10 a.m.
Stayed up far too late and yet made it on time to the Keynote.
The speaker is a former prof of mine. The scope of her interests overlaps with mine as indicated by the presentation title.
Crossing the Borders of Self
is consonant with delighted joy. So I am poorly caffeinated, present and here online.
She will make a fine point about the quotidian self and how aggravating it can be, and then suggests the science is pantheistic, which is bollocks.
‘We escape through writing from the monkey mind self, and yet the narrative can tell us about that small self; writing enlarges us.’
Now we’re off on a white privilege tangent. Wot. No. ‘How dare you’. All the things she daren’t and now we’re headed off to what she might dare. Kids books and fantasy. Through them we can cross the border. This is true but trivial? She is a Phoenixian and that makes some sense, yet she hates that town and that does too.
This is amounting to nothing more than a self-apologia for the self-charged crime of appropriation and I hope she goes somewhere more interesting soon or I’m going for coffee.
Crossing the border in her view is the same as a crime, but it is justified by an altruistic compulsion. Oh. Okay. And then appropriation of the term metafiction, which makes me feel, uh, violated and triggered. Finally she will mention that she is rich, and I think to myself that I probably knew that already, and in honesty it’s part of what is putting me off.
That’s enough.
***
There was indeed an 11:30 session but I missed it for logistical reasons and maybe then magical ones too. I was in the truck so I drove around a while. Then I stopped at the visitor center because it’s important to keep up.
On the racks of tourist lit, there was a magazine style publication simply called:
San Vicente de la Cienega
So I asked the docentish lady–San Vicente is the name of that creek next to this building, and cienega is marsh; but what does this whole italicized construction mean?
She couldn’t help me there, but I got back to the hotel wifi and answered it for myself. SV de la C was what the Spanish called this place before the pale miners came. I never knew that before, and I am pleased to know it now.
Now I guess all I need to know is what the Apache called it, even before that.
And by the way, they didn’t call themselves Apache of course. Not then. If I recall correctly, ‘apache’ is the Navajo (excuse me, Dine’) word for enemy.
Names interest me greatly.
***
1:30 … UTEP and the Mustangs of MAIS
Unremarkable for the most part, except we got to hang out with Daniel from the festival four years ago. He doesn’t know who I am, but he almost remembered.
3 PM … Writing, and over there, the Occult too
This was great. Mostly I’m going to tear it off into it’s own post from the notes sometime soon. The key phrase: Self-Possession. A key takeaway: When you’re scared in that Halloween way, it’s not always pleasant, and yet … You Are Very Present.
4:30 … A round table
Perhaps it is our job to be the voice of the dispossessed, or a teller of truths in-spite-of. Is it a responsibility, as Sartre said, to write literature with commitment? (Leaving aside the question of whether to write Literature or not.)
My answer is that politics, in writing, is Inescapable.
Also, I told the young academic guy that the answer to his question was that when he dropped the pregnant burden of his manuscript, he would become the man without a burden. He was suitably bewildered.
In the end I was left champing to Just Be That Writer Now.
Six p.m.
There is a final grouping in the Global Resource Center again, and again we come full circle to the political border and to journalists.
A phrase leapt out at me.
Borders we create for ourselves in our minds.
I’ve victimized myself thus, but I feel a new day dawning.