Grad School Laughs: Hysterical Context

April Fools!
We Thought We Were Very Funny!

Finding Humor in the Situation

Wolf Family of Litterateurs

For more ~ seriously ~ on Virginia Woolf,
see my recent post ~ "Who's Afraid? Fear Not!"
@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Virginia Woolfpack

Rest in Peace Virginia Woolf

"Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully
in what is commonly thought big than
in what is commonly thought small. . . .
Down, down into the midst of ordinary things."

1902 & 1927


Rest in Peace Virginia Woolf:
25 January 1882 ~ 28 March 1941

See more on facebook
and more on my Fortnightly Post:
~ March 28 ~ Who's Afraid? Fear Not! ~

Google Doodle Celebration on YouTube

The Fire Was Hot Within Her

Jane Gallop's assertion that the burden of sexual difference is borne by women alone is a concept aptly illustrated by Virginia Woolf's well - known image of Judith Shakespeare. Judith, trapped by her gender, is denied the free use of her limbs and her talent; her brother Will is the one whose "incandescent, unimpeded" work has risen "to the universal human, beyond gender" :

" . . . Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her . . . She died young - alas, she never wrote a word. . . . Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word . . . still lives . . . in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. . . . For my belief is that if we live another century or so - I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves . . . if we face the fact . . . that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality [i.e., "the universal human, beyond gender"] and not only to the word of men and women [the world of "sexual difference"], then . . . the dead poet who was Shakespeare's [imaginary] sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. . . . she would come if we worked for her, and so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while" (118).

concluding paragraph
from A Room of One's Own
by Virginia Woolf
******************
You can read more about Virginia Woolf,
body image, and gender bias on my current post

~ "Room, Board, and Body" ~

@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

Plus related posts on
KITTI'S LIST

Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 1
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 2
A Girl and Her Book

And previously on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
Throwback Letter to Editor
Too Beautiful to Go on a Diet
Weighing In
The Student Body in the Text

P.S.
Favorite Room of One's Own quotation:
" . . . could she have freed her mind from hate and fear
and not heaped it with bitterness and resentment,
the fire was hot within her" (63).

Day of Darkness

On such a dark day,
I am reminded of these cautionary watchwords from Virginia Woolf,
spoken by two of her best - known characters, two distraught mothers:

"There was no treachery too base
for the world to commit;
she knew that."

~ Mrs. Ramsay ~
from To The Lighthouse, 98

"She always had the feeling
that it was very, very dangerous
to live even one day."

~ Mrs. Dalloway ~
from Mrs. Dalloway, 11

**********************

and this sad stanza from one of my all - time favorite Christmas songs:

"And in despair I bowed my head:
'There is no peace on earth,' I said;
'For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!'"

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
from "I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day"

**********************

One of the best ever antidotes to cynicism are these
words of wisdom from dear, good, beautiful Anne Frank:
"It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again."

**********************

Equally hopeful are these closing lines from "The Desiderata":

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be careful.
Strive to be happy."

Pastel December Sky
Or, as my friend Diane says, Cotton Candy Trees

See also
"Real Memorial Day"

Cows Absorbing Moisture

Cows in the Autumn Catskills, 1865
by Scottish - American Artist ~ William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

Current Post On
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
"To Live Even One Day"
There are so many things to say about Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's elegant interior novel of one day -- plus flashbacks -- in the life of Clarissa Parry Dalloway. I decided to start with one of my sister Peg's favorite passages:

" 'Dear Sir Harry!' she [Clarissa] said, going up to the fine fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, 'the Approach of the Stranger' --all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools)" (266).

Peg wrote: "I just love the thought of such a banal subject as cows standing around in ponds at sunset 'absorbing moisture.' Still makes me smile."

Cows WateringSeems that Woolf may have had artist William M. Hart in mind
when she created the character of Sir Harry.
I told Peg at the time that her observation about the cow painting was perfect for my Quotidian blog because she expresses so well the thought that the cows are quotidian! Sir Harry keeps us grounded -- maybe in a boring way, but also in a good way!

A week or so after my Fortnightly post about Mrs. Dalloway, Sir Harry, and the cow paintings, Peg had one of those "connection and coincidence" moments that my blogs are all about! Synchronicity!

She wrote to say: "I opened The Frederick [MD] News-Post this morning [Friday, 22 June] and on the front page they had Sir Harry's cows (see below). I couldn't believe the pictures when I first saw it after the discussions I've had this week with you about Mrs. Dalloway. Don't the cows in this picture perfectly exemplify cattle standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture?"


YES THEY DO!

For more on William M. Hart and Virginia Woolf
see my essay "To Live Even One Day"
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Even One Day

New Post for the 14th on
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
"To Live Even One Day"

Vanessa Redgrave as Clarissa Dalloway
In the movie Mrs. Dalloway,
based on the novel by Virginia Woolf

"It was Clarissa!"
Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughan
In the movie of The Hours,
based on the novel by Michael Cunningham

"She was for the party!"
For more on these novels and movies,
see today's Fortnightly Post
"To Live Even One Day"
and from last month
"Life -- A Little Strip of Time"

P.S. I want to do this: Mrs. Dalloway Walking Tour

Mrs. Ramsay

New Post for the 14th on

The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

"Life -- A Little Strip of Time"
Tablescape by Katy Bunder

For Mother's Day, I thought I would write about one of the most steadfast mothers in modern British fiction, Mrs. Ramsay from Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf had no children, but Mrs. Ramsay has eight; and Woolf intuitively fills Mrs. Ramsay's head and the first half of the novel with touching motherly insights.

