Hello faithful readers! Apologies for the lack of posting. Last Friday I finished my dissertation, packed up, and within 24 hours I was in Berlin. Things have been busy here and unfortunately I do not yet have internet at home. As soon as I do, expect frequent updates!
During our trip to Croatia, Sasha and I amused ourselves with a number of word-based games, such as thinking of multicultural ways to give our names (Maria de la Gruending, Sasha bin Baskerville), and of coming up with as many words as we could that include “cock”. We must have fished out at least two dozen, from “shuttlecock” to “cockcombe”, but one that sticks out, probably because we subsequently used it as an insult, was “cockswain“. As you know, this is the gentleman in charge of a ship and all its seamen.
As I mentioned in a previous post, whoever planned the University of Sussex campus must have fancied him/herself some sort of visionary. I suppose that when the university opened in 1964 it was on the cutting edge, challenging accepted norms and generally shaking things up. After all, why embrace the past, with its traditions and establishments, when you could make a statement? So instead of the traditional beauty of a Cambridge, we at Sussex have buildings shaped like objects.
Take for instance, Arts A, whose arch is shaped like a tuning fork. Never mind that inside there are two large lecture theatres that have nothing to do with music.
The size of the building-objects must not be according to a set scale, because directly across from this piece of work we have a building of the same size that is a camera, and not one of your slimmed down digitals – I have never actually seen a camera like this but I suppose it to be one of those clunky ’60s era ones.
Again, no correlation with subject matter – this building is mostly student union offices. It also has a moat system that runs around it collecting drain water, garbage, and providing a dream spawning ground for any kind of pest. I should mention that this building won a design award in the 1960s, presumably the same one that the designers of Carleton’s Loeb Building were awarded. Amazing – the only building I’ve ever been in where you could be at the office with the right number on the door and still be at the wrong office.
But if you like buildings that look like objects, you’ll love buildings that look like objects … from above! That’s right, alongside the aforepictured buildings are others whose shapes only become clear for those of you with light aircrafts and nothing better to do. If you were to soar over the library, you would see not the nondescript building we see from below, but an open book.
And there’s the Meeting House, which is the roll of film to Falmer House’s camera, visible principally from above, apparently. Although, in defense of the Meeting House, it is beautiful inside. The skylight has stained glass in it and whether this was intentional or not, in the spring around Easter the light’s angle through the glass shines perfectly on the alter. And, in defense of the whole campus, the greenery, ubiquitous trees and dive-bombing seagulls provide ample distraction from the flaws of the buildings.
I just occurred to me that although I’ve been working on my thesis since April, I have not yet shared any details with my readers. In brief (if that’s possible), I’m writing about the contiguity between two different theories in political philosophy: political action and the state of exception. Political action is basically Hannah Arendt’s theory but I’m also working in the dreaded Habermas – the idea is that politics is actually about inter-subjective discourse that happens when people come together in a particular moment, like right after a revolution, when things are up for grabs. The state of exception is something that Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben have written on – basically a theory regarding the relationship between power and the law that begins with the premise that if the law can be overridden in a state of emergency, isn’t it the case that there is always something more powerful than law? I am trying to build an argument saying that these two theories come together as “constituent power”, a concept from legal theory. If this seems like a little much, and it often is for me, I can explain it much more simply:
A few days ago, my eyes red from starting at the computer too long and my mind jumpy from too much coffee, I suddenly felt that I had come to a deep understanding of how to integrate my ideas. The thoughts were coming so fast that I grabbed a piece of paper and tried to just draw them so I would remember them all. However, by the time I have finished the sovereign’s crown I had totally forgotten what it was that I was supposed to be drawing and I now doubt that I in fact had an epiphany at all. In any case, this is more or less the idea I’m working with – pretty brilliant eh?
For the last 11 months my home has been 48 Brighthelm, part of a twoplex on the top of a hill in possibly the most confusing housing complex ever designed. (My room is the topmost window on the left).
I say confusing because every building of the 30 odd ones in this area are basically identical and all the stairwells and plant-life look the same, so even after living here all this time I still manage to get confused about where I live. To add to this, the number system of these houses must have been designed by the same genius who did most of the rest of the Sussex campus, someone with either shamanic powers or a helicopter. The numbers of the houses are in sequence only if you consider spiral formations a sequence. I’m in #48; the other side of our twoplex is #36. If you keep going in that direction you come across numbers from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Likewise if you go in the other direction. If you were coming in the from the air and had a map of the houses, you might be able to sort this out, but when you’re on the ground you don’t have a chance. We often come across wayward pizza delivery men who have been lost for weeks in the maze. More on bizarro Sussex planning in a later post.
