direction in life! tee-frickin'-hee! aren't i adorable?!"

no, snow, i hate you. with your stupid mickey-mouse-y voice and the taunting way in which you swirl outside, as if you're circling me going, "c'mon, take your best shot. oh-oh-OHHHH, missed me, suckaaaa! i'm SNOW, BITCH. y'all can't touch this!"

whew. coast is clear. yes. a good long stare out the window has proven that the sky is barren. ha-HA, sky. HA. HA.


language of choice = attribution of sovereignty to old hag that rewards knight's fantasies ROGUE FLAKE SPOTTED. okay. we're good. we're good. that's right, RUN AWAY! i will break out my roommate's hair dryer and BLOW DRY you, fools! y'all will MELT!
--> tale consists of wife's fundamental fantasy: man listens to his wife, and then she gets to be young and beautiful again.

male fantasy rather than female fantasy? --> why does a wife who is both true and beautiful have to be a fantasy at all?

possible sighting: it was either a distant leaf falling or a close up snow flake. i'm gonna go with leaf for my own sanity.

?!?!?!?!

Conversations with Sleeping People

I'm back, reporting to you from the top bunk of the room I share with three other women. Yeah. Things are getting real up in here. As my example of things getting real, I was going to complain in great detail about how I never sleep straight through the night anymore, as my roommates all wake up at least an hour earlier than I do every day (the particularly ambitious among them waking up a full FOUR HOURS before me, at four-thirty in the morning), but I was just afforded a much better opportunity to demonstrate "things getting real," completely by chance. You probably won't find it as amusing as I do, but whatever.

I present to you the conversation I just had with Madison, who has been peacefully sleeping on the top bunk opposite mine for at least two hours. She inexplicably stirred, opened her eyes, glared around the room, and wrinkled her brow in some form of half-asleep disdain, possibly (understandably) for my table lamp, which actually performs well beyond the call of duty and lights the entire room rather than just the immediately surrounding area. I happen to like this, as it's placed at the foot of my bed. (Top bunk sort of limits your options in terms of bedside table placement, and my "bedside table" is a bookshelf stacked on top of my desk. Yes, I do have to climb over my desk in order to hoist myself up onto the ladder to my bed. But I digress.) I have a feeling my roommates don't like my super-bright lamp as much as I do, especially when it's on as they're trying to sleep.

Anyway, Madison woke up, cast a bewildered and disparaging look around the room, then made eye contact with me. We then proceeded to have the following exchange.

Me: What's the matter?
Madison (long pause): Weird.
Me: ...
Madison (repositioning her blankets): Ouch.
Me: What's the matter?
Madison: What?
Me: You said "weird."
Madison: Yeah.

That was it. End of conversation.

And this, I think, is the most amusing part of things getting real. When you share a room with other people, the best part is probably the half-asleep (or fully asleep) conversations that just have a way of occurring. Sometimes they're variations on a theme; I'm fairly certain Madison and I have had several versions of the following exchange as I walk into the room when she's already asleep.

Madison: Hey, baby.
Me: Go back to sleep.
Madison: Okay.

And she always immediately just lies back down and goes to sleep. Oh, that I could wield that kind of power over the fully conscious. Creepy? Perhaps. Useful? Most definitely.

I can't say as I'm innocent of having ridiculous half-asleep conversations. I had this one with Michelle last night at approximately 2:47 am, at which point I had been asleep for roughly two hours.

Me: Two-forty-seven.
Michelle: Yeah, I just got home.
Me: Two-forty-seven.
Michelle: Yes, it's two-forty-seven.
Me: Hm. Hmmmm.
Michelle: ...
Me: Bathroom.

I then proceeded to walk to the bathroom, take care of business, and return to bed. Michelle has enjoyed telling this story to our roommates, casting me in the role of Crazy Sleep Talker, but I maintain that everything I said made perfect sense, so long as you were in my head. Because although I only said a few words, the inner monologue filling in the spaces went something like this:

"What? Someone just got home. What time is it? I can't see a damn thing without my glasses. I could just put them on, but they're all the way down at the foot of my bed. No, I can kind of see Madison's alarm clock from here. What does that say? If I really squint, it looks like two-forty-seven. Oh, okay. It definitely says two-forty-seven. Now, wait, why am I still awake? Hm. Well, Michelle coming in woke me up, but why haven't I fallen back asleep yet? Hmmmm. Oh. I need to use the bathroom. That's it. Okay."

See? It makes total sense.

And now I really need to get myself to sleep for real, as I am exhausted from a busy week, I have a busy weekend ahead of me, and it is almost 1:30 in the morning and I want to be up at 9:30. So I'm off to bed, but I will leave you with this quote from two drunk girls walking on Mass Row, aka the pedestrian street outside my window, for those of you not familiar with my lovely college campus. (And in case you non-Dartmouth folks were wondering: "Foco" = "Food Court.")

"WE'RE GOING TO FOCO! ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO FOCO?"
"You guys, I don't need to eat!!!"