Mrs. Ramsay is intuitive and creative, exhibiting love and care and motherly concern. She is filled with anxiety on her children's behalf, but also with pride. Fearing that the children are about to erupt in laughter over some private joke at dinner, she says to them -- by way of maintaining order and altering the dinner table dynamic: " 'Light the candles' " (145). Standing down the length of the table and illuminating an elaborate centerpiece designed by Rose, the tall candles number eight, just as Mrs. Ramsay's children do.
Happy Mother's Day!
Tablescape by Tina McCartney

Quinton Duval

Take a moment to scan the above header and the QUOTIDIAN column to the right, and you will see that this blog is inspired by three governing epigrams:

Thornton Wilder's "every, every minute"
Virginia Woolf's "what is commonly thought small"
Quinton Duval's "black bread of day after day."

[Click here for further explication and explanation
of why I chose these passages: "What's the Big Idea?"]

The Quotidian Kit has been up and running for a year now, and I have yet to share with you the entire text of Duval's poem. Time to rectify that omission:

Day After Day

Each of us, alone on the way,
picks up the grip of his life
and goes.

Mama says the stars took us home,
all the porch lights up there
at night around the body of the moon.
Black stars that are invisible
are there too.

The coffee cools down. The car changes
gears in the garage and
the pen sleeps with the paper
on the white tablecloth.

When it is like this, you go
out and cut the roses back.
Clip until the thorns turn into the bush.

The car knows to stay in neutral
a little longer.
The big ideas huddle
in the jar together. You spread them
over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them.

Quinton Duval, November 6, 1948 - May 10, 2010
American poet and teacher

I have loved this poem since my first semester of college at Northeast Missouri State University (aka Truman). I discovered it in a literary magazine The Chariton Review (Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1975) that I was assigned to read in Creative Writing. Don't ask me how I ended up in that class, the only Freshman, with a roomful of Juniors & Seniors. My guess -- some casual admissions officer put my name on the roster after seeing "Creative Writing" on my high school transcript. But of course this class was much more advanced than that, more like a writers' workshop. It was daunting but I stuck with it. I'm not so sure that I wrote anything substantial, too young really, but I do remember everything we read, many unforgettable stories and poems.

As the above dates indicate, Mr. Duval died only a few weeks ago, though I did not realize this until I googled his name just this morning to see what else of interest I might learn about the author of one of my favorite poems. You may recall that I had a similar experience last spring (2009) when I googled the name of a former professor, Jim Thomas, only to learn of his death the week before. Funny how that happens, just a little tap on your shoulder from the Universe.

There were a number of good poets at Northeast during my time there: Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, Jim Thomas. Lucky for me, I was able to take classes with each of them.

P.S.
Jim Barnes wrote the following for Andy, who died young:

Autobiography, Chapter 19: For Andrew Grossbardt, In Memoriam

Heading East Out of Rock Springs
for Andrew Grossbardt, long gone

What's the Big Idea?

The big ideas huddle in the jar together.
You spread them over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them. ~Quinton Duval
If you are a newcomer to "The Quotidian Kit," what I hope you will discover about this blog is how well it embodies the quotations above. When Emily asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?" I want the answer to be "Yes, Kitti Carriker does!"


I picked the above photo, taken in Chicago by my friend Dagmar, because the city looks to me like a big, rounded jar where big ideas might huddle, along with the miniaturized images of me and my friends. I like to think of my blog as "the plain brown bread of day after day," and if I can, I'm going to pull some of the big ideas out of that existentialist jar and spread them on the bread for you to savor. I want these entries to prove the truth of Virginia Woolf's observation that indeed life does exist fully in what is common, in what is small, and "in what is commonly thought small."

So, every other day or so, I post my observations, large and small, ideas that crop up in the course of any given day. In addition, I occasionally feature blogs run by friends, various cross references and links that you may find of interest, announcements of community events, news about my family, favorite poems -- old and new, seasonal pictures and quotations, and photos of my adorable cats (sorry, can't resist!).

(Thanks to my nephew Hans for this one!)
In the right-hand column (-> over there -> and continue strolling down) you can see a permanent list of the many inspiring one - liners and memorable quotations that I have collected over the years. I hope you will find a few there that will stick in your mind as they have stuck in mine.

On "The Quotidian," I also take the opportunity to print excerpts from my two lengthier blogs, in order to keep you informed of what is going on there. You can reach either of these sites by clicking on the big "CARRIKER" signs that you see to the right ( <- over and scroll up).

1. "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker": my literary blog of connection and coincidence. If you scroll down to Monday's post, "Joy Luck," you'll see that it announces the most recent Fortnightly entry (these appear every couple of weeks, thus "fortnightly," i.e., every fourteen days -- on the 14th of the month & then again on the 28th).

Click Here to find out more about "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker."

2. "Kitti's List" : my book blog, a running log, with commentary of my past and current reading. The titles are organized primarily by the date of reading but also somewhat thematically.

If you are interested in reading previous "Quotidian" posts, you may continue scrolling down, reading backward in time until you eventually reach "older posts," where you can click for even more. Or you can go the "Blog Archive" in the left - hand column. Click on the black arrows for a list of months, then click on the name of each month for that month's posts. You will find many, starting in June 2009.

Please read, enjoy, follow & comment! Thanks!

Quotidian: Think Small

quo⋅tid⋅i⋅an
1. daily: a quotidian report.
2. usual or customary; everyday: quotidian needs.
3. ordinary; commonplace
4. paintings of no more than quotidian artistry.
5. something recurring daily.
6. everyday, mundane, routine, unremarkable, workaday

My goal here, similar to my other blogs (www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com & www.kittislist.blogspot.com), will be to draw connections between daily life and literature of all genres (my favorite novels, haiku, sonnets, song lyrics, contemporary poetry, self - help, and so forth), always looking for the intersection of the quotidian and the artistic, complete with visuals, intertwining the two threads until a pattern emerges from the chaos. As Virginia Woolf said, "Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."