alice in wonderland and guy debord

i read alice in wonderland when i was twelve, then proceeding to fly through everything carroll ever wrote with an intense (and correct, as it turns out) belief that things would only get weirder. this fortuitous merging of lewis carroll weirdness with a current architectural history class theme actually seems to normalize carroll's story . . . as much as would be possible.

i must admit that the bit with the queen of hearts might actually be a more appropriate dubbing opportunity. of course, i may believe this simply because i used to have nightmares about the queen chasing me through the hedge labyrinth, only to trap me in a deadend. falling down a rabbithole ensued. dérive!

irrational fears

i often wonder where my irrational fears come from. this is pertinent to my first post because i have an absolutely irrational fear (and hatred, as fear and hatred are frequently doled out in tandem) of the word "blog." it's an unnecessarily ugly word, a monosyllabic grunt that makes me cringe a little each time i hear or think it. i try to avoid hearing or thinking it. in a sense, then, this new project is one small, babystep attempt to conquer my fear of fat, squat words that i immediately connect to fat, squat ideas, and possibly fat, squat people, lit up like solitary lightbulbs and ponderously banging out posts in the middle of the night, when normal people are sleeping. this image is, of course, a stupid opinion of something that has become ubiquitous. I approach bloggers like bigots approach minority groups. the ones i know are exceptions. inventive people with inventive minds and wittiness not evidenced elsewhere in the - brace yourself for another truly awful word - blogosphere. so total immersion is the only path to an even cursory understanding of what in heavens this vast network of words (and people, i suppose) really is. off i go!

i'm going to use this blog to talk about things i like . . . and i like most everything. this is the standard first line for a first post, i guess. but as a lifer student, i don't get to write about most of these things that interest me, since the range of potential paper topics narrows with every year you spend in academe. this blog is me cheating.

i often reveal something strange about myself that no one else knows when i meet a new person. i've told people that i still hold my nose when i swim because i'm terrified of drowning. i've told people that i became obsessed with stanley kubrick and spent an entire summer writing him (meaning me) a lengthy letter about camera angles and lighting in a clockwork orange when i was a freshman in high school. i've told people that, for an entire year of my childhood, i pretended i was a spy and had a number of hide-outs around my house, equipped with flashlights, fresh batteries, ritz crackers, and books about spys and spying. this was the same year i learned how to hollow out a book to create a secret box/book in which to hide valuables and secrets and sensitive material. i never had any of these things, but i made several bookboxes, so i filled a number of them with my extensive collection of neat buttons, as well as various macaroni and cheese recipes.

so, as if with a new friend, i will now tell you that i am afraid of my own teeth. teeth are mysterious - they appear impossible to injure. little bastions of enamel. but they have nerves inside of them. they are utterly freakish things that reside inside your mouth and they will turn against you at any moment.

i also give you my favorite photograph of late - from my admittedly strange collection of people posing with vacuum cleaners. i wonder if captain magic (as i refer to him) is still around and, if so, whether he remembers this photograph or the circumstances under which someone felt impelled to take it. the captain doesn't seem weirded out by this pose, nor does he seem particularly excited by the chance to pose with a cleaning appliance in what is probably a halloween costume. i'll bet his childhood was not normal. i wonder if he was also afraid of his own teeth.