My house has been a source of comfort and of frustration this year. Frustration was rife in the winter months, because like most British houses, this one has a nonsensical heating system. To save on energy you only run it a few hours a day, but all gains made for heating are lost because of the single glazed windows and malfunctioning doors. To give you an idea – we haven’t been able to completely close the door in our kitchen for months, and whenever the wind is strong, the curtains in my room billow even though the windows are shut.
Another source of frustration, for me at least, has been the messiness of the whole place. Cleaners come in once a week and do a good clean of the kitchen and bathrooms, but unless I continually pick up after some of the other slobs in the house, the place goes to the dogs. When I came back from five days in France, this was the kitchen that awaited me:
The garbage had piled up, no one bought new dish sponges, and there was week-old food everywhere. How can these pigs live like this? The scary thing is that everyone else seems to think that our house is pretty clean, with the exception of Shekhar. With only a short period of time left and no will to keep tidying, the two of us have been reduced to writing haikus about the grossness of the kitchen and sticking them on the fridge. No one seems to have got the message. I hesitate to generalize what I have seen in my house to British society at large … but what the hell, caution to the wind: the English are not a tidy people. My house is pretty good compared to others full of Brits, but filthy compared to every place that has a strong contingent of international students. If I were going to be living here longer than a year, this would really piss me off. As it is I’ve been willing to do extra work along the house so long as I can use it to justify my belief in inherent Canadian superiority over its motherland.
Frustrations aside, good old 48 has been not just my house but my home, as in more than a place where I sleep. I have got really used to Wednesday night movies with Robin, watching the Daily Show and solving crosswords with Skekhar (well, he does more of the solving than I do – I’m more of a crossword cheerleader) and the occasional camaraderie of the kitchen. In fact, when I was in France I kind of missed the homestead, and I suspect I’ll miss it once I leave next week.
You know all those little things that you think there should be words for? There are words for them.
For example, when you flick someone with a finger snapped from the end of thumb, you are actually filliping that person. Maybe you already knew about that, though. My Scrabble partner and fellow grad student Maya played it in a game a few weeks ago, to my amazement. She even knew the other definition of the word fillip: to give a boost to. I’m playing a game with this dynamo tomorrow morning, which will be accompanied by mimosas and pancakes (to celebrate/despair of the fact that we have one week left) – wish me luck.
Readers, you haven’t been giving me the comments I deserve. I appreciate the remarks on photos and advice on school-related matters but really, couldn’t you come up with something a bit more passionate? I think my material is relatively interesting and my writing somewhat snappy. Shekhar, on the other hand, writes about frigging micro-finance on his blog Fractured/Earth and this is the comment he gets:
“How I wish I could write like you. And Fractured Earth seems to me to be an expression for all the strange turmoil, churning, agony I feel inside but cannot express for the life of me.”
He figured the commenter must have been constipated. Maybe so, but regardless I am one jealous blogger.
Here’s a recent e-mail from my flatmate and friend Shekhar to our friend Maya:
maya,
the gruending and i had another of our frequent, brilliant ideas.
we are going to give each other a list of five words to be
incorporated into our dissertations. the winner, if not for managing
to use all five, then for the most delightful usage, shall get a pint
of bitter, or a glass of wine, or something similarly liquidy.
hmmmm. liquidy. maria, i think i have one word for you already.
are you game? wanna join?
shekhar
As you can see, we’re playing dangerous games, although inserting five odd words into my dissertation is likely less dangerous than failing to come up with the required 20,000 words in the first place …
I’ll let you know which words are selected by each participating party. I’m tempted just to use my word of the week list but I think I can be more creative than that. Ideas would be appreciated.
————————————
UPDATE
Shekhar’s words for me:
battleship
potentate
china
mushroom, and…
blanket
My words for Shekhar:
heavenly
striped
lancet
badger (the verb)
snack
Have I mentioned yet that I live in a really nice place? Despite the fact that the “summer” here has mostly consisted of 15 degree weather (excluding a huge heatwave in April) there are some beautiful days here in the South of England with no too-humid-to-sleep nights or annoying bugs. Those beautiful days have a happy knack of happening when I have a reason to be outside, such as Anna’s visit in early July. We had a grand time gamboling around the English countryside. We agreed that the highlight of the trip was our hike in Seven Sisters’ Park.
The little lambies were out and about and not at all camera shy.
The Seven Sisters are a series of white chalk cliffs that seem to cut the pasture on a whim. I think we did five of the seven before we wussed out and stopped for a beer. Of course we managed to miss the last bus of the day and had to share a cab with some people then wait for an hour in a bus shelter. We played Scrabble.
All and all a beautiful day and one which I would repeat many times if I were staying in this part of the world. As it is though I’ll just be in these parts another two weeks, at which point I will hand in my dissertation [squeak of despair] and then make haste to Berlin where I start German classes at the Goethe Institut on the 3rd of September.
