when I am king!

First day of school. My first class was absolutely phenomenal. 19th Century American Lit with Professor Paul Downes. I was sitting in the corner with a 2nd year student - and I've had class with Downes before so I was anticipating him walking into the room for a reason. He's wiry, has the perfect sprinkling of grey in his black boyish hair, and dresses well - sort of like a late 80's to early 90's British hybrid of punk/Radiohead, but academically. It works for him. Then he opens his mouth...my remark to 2nd year student "And cue all the red blooded females in the class falling in love". I like to think I'm a wit.

Anyhow I really wanted to get into something that really annoyed me during the class. Well it was less annoying and more just "what happened?". We're starting the class off with the Declaration of Independence, and today we looked at photocopies of the pages of an actual US passport. Some part of my brain kept telling me that there was something illicit about that, probably because I'm crazy. Anyway the overarching theme was this harkening back to the frontier and symbols of Freedom such as the bald eagle. Downes pointed out the irony that the bird almost went extinct, that was very enjoyable. The images broke down a bit like this: bald eagle/mountains, Mount Rushmore, the west coast/train, the midwest/man ploughing, cowboys, Statue of Liberty, a totem pole, a ship, and a satellite. Very very frontier, and new in depiction.

So...usually when I'm in a class where I feel very engaged a I get this build up in my chest and it becomes this explosive thing that just has to come out otherwise I might spontaneously combust. I like participating. Can you tell?

I forget what line of questioning we were following but my mind made a jump re: the design of the passport. He motioned for me to make my statement so I launched into it and was trying to explain that rather than it being the people who designed the passport trying to romanticize the frontier/self made man aspect of the United States it seemed more like a practical choice. The fact that there are no cities represented in the passport [to me] points to the creators/designers need to avoid controversy. How does one pick cities that are emblematic of the United States without creating some sort of outcry from citizens about how one city is better than the other? I think that if it were Russia, at least they could just put Moscow in the passport, and nobody would say anything because that's just how it is. But the US is actually a conglomerate of many little countries. NYC, it can be argued is it's own country, and LA is just whack (I say that in a loving way). To me it points to a kind of fracturing (which is so American Lit) of the unity of the US (in the present), the designers had to go back to a different time to create a sense of again - unity, etc.

I'm halfway through this statement when some girl just randomly cuts in to what I'm saying, very loudly. She was trying to claim that there was a city represented in the passport because of the Statue of Liberty, and kept trying to run away with this, so I countered with the fact that there was absolutely nothing other than the top part of the statue seen in the image which I believe was a deliberate choice. Lady Liberty is an emblem for Freedom. (it has to be capitalized, you know it does) I finished my statement, which was appreciated. I just don't understand why this girl felt it was so important to not let me finish and had to jump in and not wait. Was that so important? Why was it so important? It just threw me off for a moment in terms of pettiness.

I later decided that it was because I had looked at her earlier and possibly showed some form of disapproval for her choice of outfit. She was wearing white dress socks with black leather secretary shoes with thick chunky heels, grey bell-y bottoms and a white oxford-ish shirt, but with embellishments. It was kind of wanna-be Audrey Hepburn but not quite hitting the mark. Missing it by almost a mile. It was the shoe/sock combo that got me I think. I was going to make a comment about it earlier but then it developed into a whole story because she decided to go and be passionate about something I actually think was insignificant and eventually banal.

BUT I think it's interesting that I've never experienced something like it before at U of T. It whet my appetite for shooting people down.

I'm gonna let my brain marinate in that for a bit. It's gratifying.