Class Notes 2/24

Homework: Basically, just read everyone's blog! before Friday. tomorrow. And we should be reading Virginia Woolf


So here's the plan with our memorization of the Four Quartets, in addition to the original plan of recitation at the end of the semester.......Dr. Michael Sexson's two classes (Capstone and Emergent Lit) are going to meet with Dr. Lynda Sexson's two classes (Mystics and Rel. & Science). So there will be a recitation of lines from Joyce, Dante, Eliot, and Heraclitus. I think this is going to be filmed........and edited and if anything put on youtube for fun. Dr. Lynda Sexson was talking about people making masks if they wanted.....(artistic handmade relevant masks) for dramatic effect or some dramatic makeup. Anyway, fun stuff. It isn't any extra work because we are supposed to have it all memorized anyway.

Dante: four levels of reading something.........
Literal
Allegorical
Moral
Anagogic, mystical

Dr. Sexson listed off blogs with snippets telling us to read them, he listed almost everyone, so just get to reading everyone's blogs.

Walter Pater
stylist
distinct writing, embodies both dark & light epiphanies
appropriate his last name is Pater.....which means father.....father of the epiphany


Taylor's blog, asking her students about something they didn't know that in them....asking outside the realm of convention....
trying to get intellectually excited


do not condescend to people......what is reading readiness all about?

Dr. Sexson says just start with the best!


Helena's blog also discusses Walter Pater, "the Dead" and Gabriel.....same as Taylor's......they were on the same brainwave...cool


capable imagination...stolen from Wallace Stevens


Are we all one of the living dead???
Dr. Sexson answer: yes
Taylor's answer: no!


None of us are optimally responsive to the forces and rhythms of the universe...we need to rise to the occasion....Lisa of the Little Legs says......Just do it......and so does Nike


Jennie Lynn's blog talks about the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism....and more (AND her birthday is today, Feb. 25, Happy Birthday Jennie Lynn!) Right Action in Eightfold path.


Renaissance: Mayflies have 24 hours to live....need to mate....must have some good pick up lines.....why go to bed before the day is over if you only have one day? just here to be here?


we only have so many moments.....so many heartbeats.....so many pulses


people may make more money....but they aren't living

Eliot:
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.

last 5 minutes of class spent on the last 3 paragraphs of Walter Pater's Renaissance..."How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?"