The Ravished Cannot Leave

As often happens here on "The Journey that Matters," I have forgotten things I have blogged about. So, my apologies, dear friends, if I am repeating myself.

For one of my term papers this semester, I am using one of my favorite books/series as a case study. (I love being in programs where studying something you love is OK and you don't have to pick a specific topic.) For those of you who don't know, Catherynne Valente's Fairyland series is my most recent favorite. Four of the five books have been published, and a prologue online. They are published as middle range children's books--although no stories are only applicable to a specific age range. I am looking at fairy tales and the construction of definitions of "woman." (This may or may not change in the next 8 weeks. We'll see.)

But, on a completely unrelated note, the reasons I love this series are numerous. Valente approaches storytelling in a very postmodern way--stories are embedded in stories; the narrator speaks to the reader; nothing is really as it seems; foreshadowing exists, but mostly in literary allusions; the hero and the villain are not opposites but very similar--the list goes on and on. Like all good stories, it is, like Shrek, an onion. Layers upon layers. Story within story. One that you can return to time and again and learn more and have more adventures. Like September, the reader is in Fairyland on a Persephone visa.

And that's just it. Stories occupy a special place in human culture, as I'm sure I've mentioned. We return to stories all the time. We cannot help it. Like Persephone, we are bound to return. We can spend time away, but eventually we return. We all want to be stories--to be the heroes we read about. To have adventures. Storytelling is central to humanity. Stories tell us who we are, who we want to be, who we can be. They tell us what waits in the woods, and what is in space, and how to slay the dragon, and what is in the wardrobe or down the rabbit hole.

As the Doctor says, "we're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?"

The Long Durée

I've been thinking about my training in history lately, especially the idea of the long durée. For most of the last six years, I have been surrounded by students of history--or at least, on some level, in the general vicinity of them. This is the first time in my post-high school education when I have not been in a history program. And I'm starting to see how that has affected my way of thinking.

Students of history learn how to see processes, causation, correlation. We learn how to read and synthesize information quickly and accurately. We learn to see more that names, dates, and places. History is more than memorization of facts. Many of these aspects are only possible because most historians, now, have an understanding of history from a perspective of the long durée (or the long term, in English).

The long durée originated in the interwar period in economic history. The idea is that history cannot be studied as simply events in the short term. In order to understand how and why things happen, it is necessary to look at more than just the immediate causes. Imagine a picture: you only see what is happening in frame. You miss what led to those events and what is happening outside of the frame. The same is true of history. A picture of events doesn't show more than the immediate causes.

For example, a friend once asked me about the causes of the First World War. I told her that it was more complicated than she realized. The causes of the First World War, if you look at the short term, are mostly concerned with the politics around the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But, in the long term, really go back to Napoleon, at least.

Coming back to the present, this idea affects how I think about the events we discuss in class. I know most of the other students think about things in some form of "long term" but I think it might mean something different to non-historians. In my race theory class, we talk about the socio-historical context. And everyone agrees that it is important when discussing current topics of race. But sometimes, my socio-historical context feels like it is much longer and deeper than others'. This is not a bad thing--we need diversity in experience or life would be boring. It's just that, sometimes, it's hard to remember that what I think of obvious context, or related ideas, is not that obvious. And by the time I remember and find a way to explain myself, the moment has passed. And I've been misinterpreted.

I'm not sure I had a point to this. It's just been something I've been thinking about. Studying history prepares you for so much, but it does not prepare you for changing disciplines. I can write and debate and explain ideas and draw connections and conclusions. But I cannot share the interconnected web of the past that I see as I am doing those things. And it's isolating.

[Other than this, life is going well. I really like my new job--a sign that things to tend to turn out for the best. Classes, overall, are going well. I'm working on my term papers now, so I'm sure I'll blog about them at some point. Thanks for reading what turned out to be more serious than I'd anticipated.]

Boston Pics!

Here it is folks! Pictures of the past 6 weeks or so! Finally.

This one is from late July when my dad and I came out to find me an apartment. This is Boston Harbor from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

My dad and I outside the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. It was 90+ degrees out and we'd walked a lot that day.

My dad and I again. This time, it was late August, when I moved out here. I forget where we were.

 The inside of the Old North Church. The door to the steeple is behind the organ.

Inside the Museum of Fine Arts is a room in the salon style--where all the paintings are hung without curator remarks. This one is a recent acquisition and it is possible to stand almost where the painter's perspective is from. It was my favorite piece in the half we saw.

Selfie time! There was a fire alarm while we were at the MFA, so we all had to go outside.

The outside of the Museum of Fine Arts.

This is probably my second favorite painting we saw at the MFA (excluding Georgia O'Keefe). The donkey is the best.

My mom was there too! The three of us took a picture while killing some time on one of the piers at Boston Harbor. We all look pretty good!

The people I'm subletting from have two cats. The cats and I have an odd relationship. I still have the box on my floor. When it was hot, cat A (this one) would come in and sleep for hours at a time.

The "Make Way For Ducklings" statues in the Public Garden. The book takes place in Boston. Apparently, I have read this book.

The Swan Boats in the Public Garden. They've been owned and operated by the same family for like 100 years or something. They go around the pond and you can see geese and ducks and swans and stuff. It was a nice day when I went with the people I'm living with.

This last one I took the other day after working a 630a-1230p shift at Peet's Coffee (my new job). I really enjoy it. Although I look tired here. My fashion sense is a little more hipster than I would prefer, but it's comfortable and coffeeshop-esque.

That was quite a few pictures! I'll be taking more as the year goes on! I hope all of you are doing well!