Can't sleep, pumped up from last night's and this night's Coke. And as I have said time and again, the boon and bane of these zombified nights is that it gets a person to thinking. And when things get me to thinking, I get to writing.
Oh well. To quote the vegan zombie: GRAAAAIINSSS... (munch on a granola bar)
- Funny how reading a piece for the second or third time rarely gives you the exact same impressions as the first, especially when you're going through a piece that's so prone to multiple interpretations. Take the Salvador Lopez piece Literature and Society, for example: read the piece first during fourth year, as something I was hoping I could glean quotable thesis stuff from. First reading gave me the same impression most probably get with their first skimming: writing must be done with the improvement of our society in mind.
Discussed the essay with my fourth year students as part of their World Literature curriculum, which meant I had to read it again. Second reading gives more elemental results: when you write (and by write, I don't mean the stuff that you put in your journal, the stuff you don't really want others to read), keep in mind that people can and will read it, whether it is mushy poetry or some heated exhortation against a present evil in society. Whether it will relate to them and whether they will appreciate what is written, though, will be another matter. Might as well, then, give them something to look relate to, so that in your own little way, you've sort of contributed to somebody else's learning, and to the overall progress of the human race as well. Simply put: writing for yourself with the intention of being read will probably cave into itself, so might as well write with others (and what is society but a bunch of Others, colonialistically speaking?) in mind.
- Sometimes, I feel like I'm better as student than as a teacher, which is probably why I like treating my students as more like classmates I simply have to deliver a report to. Besides, there are few things in life that are better than a class where learning doesn't exactly feel like learning, right? (I can hear you nodding, BACA batchmates.) Hence, perhaps, my lack of drive to constantly quiz my students on what they have or have not learned from my prattle. (Sucks that there's a minimum required number of quiz points per semester, else I'd simply have asked for an arseload of papers instead.) Oh well, there's still my dreams of a degree in Law, as far as studying is concerned. Guess I'd sometimes rather be soaking up all the information than dishing it out, I guess.
Not to say that I don't like teaching, though. There is, after all, nothing quite like the flow of chi, ideas and information through an active classroom, an exchange of energy from listener to speaker and vice versa equaling those mentioned in those New Age pseudo-philosophies. Problem comes only when chi is blocked, usually by somebody failing to read the materials that are to be talked about.
- I miss writing. The creative sort of writing, that is, and not the sort you need for quizzing 3rd Grade students on things like figures of speech. Rocket Kapre's got submissions for some Filipino fiction anthology of sorts by the end of the month, and I've got a story which just needs revisions (and more pages to make it to the word count minimum) in line. Hope I can at least start getting it up to speed this week. Bulols, after all, can only say so much.
- Weird that I had a headache just a few hours ago, and my head's as clear as a field in Quezon right now. Guess my body misses the occasional zombie night as well.
Calliope! Clio! Erato! Polyhymnia! Thalia! GRAAAAARRRGGGHHH!
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